Employees with the city of Greater Sudbury, who have been without a contract since March 31, voted 87 per cent in favour of striking yesterday (May 13).
“Our member's goal this time when we went into bargaining was to try to improve quality of life, and the employer seems to want to have nothing to do with that,” Steve Speck, president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 4705, said.
“In fact, they want to reverse that, and take away even more of the quality of life of our members.”
Speck said some “large concessions” regarding seniority and shift work issues could cause a strike to happen. There are also 10 winter maintenance jobs that should have been filled, but are “being held hostage” if workers don't agree to concessions at the table, Speck explained.
A conciliator has been called in to meet with both sides on May 18, 20 and 21.
“After that process, we'll have to sit down and see where we are and reaccess the situation,” Speck said.
If upwards of 1,300 city workers do strike, Speck speculates the city would shut down. He said services like transit, garbage collection and libraries would stop running.
“We're hoping it doesn't happen,” he said. “You'd have to be silly in this day and age to want a strike.”
Speck said the worker's plan is to reach a fair and collective agreement, without a strike.
“Our goal is to take this strong strike mandate and use that as the strong bargaining tool it was meant to be, to get the employer to take our demands and our proposals seriously at the table, which they haven't been doing so far.”
