Unifor ACL Membership Bulletin – CIF Update Sept 3

Unifor ACL (Atlantic Communication Locals)

Membership Bulletin

Common Interest Forum Negotiations Update – September 3, 2014

The Common Interest Forum (CIF) met from August 25 – 29, 2014 in St. Andrews, NB to continue our discussions which currently have a singular focus of negotiating a new collective agreement.

You’ll recall from our May 29^th Update that the current collective agreement expires December 31, 2014. The CIF group used the Interest Based Negotiation (IBN) process to determine the elements and timing of negotiating a new contract. Our original aim was to have a signed agreement by the end of November with voting and results completed by mid-December.

Obviously, there have been significant developments since that plan was devised and we outlined our thoughts regarding the pending acquisition in our July 24th bulletin to you. These developments informed our discussions last week. There of course remains many unanswered questions and, by extension, some queries about the negotiations process.

Our discussions last week remained focused on the key priorities outlined previously and the timing for concluding this process and bringing forward a tentative agreement for your consideration. Indeed, our unified position was that if we could continue to have meaningful discussions that would bring this process to a successful conclusion sooner rather than later, that would be best all around.

We continued to make progress last week and are now aiming to have a signed agreement by early October with voting and results completed a few weeks after that.

As noted previously, face to face ratification meetings will be held on company time and the vote will take place at these meetings. There will be no advance voting. Conducting the vote at the meetings will allow members to get a full, accurate explanation of the agreement before casting their ballot. It is our intention to have all the Unifor ACL Executive present at the meetings in Charlottetown, Halifax, St. John’s & Saint John. Our National Representative has committed to attending as many meetings as possible right across the region.  

We hope you find this update useful. Don’t hesitate to contact any of the following with your questions.       

In solidarity,

Bobby MacDonald

David Gates                          

Lynn Briggs

Steve Howlett

Mary Croke

Joyclin Coates

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