BARGAINING OPENS
Collective bargaining officially commenced on Monday April 27th with an exchange of proposals between the employer and the new library workers union, TPLWU Local 4948.
BARGAINING TEAMS
Your negotiating team consists of Rob Rolfe, Services Specialist; Brendan Haley, Maintenance Mechanic - Lead Hand; Maureen O'Reilly, Librarian, Urban Affairs; Viveca Gretton, Librarian, NYCL-BR; Beatriz Hausner, Senior Services Specialist, TRL-User Ed; Nahid Rahnavard, Public Service Assistant, FV; Karen Smith, Public Service Assistant, ND; Samee Lee Grossman, Senior Branch Assistant, DR; Carmela DeGiorgio, Senior Library Assistant, MD; and Steven Burdick, Senior Lib Assistant-Cataloguing.
Your negotiating team will be assisted by CUPE National Representatives Sarah Declerck and Joan Hanton.
The employer’s negotiating team consists of Dan Keon, Director, Human Resources; Jill Garrard, Manager, Human Resources; Holly Dewar, Manager, Human Resources; Paul Trumphour, Divisional Support Manager, Research & Reference Libraries; Heather Mathis, Divisional Support Manager, Branches Services; and, Barbara Tinsley, Library Services Manager, Brentwood, Bloor-Gladstone and Runnymede.
THE CENTRAL ISSUES
Our major issues going into bargaining in 2009 remain full time employment including part-time and page concerns, the threat against the deprofessionalization of library work and the erosion of direct service delivery, increasing violence in the workplace, the threat of midnight closings and the assault against sick leave provisions.
QUOTE FROM THE TPLWU 4948 BARGAINING CHAIR MAUREEN O’REILLY
“The employer’s proposals do nothing to acknowledge the hard work that the membership has delivered on for the last ten years to make TPL the most successful city service since amalgamation and the most productive public library in the world. Other city departments and services have had an increase to their complements of over 1,000 new hires while TPL management pushes us to increase service delivery with no change to our complement. This is unfair to library workers and threatens to diminish the excellent work that they do”
ALTERNATIVE BARGAINING STRATEGIES: WHAT’S WRONG WITH THEM?
The employer’s opening bargaining proposals were based on a method commonly known as “interest based bargaining”. This strategy often forces union members to adopt the employer’s problems as their own. Underlying this approach is concession based bargaining. Your TPLWU Negotiating Committee firmly rejected this approach by the employer. Thousands of collective agreements are reached each year in Canada using “traditional” bargaining techniques and over 95% of those are reached without resorting to job or strike action.
KEEPING AN EYE ON CITY BARGAINING
The City has over 118 pages of take aways on the table for the outside workers. In effect, they want to roll back everything the outside workers gained in the last round of negotiations.
Provincial mediator Bruce Janisse has been appointed to both the TCEU Local 416 and CUPE Local 79 bargaining tables.
In the past week, Local 416 achieved an 89% strike vote and Local 79 achieved 90% .
We will keep you informed of further developments at the city tables.
MCJOBS FOR ALL: OTHER PUBLIC SECTOR BARGAINING
Workers at the LCB0 (OPSEU) gave their bargaining committee a 94% strike vote with a record turnout. The central issue is the erosion of full time jobs and the LCBO’s desire to run operations with a completely casual workforce.
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