Exhibition-union talks halt over contracting out work
Mediation efforts to resolve a monthslong labour dispute between locked-out stagehands and Exhibition Place are suspended, the venue’s board of governors said Wednesday, as an impasse over contracting out jobs threatens to mar events scheduled in the coming months.
Councillor Mark Grimes, chair of Exhibition Place’s board of governors, said mediation had been “unsuccessful,” adding that Local 58 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), which represents Toronto stagehands and technical employees, had “refused to provide responses that address the changing workplace.”
“In order for Exhibition Place to be successful, the union’s bargaining committee must accept that Exhibition Place is no longer just a location for concerts in a stadium that was demolished 20 years ago,” said Grimes in a statement. “This is the new reality and the context under which we are trying to negotiate.”
The parties drafted in a new mediator last week at the urging of a special in-camera city council meeting, after the CNE warned the dispute could cost the fair $1.5 million in lost revenue, mostly due to reduced attendance. The event does not yet have final attendance numbers available.
“I think on upcoming events it could have a huge disruption because these events are reliant on other union members coming to it,” said Justin Antheunis, president of IATSE Local 58. “The Royal (Agricultural) Winter Fair is heavily reliant on school groups coming. If teachers decide not to bring their groups because they are boygc
tting Exhibition Place, I think its going to have a huge negative impact.”
Antheunis said the union had offered “unprecedented concessions in an effort to reach an agreement that would be fair to both the city and workers,” including changes to overtime entitlements and minimum call provisions.
“Those are big ticket items to help them be more modernized, if that’s the term they want to use.”
More than 400 stagehands and technical employees have been locked out since July 20, after months of bargaining. The union says negotiations broke down because the city wants to contract out IATSE jobs and allow tenants at Exhibition Place to bring in their own workers.
After workers were locked out by Exhibition Place, the union proposed going to interest arbitration to resolve the labour dispute. That means bringing in an independent third-party to make a binding decision based on evidence presented by both sides. The board of governors did not agree.
Antheunis said the proposals made by Exhibition Place on contracting out have not improved since bargaining resumed last week, and had “only one endgame: to break the union.”
“They only want to use us for the grunt work, not the operating work, even though that’s the skill of our trade. That’s the stuff they want to contract out to any third party.”
In a statement, Antheunis said a collective agreement was recently struck with Civic Theatres Toronto “without any contracting-out language.”
“As evidenced by the continued use of Local 58 stagehands as the exclusive skilled technical personnel for these venues and corporations, the union is more than capable of providing skilled technicians for any and all of the events on Exhibition Place grounds.”
Grimes said the board of governors had “worked to develop other creative solutions to balance Exhibition Place’s key issues and provide significant work for the union.”