City of Toronto: Collective bargaining

Collective bargaining

Collective bargaining between the City of Toronto and its unions

Read the Memoranda of Settlement between Local 79 and the City of Toronto, Full-Time Unit and Part-Time Unit B and the Memorandum of Agreement between Local 79 and the City of Toronto: Recreation Workers' Part-Time Unit for the term January 1, 2012, to December 31, 2015.

April 11: Toronto City Council approves new collective agreements with CUPE Local 79
Toronto City Council has approved new collective agreements with CUPE Local 79, which represents 23,000 "inside workers". The new four-year collective agreements are fair, reasonable and affordable and will better position the City to deliver efficient services to the residents and businesses of Toronto.

The decision documents for the new collective agreement for CUPE Local 79 in relation to the Full-Time Unit and the Part Time Unit B is available here.

The decision document for the new collective agreement for CUPE Local 79 in relation to Part-Time Recreation workers is available here.

Mar.30: City of Toronto reaches tentative agreement on part-time recreation workers
Following meetings between the City of Toronto and Local 79, the parties have reached a tentative agreement that has the endorsement of the Local 79 Executive. The union will now be taking the tentative agreement to the 8,600 part-time employees in the Recreation Worker Unit for a ratification vote. News release.

The collective agreements between the City and CUPE Locals 416, 79 and 2998 expired on December 31, 2011. Notice to commence bargaining was provided to each Local on October 4, 2011.

The Employee and Labour Relations Committee gave staff who form the City's bargaining team a mandate to bargain for fair, reasonable and affordable agreements that take into account the City of Toronto's business operations needs and the fiscal challenges it faces. The goal was to bring the collective agreements back to a more "reasonable" level regarding the numerous terms and conditions of employment that govern how the City effectively manages its operations. The City also needed to negotiate appropriate wages and benefits to ensure ongoing financial sustainability.

Our bargaining objectives

To ensure the City has the ability to pay
To have cost effective and efficient public services
To be fair to employees and the residents and businesses of Toronto
To increase our business operations' flexibility
To increase employee productivity
To increase customer service and reduce costs
To manage public money and assets responsibly

The City of Toronto is committed to ensuring a high performing, service-oriented and engaged public service that delivers cost effective and efficient services for the residents and businesses of Toronto.

The City of Toronto is and will continue to be an excellent place to work.

The bargaining process

The City respects the bargaining process and has key and important issues to discuss at the bargaining table with its unions. We are working hard to reach a negotiated settlement that is fair to City of Toronto employees and reasonable and affordable to the taxpayers of Toronto.

Governments across the country and around the world face significant fiscal challenges. The City of Toronto is not immune from these challenges and needs to make changes to its collective agreements to reflect our fiscal reality. We want a collective agreement that helps us deliver services effectively and efficiently.

The City negotiated to:

obtain necessary improvements to modernize its collective agreements to ensure it has the ability to effectively deliver its core services to the public
change costly and restrictive collective agreement provisions that hinder the effective management of the City
achieve cost containment measures in order to be able to continue to provide its services in the future

What's new

April 2: Message to Staff from City Manager Joseph Pennachetti - Collective Bargaining Update

March 26: Highlights of key terms and conditions of employment and benefits in the City's March 24 final proposal to CUPE Local 79 in all four units and the TCEU Local 416 (CUPE) Collective Agreement.

CUPE Local 79 updates

Previous updates

TCEU Local 416 (CUPE) updates

Feb 15: Council today approved the Memorandum of Settlement between the City and TCEU Local 416. The Memorandum of Settlement reflects the replaced language of the former collective agreement with the text shown struck through, while new language is reflected in bolded text.

CUPE Local 2998 updates

The parties have not commenced negotiations.

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