Yellowknife city councillors are now set to meet on Thursday to authorize a new collective agreement with municipal workers, a deal that will end a strike and lockout if finalized.
Unionized workers are understood to be holding votes to ratify the agreement this week, a prerequisite for the city to sign off on it, though the unions involved have not commented.
City council was originally expected to meet on Tuesday, but that meeting was subsequently rescheduled. A city spokesperson said the municipality had pushed back the meeting after receiving a better understanding of how long ratification among unionized workers would take.
The details of the new agreement remain under wraps. Unions and the city say those details will only be publicized if the deal is approved by workers and council.
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Thursday’s council gathering – assuming workers approve the deal – will involve two back-to-back meetings at 12:05pm and 12:15pm to pass a bylaw that formally authorizes the collective agreement.
The agreement is backdated to January 1, 2022 and runs until the end of this year, at which point negotiations toward a new agreement will need to begin.
Municipal workers have been simultaneously on strike and locked out since February 8 over the issue of salary increases at a time of heightened inflation. In their last public proposals, the city and unions were 1.75 percentage points apart in their proposed annual increases.
