Hello, everyone. I’m Jeff Traeger, president of your union. I hope everybody had a good summer. Last week on the 9th of September, we were back at the bargaining table with your employer, Maple Leaf in Brandon. And your bargaining committee continues to do a fantastic job of representing you and your interests, in the workplace at the bargaining table.
We met for four days, reviewed a lot of the non-monetary items that were still on the table from our previous rounds of negotiations back in July and were able to resolve probably about 20% of all of the total proposals between the two parties. So it was a decent week at the table. I’m not going to say it was a great week, because there are a lot of really important issues that are still on the table around things like overtime, hours of work and leaves of absence that we still need to address.
We’re hoping that by the time we get back to the table on October 8th, we’ll be there for three days. October 8-10. And we’re hoping that we can wrap up the non-monetary discussions then, and then at the end of October we have another three days where we’re hoping to begin talking about monetary issues. So that is things like wages and benefits and your pension plan, shift premiums and the like.
After that, we have three days scheduled in November and another four days scheduled in December. We’ve also started shooting videos of your committee. So besides this video that you’re watching now, over the next weeks, you’ll be able to see videos of your committee members talking about some of the major themes that are happening at the bargaining table.
So as we get closer to the expiry date on December the 31st, I hope you continue to stay involved in the process. Continue to check this website for updates and continue to be involved with your union.
Thank you.
