While the details of how to handle the situation haven’t been determined, “interruptions of service and closures are a possibility,” Mark Amorosi, the city’s director of human resources, told the Tribune.

If it happens, plenty of advance notice will be given to the public, he added.

When city council passed the city’s 2010 operating budget in December, it approved a total of $2.7 million in staff cost savings.

The full-time equivalent of 29 jobs were to be cut to save $1.5 million. The other $1.2 million in savings was to come from a 2% reduction in the city’s salary budget for remaining employees –to be accomplished through five unpaid days off in 2010. Under a three-year contract approved by council last March, the city’s CUPE employees were to get a 2.6% raise this year. The 2% salary reduction eliminates most of this raise.

To minimize impact on city services, the city proposed that the 2% salary reduction be spread evenly over all pay cheques of city employees during 2010. This proposal would have had employees “in effect buy the five days off,” Amorosi said Tuesday.

The city’s proposal might have allowed the city to schedule the five days off for employees in such a way that there would be “little or no impact” on city services this year, he said.

However, members of the union locals representing the city’s transit workers and its outside workers both voted against the city’s proposal, he said.

As a result, the city has now notified these two locals –Local 1189 of the Amalgamated Transit Union and Local 241 of the Canadian Union of Public Employees –that the 2% salary reduction will be accomplished through five days of temporary layoffs.

Another union –CUPE Local 973, representing the city’s inside workers –hadn’t yet voted on the city’s proposal. So CUPE 973 was told temporary layoffs would apply if its members vote the same way as the other two locals, Amorosi said.

Brad Kelloway, president of CUPE Local 241, said a “very clear majority” of his members voted against the city’s proposal. The vote was “not close at all.”

He said the main reason for the rejection was a feeling that CUPE 241 had taken enough of a hit in the city’s 2010 budget through loss of the equivalent of seven full-time jobs –part of the 29 positions cut as part of the budget. CUPE 241 members didn’t think the city should “turn around and take money out of our pockets as well,” Kelloway said Tuesday. CUPE 241 members “stood up and said we’ve already given enough.” And, he said, as a result of the union vote, “now there is going to be visible impact on services.”

Kelloway predicted that some city residents will have to hang onto their garbage longer and that recreation centres, pools and even city hall will have to close temporarily as a result of the temporary layoffs.

Amorosi said the temporary layoffs will apply to all members of each union local on the same days. The schedule hasn’t been worked out yet, “but I can pretty much guarantee it won’t be five consecutive days,” he said, because this would have more effect on city services. The layoffs need to apply to all members of a given local on the same day, he said, because otherwise there could be union bumping, where an employee who’s given a temporary layoff notice shifts the layoff to someone with less seniority.

“Bumping takes a considerable period of time,” and it wouldn’t be workable for the city to deal with bumping for temporary layoffs, Amorosi said.

Guelph Transit service might have to be shut down on the days when there are temporary layoffs of ATU Local 1189 members, he agreed.

“This is an option under consideration,” Amorosi said. However, there could be “another way to do it,” he added, declining to say what this might be.

The proposal for spreading a 2% salary reduction across all pay cheques in 2010 has been implemented for the city’s non-unionized employees, which includes managers, he said. The five days off they will get this year in return for the salary reduction can be taken at their discretion, subject to approval of their supervisors.

As of December, when council dealt with the budget, the city had 192 full-time non-unionized employees, 167 members of ATU Local 1189, 308 members of CUPE 241 and 201 members of CUPE 973, Amorosi said. City council members are also subject to the 2% salary reduction in 2010.

Amorosi said the city’s relations with its employees remain good, despite the union rejection of the way the city wanted to handle the 2% salary reduction.