CLARENCE-ROCKLAND, Ont. – After months of negotiations, Clarence-Rockland municipal workers voted by a narrow margin on Monday to accept the City’s final offer for a new three-year contract.
Workers ultimately decided to accept the offer in order to spare their fellow citizens any disruption to such vital public services as road maintenance, snow clearing and child care services in the city’s licensed centres.
“Throughout negotiations we sought to work cooperatively with the City, but this doesn’t appear to have been the goal of the Mayor and his supporters, who seemed intent on attacking workers’ rights and determined to provoke a strike,” said Jean-Marc Bézaire, national representative for the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), which represents the municipal workers of Clarence-Rockland.
Fortunately for the citizens of Clarence-Rockland, a last-minute withdrawal of the City’s attack on workers’ rights squeezed out of the City by CUPE negotiators allowed members to avert a disruption to municipal services.
Speaking of this win, Bézaire noted, “Until the eleventh hour, the City persisted in its attacks on the fundamental rights of employees by demanding the ability to discipline employees without just and reasonable cause. Fortunately, union negotiators were successful in having employees’ rights restored – which allowed us to avoid a strike.”
The union also forced the City to abandon its attempt to unfairly discipline a union steward for performing legitimate activities during negotiations.
“Threatening to discipline members for ordinary union activity was no less than intimidation by the City. Their attempt to take reprisals against union representatives for conducting legitimate activities during negotiations says much about the acrimonious and controversial ‘leadership’ shown by the Mayor and his supporters,” continued Bézaire.
“This bullying and the City’s stubborn refusal to work with us in reaching a fair agreement will inevitably sour labour relations between our members and the City for some time to come. If that is what they wanted to achieve, they were quite successful.”
The City’s offer consists of a 1.6 per cent increase in year 1 of the contract, and 1.65 per cent in each of years 2 and 3, along with an increase in ER benefit contributions to 90 per cent on the last day of the 3-year agreement. And the City refused a “me too” clause for wage increases – which could have limited wage increases for City Council and Managers to the same as that for unionized employees. Some suggest this refusal signals their sense of entitlement and their intention to give themselves higher wage increases than those provided to other employees.
In summing up, Bézaire concluded, “The stubborn refusal of the Mayor and his Council supporters to get real about negotiations and work cooperatively made it immeasurably more difficult to arrive at a final contract. And their stubborn attacks on workers’ rights speak volumes about the type of acrimonious and controversial leadership provided by those currently at the helm. All of which should give local residents pause to consider when they mark their ballots in municipal elections in November.”
Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 503 represents all full-time municipal employees at the City of Clarence-Rockland, including: road crews clearing winter snow, arena operators, mechanics, educators in child care centres, operators at the waste disposal site, tax collection, accounts receivable and accounts payable staff, urban planners, building inspection officers, by-law officers, and other administrative support staff at City offices.
For more information, please contact:
Jean-Marc Bézaire, CUPE National Representative, 613-293-8163