About two dozen city employees stood outside of Citizen Square, encouraging Fort Wayne city councilmembers to introduce an ordinance that would bring back collective bargaining agreements for non-public safety city employees.
Chris mullooly.
Thanks for joining.
New tonight -- a new collective bargaining agreement won't be up for discussion anytime soon for non-public safety employees.
The city of fort voting to not introduce the ordinance.fox 55's caleb saylor was at the council meeting tonight and is outside citizen square to tell us more about what happened.
Live in: chris, all five republican members voted to not introduce an ordinance put forth by the four democratic members of council that would bring back collective bargaining for non-public safety city employees.
?now?, those city employees will have to wait for it to happen ?nats?
City employees tonight stood outside of citizen square, encouraging councilmembers to introduce an ordinance that would bring back collective bargaining agreements for non-public safety city employees back in 2014, city council voted 6-3 along party lines to get rid of cba's for non public safety employees of the city and after a 5-4 vote tonight, that still stands.
Democratic councilman at-large glynn hines was one of four members on council who voted back then to keep the cba in place.
He says if republicans are for some city employees having cba's they should be for everyone.
"if you're for public safety for having collective bargaining, then the civil servant, non- public safety employees should be entitled to public collective bargaining as well and i think anything short of that is as i said back years ago is bullshit."
Second district republican councilman russ jehl voted no back in 2014 to get rid of it and voted again tonight to keep things the way they are.
He believes those city employees should accept what's im place "it is an honor to serve the public, and the public is best served not with collective bargaining and that's why i take that stance and why i think our employees should respect what is best for the public and respect the system that is in place."for the democratic members of council, tonight was less about the cba not happening than it was not even getting the chance to introduce the ordinance.
Democratic councilwoman sharon tucker of the sixth district summarized her side's thoughtsjehl says that there are instances where costs were saved due to eliminating those cba's where as hines says they haven't materialized.
And jehl says while there was talks of helping these same employees during the pandemic in the summer, that's no reason to upend things.
"the pandemic is an exceptional time and that is why you don't make structural long term changes such as bringing back collective bargaining, just because of a pandemic."
So now what this means is that the only city employees who will be able to have unions are police and firefighters, which all councilmembers i spoke with tonight agreed should be allowed, but this issue can of course be brought up again at a later date.
Reporting live in fort wayne, caleb saylor
For the first time since 2014, Fort Wayne city workers may have their collective bargaining rights restored. The bill is on the..