City of Toronto negotiators will push hard to strip city workers of “jobs for life” contract guarantees, says Councillor Doug Ford, setting his brother’s administration on a collision course with the city’s unions.

The bold push aimed at opening the door to widespread contracting-out of services, including cleaning and grass-cutting, dramatically elevates the risk of a lockout or strike after the CUPE Local 416’s contract expires Dec. 31, say political and labour observers.

Certain contract provisions guarantee any member whose job is contracted-out another equal or lower position with the city.

In a brief telephone interview with the Star on Wednesday, the brother and closest adviser of Mayor Rob Ford said: “We’re going to target ‘jobs for life’ whenever we can, because nobody should have a job for life.

“I can tell you we’ll go after it in every negotiation we can. I can’t say we’ll be successful, but I can say we’ll give it one hell of a try.”

On Monday, Mayor Ford gave Local 416 notice that he will ask council to authorize contracting out residential garbage collection from Yonge St. west to the border of Etobicoke, where pick-up is already privatized.

Ford’s team said the job-security contract clauses are the only thing preventing them from contracting out pick-up city-wide.

“Employment security is a No. 1 priority for Local 416 — it always has and always will be,” Local 416 president Mark Ferguson said Wednesday, reacting to Doug Ford’s comments.

“It’s not a clause that we are going to negotiate out of our collective agreement. If anything we’ll be looking to improve security provisions, because this current administration is looking to contract-out everything that’s not nailed down, and we can’t allow that.”

Ferguson said job security provisions are common in public and private sector contracts and disputed the “jobs for life” label, noting city workers can lose their jobs for various reasons, including disciplinary action.

John Cartwright, president of the Toronto and York Region Labour Council, said the Fords are going down “a destructive path,” because outsourcing is fuelling a growing polarization of high- and low-income neighbourhoods.

“They’re certainly sending a message that they’re coming to kick the sh-- out of their workers,” Cartwright said.

Doug Holyday, the deputy mayor and chair of the city’s labour relations committee, sounded cautious about tackling the thorny issue.

“That would be a major matter to try to take away from the union,” he said. “I’m not ruling it out, but I’d have to talk to the experts before commenting.”

Holyday noted that, in 2002, then-mayor Mel Lastman triggered a 16-day strike by trying to water down job-security provisions that guaranteed permanent workers with 10 years’ service couldn’t lose their jobs to outsourcing. Queen’s Park forced arbitration that strengthened the job security language.

In 2005, Mayor David Miller extended the contract provision to all permanent employees.

David Doorey, a professor of employment and labour law at York University, is predicting the job security battle will trigger either a lockout or a strike in 2012, and the Ford administration will try to hire private contractors to pick up the trash.

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“We’re going to have the same situation as (the strike in 2009), but instead of being about banking sick days, it’s going to be about whether people have jobs or not.

“We thought it was nasty last time? This time you’re going to have private collectors trying to cross the lines of picketers whose jobs are on the line.”

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