The Chief Administrative Officer with the Cariboo Regional District says they are happy that everybody is back and that they can start focusing on providing services to the public once again.
Murray Daly says he’s satisfied with the compromise that they ended up with.
“Yes, I am satisfied that we were able to come back to the table and negotiate an agreement that was I think fair for all parties, for our employees and our taxpayers. I think after others in the area, like Quesnel and Williams Lake settled, we were able to look at sort of what their agreements landed at, and find somewhere in the middle that worked for us.”
Daly says they can work with the 12 1/2 percent when it comes to putting together budgets moving forward.
“Yes, and that was really our hesitancy to agree to the CPI (Consumer Price Index), it’s just too much of an unknown. This guarantees us with certainty what we’re going to be paying our employees and that sort of line item within our budget, and we can work with that going forward and plan with more certainty.”
Daly says it will take some time however, to get things back to normal.
“We hope the residents can exercise just a little more patience going forward while we try to sort of overcome the backlog of stuff the workers are coming back to. Obviously, building inspections, libraries are going to open Tuesday, they’re not going to open right away, they’ve got lots of books to catalogue and stuff to get organized before reopening to the public, and building inspections are going to take a bit to get back to full capacity right.”
The deal was ratified last (Wednesday) night and all employees returned to work today. (July 4)
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