Your Bargaining Team resumed negotiations on Wednesday November 2nd and as you may recall, we were supposed to be in bargaining until Friday, November 4th. However, the City has decided to call impasse.
The City tried to force our hand and make us negotiate with ourselves. After a long day at the table and assessing our position, we decided to reconvene as a team the following morning to determine how to move forward. After the team had been released, the City’s negotiator decided to reach out to give us an ultimatum that stated that we had to give them a new proposal by 9:00 am the next day or face impasse.
Your bargaining team decided that it was in our best interest to take our time to evaluate where we are at, to ensure we were making the best decisions on behalf of the membership, instead of jumping the gun and forcing ourselves to start making concessions without truly evaluating how this would affect all of us. Effectively, to bargain against ourselves. While we were working this morning, the City reached out and declared impasse without giving us proper time to work on things.
Impasse is called when one of the parties feels that we are not able to come to an agreement without having someone to come in and assist with the process. This means that we will continue to bargain with the City, however, we will have a conciliator, appointed by the Labour Board that will encourage both sides to bargain with each other.
We will keep you updated as we get information. Please come to the AGM on Wednesday, November 30th at 5:30pm at the UNW building for further details.
Your Bargaining Team
Reilly MacNeil
Geraldine Penny
Karlee McKay
Maxime Thibault-Gingras – PSAC Negotiator
Anne Marie Thistle – Director, UNW Membership Services