Negotiations Update - Feb 22/06
As you may know, your negotiating committee had our first meeting with WEG yesterday. Steve Mitchell, WEG’s CFO, addressed the meeting with a reasonably detailed report on the WEG’s financial picture over the past few years and briefed us on their initiatives moving forward.
The balance of the meeting, and our next few sessions, can be characterized as “issue based discussions” as opposed to “position based”. That is to say that rather than exchanging “positions” on a particular item, both parties identify areas of concern or issues and discuss them in a broader, less formal format.
Only time will tell if this approach will yield positive results. Sooner or later these discussions will lead to more formalized positions.
It is our intention to use our previous Collective Agreement as the basis of our bargaining. This is the normal approach when re-negotiating a contract, although in theory all items are open for discussion. There was no indication in yesterday’s talks that WEG will move away from this model.
We have been, and are still receiving a heartening response from our questionnaire. As you can well imagine, it will take some time to distill all the feedback and this process will be completed over the next few weeks. Ultimately, the members will have to make decisions on these and other issues as they arise. This questionnaire is an encouraging beginning to this process.
We are scheduled to resume discussions with Woodbine next Monday and Tuesday, Feb. 27 & 28.
Further updates will be available as soon a possible.
