Striking Town of Cochrane workers will vote Tuesday and Wednesday (Sept. 12 and 13) on whether to accept the latest contract offer from their employer.
Mayor Peter Politis confirms that the Ministry of Labour will supervise the vote on those two days.
Either way, work on installing ice at the Tim Horton Events Centre will happen in the next week if not by town employees, by someone hired to do it. Politis says he has spoken to the Cochrane Minor Hockey Association.
“We’ve had very frank discussions about how it’s important to give the employees an opportunity in a very difficult time to just breathe, and go ahead and make a decision that we think is going to be the best decision,” he tells My Cochrane Now Dot Com. “So we’ll cross our fingers and hope that Thursday, after the vote, that it’s our employees that are putting the ice in.”
“We still have to represent the public and we still have to be responsible, and we still have to put a plan in place, and we have a plan in place that is the next best thing, but nothing nowhere near as suitable as our employees actually doing the job.”
The strike by 60 non-management employees began July 31st. When mediation failed, the town requested the supervised vote.