Calgary News Watch

The fallout from the bitter transit union and the city of Calgary is just beginning to hit. Morale for union workers with city contracts is at an all time low.

Union leaders have watched the past goings on with the transit union and it doesn’t bode well. The city is currently or will be negotiating an additional four contracts.

While the firefighters aren’t allowed to strike, they’re been without a contract and the city is set to begin negotiating with the paramedics on Monday. The paramedics are not considered essential to the city; they could call for a strike.

Mike Mahar, head of the transit union, predicts the fallout to be pretty bad.

“[Morale] was bad going in and they damaged it worse than it was before,” Mahar said.

Bruce Robb, paramedic union president, has been keeping a close eye on the city’s tactics with the transit workers.

“I thought the city took quite an aggressive stance with transit negotiations.”

And while at the time of this writing the vote wasn’t yet in, workers believe it will be a close call but will be accepted. One member was overheard commenting about the city getting exactly what they wanted.

In the city’s offer, the issue of shuttle buses wasn’t dealt with. The union will file grievances when the time comes. In the meanwhile, here we go again. This time, it’s the paramedics.

Source: Calgary Herald

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 2nd, 2007 at 10:42 am and is filed under Global News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or Search Engine Friendly trackback (rel='external') from your own site.