London City Council has voted unanimously to ratify a new four-year contract with CUPE Local 101 that represents 750 inside municipal workers.
The newly ratified deal ends the inside workers strike that has lasted almost 60 days.
“This contract is the result of many hours, days and weeks of bargaining and required compromise from both parties to agree on a settlement that both sides endorsed and recommended to their principals," says City Manager Art Zuidema in a news release.
Members of the union ratified their new contract with the city in a vote held at the Western Fair District's Canada Building on Wednesday. The vote was 77% in favour of accepting the agreement, however, it required final approval from city council.
According the news release from the city, the new contract includes a wage increase of 1% in the first year and increases of 1.25% for each of the three remaining years. It also expands weekday service delivery hours from 7am to 8pm, and introduces Saturday service delivery hours from 8:30am to 4:30pm.
As well, the city says the four-year agreement limits retroactive wage increases resulting from arbitration awards related to job evaluations, it limits early retiree benefits to new hires who work at least 30 years with the city, and the contract allows the city to consider new factors like performance appraisals when promoting employees.
The city says services affected by the strike will begin to return to normal starting next week.
- With files from Scott Kitching.
