Transit union sends counter-offer to HRM; HRM ramps up attacks

bsommerhalder February 27, 2012 2

Transit union sends counter-offer to HRM; HRM ramps up attacks

At 12:45pm today, the transit union sent a counter-offer in response to the offer they rejected on Friday.

No word yet on when HRM will respond, or on what was included in the union’s counter-offer. I’ll keep you posted as I learn more.

Meanwhile, HRM ramped up its attack on the transit union:

ATU Local 508 is holding your transit system hostage to get what they want – binding arbitration, no rostering and unchecked overtime costs. Don’t let them do it.

This was a full page ad in the Chronicle Herald today — not cheap real estate.

No matter whether HRM is in the right in this labour dispute, this messaging is further polluting the relationship between management and the union. This is exactly why strikes happen in the first place — when the sides can’t agree to play nice.

UPDATE (Feb 27, 4:00pm): Apparently the union’s counter-offer includes a measure that would address overtime without adopting rostering. It’s still unclear how rostering would fix this, but I digress.

TAGS » labour dispute, transit strike

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Mary

The relationship is not between management and the union; it’s the public and the union. The public pay the transit workers’ wages; not management. It’s the 99 percent who are being forced to take cabs; miss work and class and walk for miles.

bsommerhalder

Your point is well taken Mary, the public is definitely one of the parties taking a huge loss here.

But really, it is the relationship between management and the union that got us to this point in the first place. If they had a good working relationship, this process would have looked much different, and we’d likely have been able to avoid this strike.

Campaigns like the one referenced above do nothing to build trust.