City To Pay Out Half A Million In Overtime For Post-Strike Cleanup
Posted August 6, 2009 12:58 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The strike was finally over, and a city rejoiced. But who would clean up the wretched remnants of the elongated labour dispute, and at what cost?
Ratification of the eventual deal was delayed while the first part of that question was debated. In the end it was agreed that CUPE 416 workers would take on the task, working over the holiday weekend to clear out the temporary dump sites.
What about the cost? That answer has emerged — and the total is almost half-a-million-dollars in overtime.
According to the City, that’s about 1/5th of what workers lost during the nearly 6-week long strike.
Some councillors believe the City could have pared down that bill significantly with a bit more foresight.
Coun. Denzil Minnan-Wong for one thinks workers should have returned on the Tuesday after the long weekend.
“What we possibly could have done is found ways to minimize that overtime,” he stressed.
“We had a long weekend and there were extra charges for working on a Saturday and Sunday, and a holiday Monday. We could have had the agreement come into place as of Tuesday and that potentially could have minimized the amount of overtime we paid out.”
That argument may not hold much weight, however, as a certificate issued by the Ministry of the Environment, forced the city to start the cleanup of temporary dump sites no more than 24 hours after council voted to officially end the strike.
Others believe we should have followed Windsor‘s lead. After a 101 day strike, they said no to overtime, but the trade off was that the clean up would take significantly longer.
