Cape Breton transit, curbside collection services not operating due to work stoppage: municipality

Cape Breton Regional Municipality (CBRM) says Transit Cape Breton buses and Handi-Trans services are not operating Tuesday due to a labour stoppage by CUPE 759.

The union represents outside workers in the municipality.

CBRM says solid waste curbside collection is also not operating because solid waste facilities are closed.

Residents are advised to remove their waste materials from their curb until the next collection day.

The municipality says the work stoppage is illegal.

“The current collective agreement between CUPE 759 and the Cape Breton Regional Municipality has a grievance process. This process was not followed,” said CBRM in a Tuesday morning email.

In a statement released Tuesday afternoon, the union said 300 municipal workers stopped work in response to “the city violating their collective agreement by hiring for a position without notifying CUPE 759.”

“This isn’t the first time the CBRM has done this,” said Kevin Ivey, CUPE 759 president, in the statement.

“During the summer, they posted tenders to contract out our work without notifying us, a direct violation of the collective agreement, and now they’re doing it again.”

The union says the municipality posted two tenders for garbage collection in June.

According to the union, if a private company had a successful bid for one of those contracts it would mean a loss of 50 jobs.

“The CBRM did not notify CUPE 759, so they found out their jobs were at risk from the local news. CUPE 759 organized and rallied at city hall in protest, resulting in the council promising they would not contract out their work,” read the statement.

Ivey says the union is frustrated.

“We keep having meetings about the CBRM not following the collective agreement, and we had another one yesterday, but nothing changes,” said Ivey.

The union says they have been contacting CBRM since Wednesday about another issue, with no resolution.

“Last week, CUPE 759 was made aware that a member of another union was being transferred into one of their available positions without following the process laid out in the collective agreement,” reads the statement.

“We presented a solution,” said Ivey, “but we were told they’d take that into consideration for the future. We heard that in August too. I told our members that it was against the collective agreement to stop work and that they’d be punished, but they don’t care. They want respect, for both themselves and their collective agreement, so they’re on the streets to get it.”

CUPE Nova Scotia president Nan McFadgen says the labour stoppage is a direct response to the CBRM “ignoring the collective agreement.”

“This isn’t new. It’s a pattern of disrespect and disregard for the collective agreement,” said McFadgen in the statement.

“They pick and choose what aspects apply to them, and the workers have said, loud and clear, enough is enough.”

Political scientist Tom Urbaniak says the lack of communication around the labour stoppage has resulted in bad public relations for both CBRM and the union.

“It’s almost like the parties have forgotten that there’s another stakeholder in this, and that’s the public,” said Urbaniak.

“If there’s personal or confidential information involved, there’s still a way to communicate that so that the public can be better informed.

A city spokesperson says about 6,000 households did not have their garbage collected and about 4,000 transit rides were impacted Tuesday.

“After the dust settles on this, there’s going to have to be some, and I say this in a very constructive way, reckoning about how it go to this point and how we can make sure that this sort of thing doesn’t get repeated,” said Urbaniak.

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