Thousands of City of Calgary workers vote in favour of strike action

Thousands of City of Calgary employees have voted overwhelmingly in favour of a strike action calling for higher wages and more flexibility to work from home.

CUPE Local 38, which represents around 5,000 tech and administrative workers, has been in negotiations with the city since last November resulting in three rejected offers.

Union president D’Arcy Lanovaz says there are two big concerns at the table — wages and work from home policy. The union is calling for a 10.5 per cent wage increase over three years in addition to more flexibility to work from home.

“The city is healthy, the outlook is quite rosy economically,” he says. “There’s no reason that we can’t be that employer of choice.”

The city offered an 8 per cent increase over three years, but Lanovaz says they need to at least put the rate of inflation on the table of they want to “retain and recruit new talent.”

“They are all great employees,” says Ward 7 Coun. Terry Wong. “People are certainly concerned about rising costs of inflation and how their incomes are being balanced.”

“But at the same time we are concerned about who is going to pay the bills and we trust the administration to mediate the right answer so we get the right balance.”

Nearly 90 per cent of members voted in favour of strike action but Lanovaz says they aren’t at the picket lines yet. The union says they would start with a work-to-rule campaign before an actual strike.

“That type of campaign is where our members would withhold any voluntary work, any overtime work, any extra duties, and do just strictly what is within their job description,” he says.

“Get across to employers and maybe Calgarians that, ‘hey there is a lot of work that goes on to make this city run properly.'”

The union says they believe any job action would have a bigger impact on the city than on Calgarians. It would have to give 72-hour notice ahead of launching a strike.

With files from Margot Rubin