City Responds to CUPE 416, Targets Job Security Provisions

Offers a four-year term which eliminates job security for workers with less than 25 years at the City.

By Hamutal Dotan

Last Friday, CUPE 416, representing the City’s so-called outside workers (including paramedics and staff responsible for parks and road maintenance), announced that it would accept a three-year wage freeze. It was the latest salvo in an increasingly public negotiation with the municipal government, negotiations which everyone is predicting will end in a lockout of the workers. Today, the City responded with a counter offer, which it describes as follows:

This four-year term offer includes eliminating the current commonly called “jobs-for-life” provision for those workers with less than 25 years seniority and provides for modest one-time lump sum wage payments… The City of Toronto’s collective bargaining agreements contain language that makes it nearly impossible for the City to make any changes to shift schedules and other working conditions. The City’s offer today, as with its original offer to the union, continues to seek much-needed changes to these restrictive provisions.”

Mayor Rob Ford and budget chief Mike Del Grande (Ward 39, Scarborough-Agincourt) have made it clear for some time that the job security provisions would be their main target in this round of contract talks—eliminating them is an essential step towards a much broader goal of privatizing the delivery of many City services.