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While details of the agreement remain under wraps, Mayor Rob Ford, who spent the night in his City Hall office getting regular updates, was clearly pleased with the outcome.

“I can tell you it’s a great day — an absolutely fantastic day — for the taxpayers of this great city,” he said in Nathan Phillips Square Sunday morning. “We do not have a strike and we’re going to keep this city moving.” Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday called it a “a good contract for the union and it’s certainly a good contract for the taxpayer.”

Without an agreement, the union was in a legal position to strike as of 12:01 a.m. Sunday, and the city had the option to lock its workers out.

This has been a rancorous round of bargaining between the City and CUPE Local 416, which represents about 6,000 municipal employees. The rhetoric reached a fever pitch at points, with the union accusing the Ford administration of seeking to gut its collective agreement, and city officials insisting that changes are necessary to help it better manage, and afford, its workforce. At issue was not how much employees get paid, but terms in the contract that make it difficult for the city to contract out services, change shift schedules and redeploy workers when jobs are cut. Mayor Rob Ford has said he wants to trim 7,000 jobs from a civil service that is 50,000 strong. The offer his negotiators made public on Friday sought to rein in the so called “jobs for life” clause by limiting the number of employees who can’t lose their jobs due to contracting out or technological changes to those with 22 years seniority.