London taxpayers are saving about $1 million a week in unpaid wages during the strike by city hall’s 750 inside workers, city officials estimate.

Now into its fourth week, the amount saved in pay that would have gone to striking members of CUPE Local 101 will within days eclipse $4 million — a figure nearly equal to a 1% hike in property taxes.

Asked whether that puts even less public pressure on city council and management to budge toward ending the impasse, city hall’s top manager dismissed that perspective.

“I don’t want to give you the impression that we feel we’re sitting pretty or we’re necessarily happy,” Art Zuidema told The Free Press.

“That isn’t the case.

“We’d like to get our people back to work as soon as possible.”

The savings are partly, but not significantly, offset by the ­overtime paid to city managers filling in at jobs normally done by the inside workers. They’re being paid less than time-and-a-half for every hour of overtime, Zuidema said.

Union leader Shelley ­Navarroli played down the financial ­savings, contrasting them with what’s been lost through construction-industry slowdowns and ­disrupted services to the public.

“I’d be interested to know what they’re doing with (the saved money) and why they’re not trying harder to get us back to our jobs,” she said.

Tuesday will mark Day 23 of the first inside workers’ strike since 1979, and there’s no indication of contract talks resuming between the two sides.

The biggest sticking point is clear.

City hall wants to rewrite contract language to let it schedule weekend work for inside workers, who handle duties such as administrative work, business licences and social services.

There are other concessions, tbut that’s the main one. Local 101 leadership, in an echo of the national union’s approach, say they’ll accept no concessions.

But into Week 4 — when workers are taking home just $300 a week in strike pay — the situation may be growing more difficult for pickets.

As Mayor Matt Brown has stated, the average inside worker makes about $58,000 a year — the kind of factoid that typifies Brown’s penchant for researching and reframing a topic to make it clearer for the public.

About 400 of the 750 union members make more than that, he added. The contract offered by city would by its end increase a $58,000 salary to more than $60,000.

But this impasse is not about the money for the union.

They’re irked by the demand for weekend work, which is required under the Zuidema-led Service London initiative that aims to make city hall more customer-friendly.

Union leaders have repeatedly said the city hasn’t demonstrated that there’s public demand for city hall to be open weekends.

In response, city officials have noted the core work hours for most inside workers, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., haven’t changed in 50 years and an update is long overdue.

Last week, two days of contracts talks collapsed bitterly.

Save for the mayor, city council members have said virtually nothing publicly about the labour strife, a silence that has started drawing criticism.

patrick.maloney@sunmedia.ca

twitter.com/patatLFPress

THE CITY’S LATEST OFFER

Four-year contract with wage increases of 1% in each of the first three years and 1.1% in 2018, the final year.

Concessions sought: