[URBAN NOTE] "Talks with CUPE, Toronto's largest union, go down to the wire"

[rfmcdonald]

The Globe and Mail's Kelly Grant describes how things aren't getting better for Toronto--and its mayor--as more city employees than library workers prepare to go on strike.

Negotiators for CUPE Local 79 and the municipal government were trying to beat a 12:01 a.m. Saturday deadline imposed by the province at the city’s request, after which workers could strike or management could impose a lockout.

Toronto’s deputy mayor and a spokesman for the 23,000-member union said they would keep their respective bargaining teams at the Sheraton Centre hotel, where talks are taking place amid a sea of orange-clad delegates in town for the NDP leadership convention.

“I wish we were a lot closer,” Cim Nunn, a CUPE spokesman, said just after 8 p.m. “My hope is that, if we’re still a ways apart but there’s a willingness on both sides to continue to talk, that bargaining will continue to take place through the deadline.”

Deputy mayor Doug Holyday, who planned to head to the hotel after 8:30 p.m., repeated his message that the mostly white-collar employees of Local 79 can’t expect a sweeter deal than the labourers of Local 416.

“I don’t think it’s reasonable for 79 to expect wild swings from what happened with 416,” he said.

However, the CUPE Local 79 negotiations are unfolding against a political backdrop that has darkened for the Ford administration since it squeezed significant concessions out of Local 416 in early February.

In that case, the city caught labour leaders off balance by threatening to unilaterally impose a new contract on a union that hadn’t sought a strike mandate from its 6,000 members.

[. . .]

Since that victory, Mr. Ford has suffered a trio of council-floor drubbings, including the crushing of his subway ambitions this week.

It’s not clear how the mayor’s weakened stature will affect talks. As of late Friday the city was taking a gentler approach than it had with Local 416, having not moved to impose a new contract.

CUPE Local 79 inoculated itself somewhat against that manoeuvre by holding a strike vote Tuesday.

Armed with the support of more than 85 per cent of voting members, Local 79’s president promised not to join library workers on the picket line unless the city unilaterally imposed a contract.