Gateway Casinos (Grand Villa Casino) collective bargaining update

Your bargaining committee just spent the last few days with your Employer. We tabled the non-monetary proposals on Monday and began contract negotiations in earnest.

We were successful in reaching agreement on a number of issues and discussions of other items were of value. Your Employer also identified areas of the Agreement they were seeking clarity and, not surprisingly, many of these were in common.

We have scheduled two more weeks with your Employer in March. We are hopeful they will prove productive. As we work through March, we will continue to provide updates.

On a different note, we have been hearing a number of rumours at the worksite about what we have been trying to negotiate. As we mentioned in the last Bulletin, we are not able to discuss specifics from the bargaining table with the membership. Both your Employer and your bargaining committee need to have the ability to speak freely while bargaining about issues of importance to all of you. We also need the ability to be flexible and focused on the items all of you have told us are important. If we were to discuss specifics with the membership while we go through this process the ability for either side to trust the other would be compromised and neither side would be able to continue the discussions necessary to get a new Agreement.

We are not being secretive as we will inform every one of all details once we achieve a tentative agreement. In the meantime, it is important for everyone to understand that neither the Employer nor your bargaining committee can, as part of the bargaining in good faith process, discuss the details of the actual negotiations.

We appreciate your patience on this as we are working hard to get you the best Agreement possible.

In solidarity

Patricia Earle, Bargaining Committee Member            Heather Turner, Staff Representative
Chantelle Kilmartin, Bargaining Committee Member    Mike Orders, Staff Representative
Jason Merk, Bargaining Committee Member
Craig Procter, Bargaining Committee Member
Doug Riley, Bargaining Committee Member
Michael Roberts, Bargaining Committee Member

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