Canadian Labour Reporter

If negotiations remain dead- locked, there is a possibility inside workers could strike. But both sides have shown a commitment to reaching a deal, despite the hurdles. Calling the current deal for CUPE 79 "excellent," Mayor John Tory said it was the final offer but added there was always room for negotiation with willing partners. "The deal with CUPE 416 is a good deal, it is a fair deal — a deal that is fair to both our hardwork- ing staff and respects the taxpayers of the city," Tory said, adding that city councillors had voted unani- mously to accept the deal ratified by membership. While details were not made public, the contract with Local 416 removed the contentious "jobs for life" clause (which protects union- ized workers in cases where their jobs have been contracted out) in exchange for a slight wage in- crease. "(The deal) shares fundamen- tals of the deal that was ratified by Local 416 employees, and also contains proposed terms that marks significant progress on key issues to Local 79," he said. "Jobs with the City of Toronto are good jobs and they would con- tinue to be good jobs if the offer was accepted and implemented with the overall terms of employ- ment, including job security." Job security is a major stick- ing point for the union and it de- nounced what it called the city's proposal for a two-tiered system that would threaten jobs and make it easier to contract out bar- gaining unit work. President of CUPE 79 Tim Maguire said the union has also worked on ways to cut costs. That includes pooling benefits packag- es between all CUPE city workers, which the union proposed during the last round of bargaining, say- ing it would save anywhere from $3 million to $7 million. "We want to maintain stable full-time jobs with the city and provide more predictability when it comes to scheduling part-time workers," Maguire said. "We are trying to protect good jobs and benefits that come with good jobs." CUPE 79 also said the city's offer would jeopardize job secu- rity for younger workers and new- hires, and discriminates against women who work in municipal pools because of a lack of a female swimsuits (instead of shorts). Finally, the union said the city's redeployment rubric would move workers out the door faster. "This complicated and unclear process severely limits a worker's ability to avoid layoff by moving into another position based on se- niority," the union said. "In simple terms, those facing layoff(s) can only bump the most junior person in each of the four wage grades, and only if they can gain the training and expertise in one month." In spite of some contentious points, both sides have expressed a willingness to return to the bar- gaining table. A good deal, added Tory, would have to be both fair and realistic. "First it must respect the good work of our city employees; sec- ond, it must reflect our financial realities as a city and; third, it must be fair to the taxpayers of the city," he said. Court of public opinion A work-to-rule campaign, like the one launched by CUPE 79, can fail or succeed based on public perception. The tactic is a double- edged one, according to Howard Levitt, a partner at Levitt Grosman in Toronto. "When have they ever done more than the bare minimum?" he said. "City workers have been notorious for doing the bare mini- mum, as is the case for most of the public sector." With the exception of teach- ers, who are required to run af- ter-school sports and clubs not explicitly mentioned in the col- lective agreement, performing the minimum requirements of the job can backfire during job action, Levitt said. "The only substantive change appears to be that the city workers are saying, 'We're not going to go beyond the rigid, narrow job de- scriptions in the collective agree- ment,'" he said. "So, for example, 'If there's a photocopier stuck and our collective agreement doesn't require us to fix a photocopier, were not going to.'" The problem is arbitrators these days are expanding manage- ment rights to the point they will have to do matters that are rea- sonably ancillary to their job du- ties, Levitt said. "There's no longer a rigid cat- egory of job functions as there might have been, say, in craft unions decades ago," he said. The city could also be within its management rights to discipline employees for disobedience and misconduct, which would reflect badly on the union in the court of public opinion. "And if that exacerbates things then so be it. Putting pressure on the other side should not be a one- way street. This is ultimately a game of who has public support," Levitt said. The last major strike in the City of Toronto happened in the sum- mer of 2009, when garbage piled up in the streets and city-run camps and pools were shuttered for 36 days. 7 Canadian HR Reporter, a Thomson Reuters business 2016 CANADIAN LABOUR REPORTER NEWS < Ongoing pg. 1 Local 79 work-to-rule campaign could backfire: Lawyer Photo: Mark Blinch (Reuters) CUPE protestors rally outside Toronto City Hall in the summer of 2009. The last major strike by city workers lasted a little more than a month and saw garbage pile up in the streets.

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