Outside workers ratify 4-year collective agreement
Posted February 14, 2012 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
TORONTO, Ont. – Toronto’s outside workers have ratified their new four-year collective agreement with the city on Monday. City council will vote on the agreement at a special meeting on Wednesday.
The tentative deal was reached between the two sides more than a week ago.
CUPE Local 416 — the union that represents the nearly 6,000 outside city workers, including garbage collectors, road and parks employees, animal control officers and paramedics — had recommended that members approve the deal.
“With this contract now settled, our members can continue to provide the great public services Torontonians rely on. They understood the importance of reaching consensus and finding common ground in this difficult round of negotiations,” Mark Ferguson, president of CUPE 416, said following the vote.
The new four-year agreement includes a six per cent wage increase, an interest arbitration mechanism for EMS workers and a “jobs for life” provisions for permanent employees with 15 years or more of service.
Ferguson would not say how close the vote actually was.
Before the vote, many paramedics said they were not happy with the deal because it did not give them the full essential services designation they wanted.
“We’re feeling as if the union is using us as a bargaining chip and we’re just not going to get what we want,” one paramedic told 680News.
The paramedics were so disappointed with the deal that Roberta Scott, vice-president of the Ontario Paramedics Association, told 680News that many will likely think of aligning themselves with a different union.
“We’ll look at options for the future — whether this is a place for us or whether we feel we might be better represented somewhere else,” Scott said.
Monday’s vote took place at the Ontario Federation of Labour headquarters at Don Mills Road and Eglinton Avenue East.
Negotiations continue with the union representing 23,000 inside city workers.
