With hours left before Windsor Star employees walked off the job, a tentative agreement has been reached between the employee union and the employer.
Officials with the Joint Council of Unions (JCU), which is the bargaining representative for the three unions that represent Windsor Star workers, announced early Friday evening that the new contract had been reached with the newspaper employer Postmedia Network Inc.
“We are relieved to have reached a tentative agreement that we can recommend to our members who have been serving this community by providing high-quality daily local news for decades,” said Julie Kotsis, chair of the JCU, in a news release.
A strike deadline had been set for 12:01am Saturday for over 180 employees that work for the Windsor Star.
No details about the agreement have been released, but a ratification vote for is scheduled for Sunday at noon. The sticking points during bargaining were wages and job security, according to the union.
The employees have been working without a contract for over a year and overwhelmingly approved a strike mandate back in December 2017.
The majority of the Star’s workforce is part-time and stationed at the paper’s printing facility off EC Row. The rest of the employees work in the paper’s downtown offices, covering a variety of departments.
-With files from Mark Brown
