Transit union members reject contract offer

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This article was published 30/05/2019 (1939 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The leadership of the Winnipeg Transit union is urging city hall to return to bargaining, after its membership overwhelmingly rejected a deal for the second time in eight weeks.

Members of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1505 voted 96.6 per cent against what had been described as the “final offer” from Winnipeg city hall.

“The results of the vote tell me that the members won’t take the concessions that the city is pushing,” Aleem Chaudhary, Local 1505 president, said in a statement released Friday afternoon.

The vote gives the union leadership a strike mandate.

The union would prefer to resume negotiations; however, legal job action could be expected in the days ahead, Chaudhary said.

“While we do have a strike mandate, we intend to ask the city to return to the table and work towards a fair deal,” Chaudhary said. “We do intend to begin taking legal job action in the days to come and will be updating the public regarding our next steps.”

Local 1505 represents more than 1,400 operators and maintenance workers at Winnipeg Transit. The collective agreement between the City of Winnipeg and ATU 1505 expired Jan. 12.

The union released the result of the vote Friday, which revealed 1,176 (84 per cent of members) cast a ballot, with 1,136 voting against the city’s offer and 38 voting to accept. The union reported two spoiled ballots.

Transit has failed to address major issues, including respect for employees and scheduling, while the city’s insistence on the creation of part-time bus driver jobs continues to be a major obstacle to achieving a tentative agreement, Chaudhary said.

“Bringing in 200 part-time operators at wages $10 less than the average for regular operators, with no pension or benefits, is not how you run a successful public transit system,” he said.

City hall issued a statement stating it will return to bargaining with the assistance of a provincially-appointed conciliator.

“The city is disappointed in the vote results, as we had clearly indicated this was our final offer. We will be requesting that the province appoint a conciliator so that we can conclude these negotiations,” David Driedger, manager of corporate communications, said in an email.

“The City of Winnipeg is committed to continue negotiating in a fair and reasonable manner with ATU, and is hoping for a successful conclusion to collective bargaining that won’t result in any disruption to transit services for the thousands of users that rely on it every day.”

The city’s latest offer, presented to the union May 17, followed a day of job action during which bus operators did not enforce fare collection (estimated to have cost Winnipeg Transit about $45,000in revenue). The job action prompted to city to file an unfair labour practice complaint against the union with the Manitoba Labour Board.

Negotiations between the two sides appear to have been disrupted by uncertainty within the city’s labour relations department. 

The manager of the labour relations, Robert Kirby, was doing double-duty leading the internal probe into the building inspections division while heading up the transit talks and then he recently resigned his post to take a position in another province. 

The individual then tasked to lead the negotiations with the transit union, senior labour relations officer John Dawson, is currently out of the country on vacation until June 10.

aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca