Councillors due for 2% pay hike
Posted February 1, 2012 8:22 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Mayor Rob Ford and city councillors are due for a two-per-cent pay hike this year.
The cost-of-living increase, built into the budget passed last month, is about $2,000 per councillor and is based on Statistics Canada’s consumer price index for Toronto.
The 2012 budget also included a 2.5-per-cent property tax increase and millions of dollars’ worth of service cuts. And the TTC recently implemented a 10-cent fare hike on tokens and passes.
The councillors’ pay increase, if accepted, comes as CUPE Local 416 said in current contract talks its nearly 6,000 members would take a three-year wage freeze.
According to the Toronto Sun, the difference is expected to be between two and three per cent — last year’s change in the consumer price index — and would be retroactive to Jan. 1, 2012.
Ford, who made $167,770 last year, said he would not take the increase. Councillors currently make $99,620.
Coun. Doug Ford said a motion will be put forward to refuse the raise and freeze salaries.
Last year, council voted not to take the raise.
Meanwhile, members of the city’s employee and labour relations committee met Wednesday with city negotiators behind closed doors for an update on bargaining talks with Local 416, and instructed the bargaining team to continue with a harder stance.
“I would call it a lot harder than it’s ever been taken before,” committee member Doug Holyday told CityNews.
The city and its outside workers are in a position to have either a lockout or a strike if no agreement is struck by the bargaining deadline of 12:01 a.m. on Sunday.
The city has said a contingency plan is in place for city services, and that the public would be told a few days in advance of any work stoppage.
