Toronto Zoo closes as staff go on strike
Skeleton crew cares for 5,000 animals as contract talks stall over ‘job security’ provisions
The Toronto Zoo will remain closed Friday after unionized staff who normally care for about 5,000 animals went on strike a day earlier.
Zoo management won’t say if the attraction and research-and-breeding facility will stay closed over the weekend, but have cancelled all school visits and corporate events for this week and next.
“The animals’ meals continue to be prepared by the zoo’s nutritionist and additional staff and are then delivered to the various areas on site where the food is then prepared for the individual animals,” said Jennifer Tracey, the zoo’s senior communications director, on Thursday.
“Staff, under the supervision of wildlife care supervisors and managers, are responsible for cleaning the various animal areas,” she said, adding wildlife welfare is the zoo’s top priority during the work stoppage. More than 400 members of CUPE Local 1600 went on strike early Thursday after contract talks broke down.
Although the zoo remained closed, pickets walked back and forth across the gates, carrying signs and joking as they tried to stay warm, holding up vehicles for about 10 minutes each.
The city-owned zoo and the union have starkly different descriptions of what halted talks.
Christine McKenzie, the local’s president, said the only sticking point is job security provisions for her members.
“We can’t continue to be a world leader and do the work we do — saving species from extinction — if we don’t have job security, and the employer refuses to negotiate that item,” she said in an interview, adding loss of job security could see the zoo become merely a place of “amusement and attraction.”
Tracey, however, said “the job security that we provide our employees at the zoo is not under threat. We have no outstanding proposals that seek to reduce the existing job security of zoo employees.”
Management will not agree, she said, to “enhance” the contract in any way that would threaten “tools” needed to “continuously improve the zoo’s operations.”
Although it’s far from peak season for zoo visitors, birthing season is kicking into high gear, putting additional demands on the skeleton staff.
The strike has forced the postponement of next week’s scheduled public launch of an $18-million high-tech zoo hospital and laboratory with an atrium for visitor viewing.
“We have 5,000 animals in there that we are dying to get back in and take care of because they aren’t getting the care they need right now,” McKenzie said.
During the strike, the 86 Scarborough bus cannot access zoo grounds, the TTC said. Buses are turning back to go west at Meadowvale and Zoo Rds.