July 31, 2009, 1 e-mail

Adam Giambrone wrote:

Dear resident,

Throughout this difficult strike over the past six weeks, the City of Toronto has been seeking to negotiate a new collective agreement with union Locals 79 and 416 that is responsible and affordable for Torontonians, is fair to employees, and which enables the City to provide quality services and programs in an efficient and effective manner. The collective agreement approved on Friday, July 31, 2009 achieves these goals and is consistent with the bargaining position that the Employee and Labour Relations Committee directed the City's negotiating team to take.

This agreement, while being fair to our employees, is nonetheless among the most, perhaps the most affordable collective agreements of any of the new contracts signed in the public sector since 2007, including other municipalities in the GTA as well as both the Provincial and Federal agreements. Its key provisions include:

-Salary increases of 6% over 3 years (net impact of 5.6% over 3 years when benefits are taken into account)

-No increases to medical or dental benefits

-Permanent phasing out of the sick bank benefit, to be replaced by a new short-term disability plan. Phasing out this benefit is consistent with the approach taken by other municipalities such as Mississauga and the former City of Etobicoke and former City of York.

As a result of this agreement, the estimated savings for the City of Toronto and for Toronto taxpayers is $42.5 million over three years on salaries and benefits. Furthermore, the estimated sick leave liability reduction over 5 years is $140.7 million. A presentation that provides more details about the new agreements, for those who are interested, can be found at background

I was proud to stand up today and vote yes to this agreement which will help ensure the long-term fiscal sustainability of the City of Toronto, will help us meet our responsibilities to our taxpayers, will help us maintain the quality of services that our residents expect, and which is fair to our employees and respect's the City's obligations to them. Had the City not ratified this deal, workers would be back out on strike right now further depriving people of the municipal services they count on. Furthermore, there would be an extremely high risk of the Province ordering people back to work with binding arbitration, which would have likely resulted in a more expensive agreement than this one.

Now that the strike is over, our focus is shifting to getting everyone back to work, cleaning up the city, and resuming the services that our residents count on. Today was the first day City staff were back at work and were available to help people with requests for most city services. Some services which require more start up time, for example because cleaning or maintenance is needed, will resume on Tuesday August 4th.

Cleanup of the temporary garbage sites and litter bins will begin immediately and will be completed by the end of the weekend. Regular garbage collection services will resume on Tuesday August 4th. For the next four weeks, no garbage tags will be needed, residents can put out as much garbage as they need to in bags next to their bins.

To further contain costs, the Mayor and the City Manager have directed that no overtime will be granted, except where it is required to address health and safety issues. The exception is overtime to get the city and the temporary garbage sites cleaned up as quickly as possible. It is significantly less expensive to grant overtime to get this work done than it would be to contract this work out.

Full details of the City's return-to-work plan can be found at Service Resumption Plan

I would like to thank the residents of Ward 18 and of the city as a whole for their amazing patience, understanding and support during this difficult process. I would also like to thank the non-union and management employees who worked tirelessly throughout the strike to keep our critical services running.

Sincerely,

Adam Giambrone
Toronto City Councillor
Ward 18 Davenport

Chair, Toronto Transit Commission (TTC)