BlueCollarContract

Westmount officials could scarcely contain their satisfaction last Monday evening as they made the announcement of a long-term labour agreement reached with the unionized members of the City's blue collar work force. "The City is re-establishing a climate of trust and mutual respect, a stable work force and a long term collective agreement, six and a half years, which balances wage increases with working conditions that maximize our productivity," finance commission chairman Guy Charette said in part of his 2009 budget presentation.

The terms of the contract provide for hourly rate increases of 2 per cent starting retroactively in 2006, as well as in 2007 and 2008, rising 2.25 per cent in 2009, and 2.5 per cent in 2010, 2011 and 2012. "We on council are very pleased with what has been negotiated," noted Mayor Karin Marks. "I think the union is very pleased. They voted 98 per cent in favour of it, and there is nothing better than a contract where both sides feel they got a good deal … "It's important also to note that we started this contract on a blank page," she added. "This was not a renewal of a contract. After merger, when all of these decisions were made by the City of Montreal, we came back to having the right to negotiate our own contract here, and I think that made it a more difficult undertaking."

Marks said the City's team of negotiators was headed by Alan Kulaga, the director of Westmount's Human Resources Department, "who I think did a wonderful job." She said the City didn't want a minimum staffing requirement, or similar measures that say you can't have fewer than a set number of employees whether they are needed or not.

But Westmount wanted to operate its public works department based on a five-day work week, rather than four as is the case with the City of Montreal. "It works a lot better with the number of employees that we have," said Marks.

One of the other elements of the new contract was the ability to have a special category of employment, that would allow the City to hire more students during the summer. "During the merger we lost that ability and anybody hired in the summer had to be paid, which meant we were hiring students sometimes to paint poles at $22 or $24 an hour, which meant we had to stop hiring them."