Digby Island Ferry workers and City reach contract agreement

A new era of management/union cooperation was heralded by Mayor Jack Mussallem, as the City outlined the background on a two year collective agreement with the Maritime Works Guild (Digby Island Ferry Workers).

The contract, ratified by Council on July 8th,  calls for zero percent and wage freeze over the life of the contract. The Guild has also agreed to work with City management to increase the revenues and decrease expenditures in coming years.

No further details on the nature of those negotiations were revealed as part of the City's announcement.

Interestingly enough, Council did not make mention of the contract resolution at their public session of July 8th, instead posting the notice of the ratification to the city's twitter feed.

As part of the news release announcing the new collective agreement, Mayor Mussallem offered his thanks to the Guild members for recognizing the difficult situation that the city finds itself in at this time and highlighted the ability of working together to benefit the taxpayers within the city.

The city's new City Manager Bob Long also offered up some praise for the agreement, highlight  how "the Guild and its members were appreciative of the City's financial circumstances and will work closely with management to save substantial cross subsidization the City taxpayers pay towards the Digby Island Ferry."

You can review the city's news release here.

July 10-- N View-- City and Digby Island Ferry workers come to wage deal