City, union still battling over water delivery

IQALUIT — The City of Iqaluit and the union that represents its locked-out workers still can’t agree on how much water Iqaluit residents should get under an essential services agreement between the two sides.

Now the dispute has landed in the lap of the Canada Industrial Relations Board, a federal body that adjudicates disputes arising between employers and unions during collective bargaining.

The city has filed its essential services agreement with the board, in the expectation that the board will refer the matter to a court next week.

“Once it gets to that point, then we could go into court and ask them to enforce it [the essential services agreement],” Iqaluit Mayor John Matthews said.

At the same time, the union has filed its own complaint with the board, alleging that city officials have engaged in unfair bargaining tactics.

They say that when city officials made their most recent contract offer to the union just before the Easter weekend, they violated labour law by circumventing the union’s negotiators and presenting the offer directly to employees.

The city has circulated a summary of the offer among employees, members of the public and the media.

As for the water delivery dispute, Jean-François Des Lauriers, the Public Service Alliance of Canada’s executive vice president for the North, says it’s inevitable that city employees on work-to-rule couldn’t deliver enough water to residents over the Easter weekend, when many people on trucked service ran out for several days.

He said that’s because the city has failed to react properly to Iqaluit’s recent growth spurt, and has found itself without enough water trucks and drivers to serve all residences that are now on trucked service.

Des Laurier said the city’s maintenance abilities are also woefully inadequate.

“The problem is that the equipment that the workers have can’t handle that kind of traffic right now. The level of breakdown is horrendous,” Des Laurier said.

On top of that, he said it’s impossible for water delivery staff to finish their routes without putting in overtime — double shifts in some cases.

The stress that this creates for water delivery workers is a major factor that led to the contract dispute, Des Laurier said.

“We lived up to the essential services agreement that we signed with the employer… and the truth of the matter is, they have to work such an enormous amount of overtime because of a lack of planning on the part of the city.”

Despite the many issues that divide the two sides, a faint glimmer of hope appeared this week.

Matthews said the two sides have been talking informally about returning to the bargaining table, but that it’s too early to say whether that could happen by next week.