Talks between transit union and city break down

Transit workers could head to the picket lines as early as mid September after conciliation talks broke down the day they started, a union leader said Thursday.

The Amalgamated Transit Union Local 966 and the City of Thunder Bay met with a conciliation officer from Toronto Thursday morning. Talks between the two sides broke down quickly, bringing transit workers a step closer to a labour disruption.

"The bottom line is the city is not changing its position and neither are we, so I guess that’s the end of that," said Charlie Brown, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 966. "We’re looking for a contract and I guess the city’s looking for a strike."

The conciliation officer will head back to Toronto where she will take between seven and 10 business days to file a no-board report. Following the filling of that report the union will be in a position to exercise legal strike action. Transit workers could also face a work-to-rule or a lockout at that time.

Brown didn’t detail exactly what the union was after in terms of a contract, but said the union wants to negotiate. Meanwhile the union president said the city is looking for a number of concessions, which include changes to the employee’s benefits packages, working conditions among other things.

A specific issue the union has a problem with is a city-tabled concession that would allow transit to go to an unlimited part-time work force, which the union believes would erode its full-time workforce.

"We haven’t even begun to start talking money, and we really haven’t had any negotiations in the last year-and-a-half as far as we are concerned," he said.

"The city came to the table the first day and they really haven’t moved on any issue from day one. We are really not in a negotiation, we are in a position where the city is trying to bully something down our throats and bus drivers are finally tired of this and we are not going to take it anymore."

The union will hold a strike mandate vote at its union hall Aug. 29. Brown said he expects the turnout to be high and the outcome to be overwhelmingly in support of giving the union a strike mandate.

"I think the city is going to wait to see what happens at that meeting," Brown said. "Then maybe we can see if they will come back to the table and be a little more compromising. Until then I guess we are going to have to do what we have to do.

Officials with the City of Thunder Bay have been contacted, but could not provide immediate comment.