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The Town of Kensington, PEI is locking out its unionized employees three weeks before Christmas.

CUPE National Representative Stacy Delaney says, “CUPE Local 4893 members, consisting of Police Officers, Communication Technicians, Public Works and Janitors, were told that as of tomorrow morning (December 4, 2013), all employees excluding Police Officers will be locked out.”

Delaney says Local 4893’s contract expired in April 2013. After five days of bargaining with the Town of Kensington in May, the parties were unable to reach an agreement. That’s when the union filed for conciliation.

Three more days of conciliation took place in September and October. The matter was referred to a Board of Arbitration on October 8th, 2013 by the Minister of Environment, Labour and Justice, Janice Sherry.

Delaney says, “The outstanding issues all relate to equality and fairness for this group of employees, things like on-call pay for part-time police officers, wages and the duration of the contract. We are not asking for anything more than what other Town of Kensington employees have received.

The part we find most disturbing,” she says, “is that although there is no good time for workers to be locked out by an employer, it is less than three weeks before Christmas and this employer is choosing to lock its employees out of work. This is cold-hearted, to be sure.”

This lockout will undoubtedly affect services provided to the residents of Kensington”.


For more information:

Stacy Delaney
CUPE National Representative
(902) 566-4006 or (902) 315-4366

John McCracken
CUPE Communications Representative
(902) 880-8057 (m)