Hamilton water operators go on strike demanding better pay from the city
City says water will continue to be delivered despite labour disruption
Operators who run Hamilton's water and wastewater plant are on strike Wednesday after negotiations with the city fell through.
At the Woodward Avenue Treatment Plant, 54 workers are picketing, said Greg Hoath, business manager of the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 772, on behalf of the Hamilton Ontario Water Employees Association.
They oversee the water purifying process as well as the discharge of waste water, he said.
The city has said in a news release, well maintenance and water testing will continue "without interruption" and it has contingency plans to "maintain critical facilities operations" to ensure clean water continues to flow.
"I want to assure residents that contingency plans are in place, and City staff are working hard to maintain safe and uninterrupted operation of our water and wastewater systems," said Mayor Andrea Horwath.
"I have deep respect for our water and wastewater workers, and for the collective bargaining process. I encourage both parties to continue to work toward a fair resolution to this dispute as quickly as possible."
However, the workers on strike are "genuinely concerned" about how the city will maintain operations at the plant, said Hoath.
"We know what it takes in there, and there's no way they have enough bodies that are certified," he said.
'Looking for fairness'
At the same time, workers have faced two major issues that haven't been addressed for two decades, said Hoath.
The first is operators are required to get four, "Level 3" certifications but are paid less than a different group of workers who are only required to have one, "Level 1" certification, said Hoath.
The union wants to close that gap by increasing the pay of its members by six per cent over four years, he said.
The second issue is that if operators want to reach the top pay rate, they have to undergo on-the-job training, but it can take the city as long as 10 years to facilitate it, he said.
"We're looking for fairness within the city itself," he said. "I told the city last night, 'We're here, you call, we'll come.'"
Mat Couture, a millwright picketing outside the plant Wednesday, said the high cost of living these days helped push workers into demanding more money. He says his team, which keeps the plant operating smoothly and fixes things when they break, is not paid as much as millwrights in other water systems.
"We're severely underpaid," he told CBC Hamilton, noting the average wages for millwrights in online job postings are between $43 and $45 per hour, while he and his colleagues make $38.64.
"In Halton Region… at the Skyway Wastewater Treatment Plant, their millwrights and electricians are currently being paid $43.56 an hour."
Rob Filice works at the Hamilton plant as a water and wastewater treatment operator, and says frustration over the gap between his colleagues and higher-paid CUPE workers in the city water system has been simmering for a while, but become more pronounced as contract talks approached.
Filice, the union's acting president, said 100 per cent of the workers initially voted to strike, and even after the city gave a "final offer," support for a strike was still at 93 per cent.
"We're just asking for parity," he said. "The guys have had it."
Essential services not impacted
The city said, on its website Tuesday, it has been in negotiations with the union since last December.
A total of 371 people work at Hamilton Water in both union and non-union positions, the city said.
The city doesn't anticipate the strike will impact water bills or property taxes and most essential services will continue as usual including:
- Operating and maintaining water and wastewater treatment facilities.
- Monitoring drinking water.
- Collecting required regulatory water samples and responses to spill reports.
- Redirecting waste haulers from Woodward Avenue to the Upper Ottawa Waste Transfer Station.
- Issuing permits, booking appointments and selling water truck and waste hauler tickets from the Hamilton Water Storefront.
Non-essential services that will be impacted include some internal programs, engineering design studies, certain water quality monitoring and bylaw administration and enforcement, the city said.