Daniel MacIsaac
Northern News Services

NNSL (Jan 11/99) - A major step toward reaching a contract settlement between the GNWT and government workers was made Friday when the 10-member negotiating team from the Union of Northern Workers voted to put the GNWT¼s latest collective agreement offer out for a vote by its membership.

In a press release, the UNW said it had also accepted the recommendations made by mediator Tom Jolliffe in his Dec. 31 report. UNW president Jackie Simpson said only a few agreed-on modifications in the proposal and the GNWT¼s Memorandum of Understanding will be made before the proposal is presented for membership ratification.

The proposed two-year agreement is retroactive to April, 1998. Government workers have been without a contract since the last one expired March 31.

The UNW release said the agreement provides for, among other things, the implementation of the Hay Plan and new Job Evaluation Review Board.

Speaking from her downtown Yellowknife office Thursday, Simpson expressed hope a settlement might soon occur.

Simpson said the breakthrough in negotiations occurred in December when the GNWT agreed to withdraw the issue of a pay-equity settlement as a stipulation for signing a new contract.

„Without that happening we were definitely up against the wall and could not negotiate a collective agreement,¾ she said.

Simpson pointed to the closing comments in Jolliffe's report, which compared the government¼s attempt to combine job-evaluation rewrites and wage increases as mixing apples and oranges.

„You need to take those apples and oranges and put them different baskets and deal with them separately,¾ she said.

Simpson said there have so far been no negative effects of the lack of a contract. Still, she added, having a contract settlement will take away worker uncertainty, particularly in light of the imminent territorial division, on April 1.

„It will be better to have something in place that will allow for stabilization during that kind of a transition period,¾ she said.

The UNW has already split in preparation for the territorial division. The union now has a membership of approximately 3,000 government workers, while 900 moved over to join the Nunavut Employees Union.

In fact, Simpson said it was the impending territorial division that led the GNWT to attempt to combine contract negotiations with the contentious issues of pay equity and job classification.

„In the event of division, you have to determine degree of liability or if there is any liability to the new government.¾

Director of Labour Relations Herb Hunt announced earlier this week that the GNWT had accepted the mediator¼s recommendations, and had put forward the proposed agreement for union review.

As for the pay equity issue, Simpson said the GNWT, the UNW and its affiliate, the Public Service Alliance of Canada, are to meet before a Human Rights Tribunal in Ottawa on Jan. 21 and 22.