Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 10/2/2017 (1314 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Contract talks between city hall and its unions don’t appear to be going well.

The firefighters union and middle management staff union are going to binding arbitration. Talks with the city’s largest union were suspended this week after only two meetings.

The only good news on the bargaining front is civic negotiators are still meeting with a fourth union.

"We’re still talking," said Maurice Sabourin, president of the Winnipeg Police Association. "We’ve been able to reach agreement on some minor issues, and we have meetings planned for next week."

Collective agreements with police, firefighters and CUPE 500 expired at the end of December. The WAPSO agreement, which represents middle managers and professionals, expired in October 2015. CUPE 500, which represents the largest civic union with about 4,600 members working in most civic departments, posted a notice on its website Thursday stating talks have "paused." The move was to provide the union negotiating team time to comprehend what it described as an "unprecedented proposal package" that demanded sweeping concessions.

Gord Delbridge, president of CUPE 500, said he will not bargain in the media and would not disclose specifics of the city’s proposal, but it seems the union’s first strike in 100 years is likely.

"We want to get back to problem-solving," Delbridge said, adding the union sent 10 grievances to expedited arbitration. "We’ve never done that before."

In November, Delbridge said the union would not give ground on the job security clause that prohibits layoffs as a result of contracting and they wanted wage increases better than what they saw in the last two agreements.

"We’re determined to get a fair deal for both parties," Delbridge said Friday.

Leadership at CUPE 500 feels hard done by. Their last two-year agreements had annual wage increases of two per cent, and before that, a one-year freeze followed by annual percentage jumps of one, 2.5 and 2.5.

Several union sources said the city appears to be taking a hard line in negotiations, notwithstanding the status of the police talks, and put the blame on the city’s new labour relations manager, Robert Kirby.

Kirby started at the city in December after spending four years in senior positions with the RM of Wood Buffalo in Fort McMurray, Alta., as director of transit and public works and manager of labour and employee relations.

The city is expected to hold firm on wages, but that appears out of their hands when dealing with the firefighters and WAPSO because both groups are going to arbitration. Arbitrators often refer to comparable increases at similar-sized municipalities.

Opting for binding arbitration is surprising for the firefighters, who were able to reach an agreement with the city on their own in the last set of talks. That resulted in annual pay increases of three per cent from 2014 to 2016.

Council directed the police board to set wage increases at or below inflation. The only hope of achieving a settlement such as that is at the bargaining table. It’s unlikely to happen if police follow the other two unions into arbitration.

Past arbitration rulings have relied on police wage increases in Calgary and Edmonton, which have been recognized as consistently the richest in the country. In the last three-year agreement, the police association got annual wage increases of 3.5, three and three per cent.

aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca