One has to wonder who made, or how the decision was made in Burnaby’s city hall, to take the firefighters on during the last contract negotiations.
After four years of wrangling and veiled – and not-so-veiled – fighting words flung back and forth between city hall and the Burnaby firefighters, an arbitrator has, frankly, given the firefighters what they asked for four years ago. At one point the firefighters staged a silent sit-in during a city council meeting last fall (see story on page 3).
Now, there might be some finer points we are missing – we haven’t seen the written decision yet. But the major factors such as pay increases met the firefighters’ requests.
Was this just a "let me show you who’s boss here" move? Was it a way of making the firefighters work for their settlement? Was it a message to the taxpayers that the city was not giving in easy to its old supporters?
And what city labour lawyer advised the city that it had a good chance of winning? Or was the advice that the city would lose, and if the city did get that advice, why did it ignore it?
While it’s fascinating to piece together the information just for the sake of discovering what sustains conflicts such as these, the reality is that this cost taxpayers real money.
Legal costs and arbitration costs are not minor amounts. The firefighters spent $70,000 on legal costs. And then there’s the less tangible, but still important, costs in productivity and morale.
What’s ironic is that now the city and the firefighters are entering into negotiations for the next contract. Yes, that’s correct. The decision was on a contract that only runs to the end of 2015.
Let’s hope saner minds prevail at the bargaining table this time around.
