About 200 municipal workers in Richmond Hill are on strike, resulting in some services being impacted.
The workers, represented by CUPE 905, maintain roads, parks, water, community centres, arenas and theatre productions. They walked off the job at 12:01 a.m. on Friday.
In a post on social media, the union claimed the city is refusing to pay a fair wage.
“Mayor and Council can find money for everything except the City workers who run Richmond Hill. The status quo is no longer working for municipalities,” CUPE 905 said.
Richmond Hill Mayor David West said, in a statement, he values the work of all city staff and hopes the union will return to the bargaining table and continue negotiations.
“As Mayor, I believe it is important an agreement is reached that is equitable to the workers, and equally important that we are fair to Richmond Hill taxpayers,” West said.
Here’s a list of city services closed or suspended because of the strike:
- Arena ice-pads
- Parks and sports field maintenance and non-emergency repairs
- Routine forestry and horticulture activities
- Snow windrow clearing
- Trail maintenance
Here are the services that “may take longer than usual”:
- Recreation facility repairs
- Unscheduled cleanups
- Waste collection from city parks
- Winter maintenance operations – salting, plowing and/or shovelling of city roads, sidewalks, facility parking lots and entrances to municipal buildings
Here are the services that are not affected:
- Fire and emergency services
- Access Richmond Hill, including receiving payments for City-related bills
- By-law services
- City Clerks Office
- Development support services
- Emergency infrastructure repair
- Hazardous tree maintenance
- Recreation programs, community centres, pools and facility permits
- Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts events and programs
- Streetlight repairs
- Waste collection
- Water and wastewater operations and testing