Outdoor municipal workers in Sudbury reach tentative agreement with the city | CBC News

CUPE Local 4705, which represents outdoor workers with the City of Greater Sudbury, have reached a tentative agreement with the municipality.

Meetings with an arbitrator began at 9 a.m. on Tuesday, and carried into the early hours of Wednesday morning. 

“After a total of 20 days at the table, I am proud to announce the bargaining teams have signed a tentative agreement for our outside unit workers that meets the needs of our residents and improves work/life balance for our employees,” Greater Sudbury Mayor Paul Lefebvre said in a press release. 

The union local representing approximately 500 municipal employees working in garbage collection, roads maintenance, parks and vehicle maintenance listed working conditions, scheduling and job security as issues on the table.

The union initially put forward a deadline to go on strike as of 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, if a deal was not reached. 

However, in an update at 11:55 p.m. on Tuesday on CUPE 4705’s Facebook page, the union local’s president, Bryan Keith posted a note reading “Please be advised that the Outside Bargaining Unit is still at the table. We care continuing to inch forward to a collective agreement,” and asked outside municipal workers to keep an eye out for emails and calls from the strike team for updates as they became available. 

In another post at 6 a.m. Wednesday, Keith posted, “We are still at the bargaining table, trying to achieve a tentative agreement.”

The release noted that the CUPE executive team will hold ratification meetings with the membership, scheduled for August 21, according to a post on CUPE’s Facebook page.

The terms of the agreement will be presented to Greater Sudbury City Council in a closed session on August 15 and the details of the agreement will not be announced until the deal is ratified.