City of Toronto “inside” workers have handed their union leader a “very strong” strike mandate as talks continue toward a new contract.

“We want dialogue. We don’t want a work stoppage,” CUPE Local 79 president Tim Maguire said Monday after the results of Saturday’s strike vote were tallied. He would not reveal the percentage of his 20,000-plus members who voted to walk out if talks with city negotiators fail to reach a settlement.

Those members work in all city divisions. A walkout would likely halt restaurant inspections and city family health services and close city-run daycares, recreation and community centres, city family health services, and more.

Talks between Local 79 and city negotiators started last October and are slated to continue next week.

The threat of a walkout is seen as a way for members to strengthen their leaders’ hand at the bargaining table.

Another local, CUPE 416, is asking 6,000 “outside” workers, including garbage collectors, to approve a strike mandate in votes being held Tuesday and Wednesday. The Local 416 website states: “The city has proposed to eliminate our job security, reduce our sick pay, and cut our benefits.”

Maguire is a veteran of bruising 2011-2012 negotiations with the Mayor Rob Ford administration. His members ended up approving a concession-laden “final offer” as the city threatened to lock them out or impose the conditions anyway.

This time around, Maguire said he is concerned fact the city requested the province appoint a conciliator to intervene in two-month-old talks with Local 416. The city has not made the same move with his members.

Maguire wouldn’t compare the tenor of talks under Mayor John Tory and his predecessor Ford, but said: “We hope a very strong (strike) mandate may deter (city negotiators) from an aggressive approach to bargaining.”

Local 79 argues that half of its members are part-time or temporary full-time, and wants the city to agree to proposals to “improve city services by improving the stability of our members’ work lives.”

In a note posted Friday to its bargaining website, the city argues that 28,500 full- and part-time workers cost taxpayers $1.75 billion in salary and benefits every year.

“In order to make the city work, we need both part time and full time employees, each with their own roles,” it states. “We continue to maintain a consistent balance between the two different roles, not sacrificing full time roles in favour of part time roles.”

Contracts for locals 416 and 79, as well as two other locals representing city staff, expired Dec. 31.

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