Please Click Here to find recent news, events and information from CUPE Ontario.
The driving rain did not keep hundreds of CUPE Ontario members and their supporters from rallying outside Windsor City hall on April 20, 2009. The crowd at the afternoon rally gathered in support of the members of CUPE Local 82 and CUPE Local 543 that have been forced out on strike. The Presidents of Local 82 and Local 543, Jim Wood and Jean Fox respectively, addressed the gathering, as did Sid Ryan, President of CUPE Ontario and Andrea Madden, President of the Windsor CUPE District Council. The speeches were a direct message to Mayor Eddie Francis to take off the table the city’s demand for elimination of retiree benefits for new hires. This roadblock caused the strike and is holding up any progress on a settlement with the two CUPE municipal locals. Yet this concession would yield no savings for the city for at least 30 years.
Immediately after the rally, in the packed city council chambers, Sid Ryan and Windsor’s mayor Eddie Francis debated for two hours ways of ending that city’s municipal strike. In an unusual turn of events, last night’s council meeting turned into a productive discussion between all of the principals about how to break the gridlock in the city-wide labour dispute.
The debate was by turns civil and heated. Sid Ryan began by requesting that Mayor Francis withdraw the city’s concession demand that the two striking CUPE Locals surrender their retiree benefits. Ryan informed the mayor and council directly that this demand would yield no savings for the city for at least 30 years.
In turn, Mayor Francis reiterated the city’s Net Zero bargaining strategy wherein any improvement in the collective agreement must come at the cost of existing benefits. The debate continued for over two hours in council chambers packed with CUPE members. Several councillors remarked at the fact that such a debate had never previously occurred.
The debate ended with a motion being passed by Windsor city council requiring the mayor and the CUPE Ontario president first meet with their principles, and then meet together to seek a resolution to the strike that has left the economically challenged Ontario city without its badly needed municipal services.
The following morning, Sid Ryan visited picket lines including the Central Avenue Waste Transfer station where the people of Windsor have created Mount Francis, a fifty car length mountain of garbage. Police have to patrol the garbage mountain in order to ensure that residents don’t continue to add to it.
In compliance with this motion, Sid Ryan will be in Windsor on April 22 to meet with the CUPE Local 82 and Local 543 Presidents and Mayor Francis.
COPE491/EW
