Members of the city's unionized workforce will pass judgment tonight on the contract hammered out by their leadership.
Beginning at 6 p.m., Canadian Union of Public Employees locals 1048 and 399 will gather at the Civic Centre to learn the details of the tentative collective agreement and vote on whether to ratify the terms.
"It's up to the members now," said CUPE 399 president Gary Campbell, who announced the agreement with CUPE 1048 president Janet Bigelow and city operations superintendent Bill Gaal late Tuesday afternoon after a day-long bargaining session.
The mayor and council also have to agree to the contract. A special closed council meeting is scheduled for noon today.
CUPE members have been without a contract since their previous five-year agreement expired Dec. 31, 2012.
And with the terms of the proposed new deal being kept close to the vest until everyone can hear it at once, Campbell said the members of his local - representing outside workers - are definitely curious.
It was a deal forged in a tense environment, with statements from union leadership consistently referring to membership feeling undervalued and disrespected by their employer.
And those aren't feelings that will necessarily be erased if tonight's vote is in favour of the agreement.
"I think it might take a little bit of time for that go away," said Campbell. "It was a brutal round of bargaining."
"Sometimes it takes a long time to heal wounds," said Bigelow. "It takes years to build a good culture. Of course there's going to be some rebuilding that has to happen, but I think it will be fine."
And despite any public statements, there's no animosity amongst the people who sat across from each other at the bargaining table representing their respective groups, Bigelow said.
"It's each person doing their work, we're all professionals. And we'll go back, we'll sit across the table on different things and we'll chat and we'll ask how each other's families are doing and carry on, just like we did before," she said. "No one is taking this personally, in any way."
There is, however, relief in there tentatively being a plan going forward and over not having to strike, according to Campbell, among both unionized and exempt staff. "It's definitely something we didn't want to do."
