Outside workers can be locked out by Sunday

The deadline approaches.

At 12:01 a.m. Sunday morning, Toronto's outside workers could be locked out by City of Toronto management. They could be out on strike. Or they could be on the job, or at least expecting to be first thing Monday morning.

As of Toronto Community News Tuesday, that is all any one can say for certain as the city's move to foreshorten bargaining with CUPE Local 416 reaches the strike / lockout deadline that city negotiators precipitated by requesting first provincial conciliation and then a "no-board" report.

Doug Holyday, the city's deputy mayor who chairs the Employee and Labour Relations Committee, said the city has no plans to orchestrate a lockout Sunday morning.

Mark Ferguson, president of CUPE Local 416, said he believes the city intends to either do that or force the union to strike by offering new rules of work to employees after the deadline.

Such a measure is a rarely used ability employers have after a strike deadline to disregard the current contract with employees and offer workers a new contract they must sign before returning to the job. Such a contract can include lower wages, longer working hours and cuts to benefits.

Ferguson said CUPE 416 won't strike unless forced to by such a measure.

If a labour disruption does occur, the city has a contingency plan as to how services would continue to be delivered and which might be suspended. But as of today, the city had not released details.

In past labour disruptions involving outside workers, garbage collection has been suspended in parts of the city where city workers operate garbage trucks. Communities such as Etobicoke, and highrises that manage their own garbage collection, weren't effected.

Residents were asked to bring their garbage to central locations in their communities - often parks - and had to cross picket lines to do so.

Holyday has been on the record as saying the city is choosing to bring matters to a head so that in the event of a disruption residents aren't faced with the problems of storing and moving their own garbage in the summer.

The issues on the table relate to job security. The city is hoping to remove many provisions that allow senior employees to bump junior ones in the event of layoff, and prevents the city from replacing certain unionized workers with outside contractors.