Cambridge outside workers approve contract, ending strike
CAMBRIDGE — City parks, rinks and pools are poised to reopen on Thursday after outside workers approved a new contract Wednesday afternoon.
The tentative agreement reached late Tuesday night was overwhelmingly approved by the 185 members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees 32 at Preston Auditorium.
Only a single “no” vote was registered.
“It’s a great deal,” said union member Rob Burr, lead hand at Duncan McIntosh
Arena, after the vote. “I thought we did very well. We got a good contract. I think it works for both the employer and the employee. We’re all happy.”
City council ratified the agreement late Wednesday afternoon.
The agreement includes a $1.25 raise as well as a two per cent cost of living increase each year until their new contract ends in 2020.
It also includes an agreement for in lieu time, something the workers did not have in their previous contract.
The city added that a joint job evaluation market assessment program will also be implemented.
Wages had been the main issue in the dispute, with the union saying its members were among the lowest paid outside workers among Ontario municipalities.
“We got exactly what we were looking for, for the most part,” union local president Ray Burigana said of the agreement. “No complaints.”
Cambridge Mayor Doug Craig said the tentative deal is a relief for everybody.
“It’s a good offer that I think is going to satisfy the outside workers. I think it’s a very fair offer that meets a number of their demands,” Craig said.
“Secondly, we’re going to obviously bring to an end the inconvenience to the community. I’m talking about hockey schedules, pools — and to continue with the excellent service in terms of snow plowing, if in fact the event does arise.”
News of the likely end of the strike was welcomed by city user groups, weary of scrambling to find ice time at private venues or outside the city limits.
“It means we’ll be able to get our players back on the ice,” said Cambridge Ringette Association president Cathy Nie, who oversees 250 players in a program that includes learn-to-skate and learn-toplay sessions for younger kids.
“We’ll be able to get our little ones back to their normal ice on Saturday, which is great.”
The past week has been a big headache for ringette ice convener Yvette Heimbecker, Nie said, as many games were either moved to different times at locations outside the city or called off. One game, which was held in Paris, had difficulty getting referees.
“They were scheduled at one time. Then we moved them to another city, four hours earlier,” Nie said.
But Nie was grateful for all the help nearby ringette associations offered Cambridge in the last week with city arenas closed.
“Our surrounding ringette communities have been great,” she said.
“Caledonia, Paris, Hamilton, Guelph, Kitchener, Waterloo. They all called. ‘How can we help? We have ice Wednesday night, would your team like to come and practise with us?’ Little things like that.”
This weekend, some games will still be held out of town despite the strike settlement. One will be in Niagara Falls. A couple of teams are at a tourney in Guelph. Another is going to Burlington for a game initially to be held in Cambridge.
“They called and said, ‘We know you guys have the strike, so could we host you instead of you hosting us?” Nie said.
The Cambridge Minor Hockey Association, with 1,350 registered players using about 150 hours of ice time each week, kept its travel teams and their playoff series running during the strike week by playing games out of town.
Most of the association’s house league programs lost games last weekend although one division found ice at the privately run Cambridge Sports Park, moving games into usual practice times there.
A return to normalcy at city rinks this weekend is happily anticipated.
“Big, big relief,” Cambridge minor hockey president John Morton said.
“That’s good news. Missing a week is easier to fix than missing two or three or four.”
Craig said his email inbox only got a few emails from the public during the week of strike action and closed arenas. One was “nasty” and unsigned. Another came from a hockey convener who was quite upset, he said. Craig said he responded to emails asking the writers to, “Be patient with us. We’re doing our very best to work this out.”
After Craig got back to the convener, he said, the convener understood the situation.
“People do get it and understand what we’re trying to do here,” Craig said. “There’s a responsibility on one side — of the public purse. And, on the other side, the responsibility to be fair to your employees. We’ve tried to balance that and I think we’ve achieved that balance.”
During the strike, police laid a careless-driving charge against the 22-year-old operator of a snow removal vehicle, which hit a striking city worker outside city hall on Sunday morning. No one required medical attention.
The operator was from a snow removal company contracted to plow the sidewalk during the strike.
“It was a very peaceful strike, except for one incident,” said wastewater operations lead hand Mark Linton, who said he called that incident into police.
Linton said the ratified contract doesn’t give the workers everything they wanted in relation to their counterparts elsewhere. But he is content.
“You’ve got to think of the taxpayer too,” Linton said. “You can’t have everything at once. We feel it was fair. It is what it is. It’s good. Everybody’s happy.”