Bargaining Bulletin No. 13

Meeting June 29, 2011
The contract committee met in Ottawa yesterday with the express purpose of concluding a tentative agreement.
Both teams worked throughout the day and evening and we believe we were very close to an agreement however we were not able to bridge the gap on remaining financial issues. While these meetings were not acrimonious they were very discouraging for all in the end.
Our goal is to secure the best possible agreement that we can unanimously recommend for ratification. Our position is reasonable and provided for protections that are necessary.
As always our team had long, thorough debate on the few remaining issues and we are all in agreement with our position and principles.
Next steps
Our primary purpose is to exhaust every possible route to secure a freely bargained collective agreement. That is more important today than a few short weeks ago. To that end, we will take one more step at trying to get past the last hurdles. Nav Canada has agreed to meet with a private mediator who we will task with finding the way forward for both sides. This process will be non-binding and informal. We plan to have the meeting on July 23rd although this depends on the mediator’s availability.
Should this process be unsuccessful we will, with due regard to recent events, file a notice of dispute with the CIRB and commence that process.