Warning message

Please note that this page is from our archives. There may be more up-to-date content about this topic on our website. Use our search engine to find out.
Toronto Professional engineers at the Canadian Standards Association (CSA), in the process of negotiating a first contract, will be in a legal strike/lockout position on February 15th, 12:01 a.m. The 75 engineers, represented by CUPE Local 4559, make up the Toronto area unit of the Canadian Standards Association. Their main work is to certify products for public safety before these products hit the Canadian market.

“Our main issues are wages and pensions,” says Rick Morrison, Vice-President of CUPE Local 4559. “Our employer is still using a classification grid that has left us underpaid and misclassified for over 24 years now. We also have a disagreement as to what should be done with the surplus in the employees’ pension fund.”

“We are very proud of our work - we certify everything from hockey helmets to heart monitors, and keeping engineers on the job at the CSA is a matter of public safety,” says Morrison. “It is definitely in the public interest for our employer to come to the table with an offer that will achieve a fair first contract.”

Three days of mediation talks are scheduled this week.

CUPE represents over 180,000 working women and men in Ontario, many of whom work in the municipal, school board, and hospital sectors.

-30-

For more information:

Rick Morrison, Vice-President, CUPE Local 4559, or
Tiki Wong, President, CUPE Local 4559,
cell: 416-997-3883
Norm Mackenzie, CUPE National Representative,
office: 905-568-4664
Andrea Addario, CUPE Communications,
office: 416-292-3999, or cell: 416-738-4329