HMHA president makes statement on outside worker strike hardships

The president of the Hespeler Minor Hockey Association John Murray has released a statement on their website and through a tweet this morning about his disappointment with the CUPE 32 strike keeping Cambridge ice rinks closed.

Negotiations between CUPE 32 and its 180 outside workers and the City of Cambridge resumed Tuesday morning at 10 a.m., but the workers have been on strike since February 2.

Murray says he respects the strike process but feels they weren’t given adequate notice of the potential closures and need to find alternate practice and game locations.

His full statement can be read below:

“Message from the HMHA President
Submitted By Kevin Mehlenbacher on Tuesday, February 07, 2017
With extreme disappointment, the current disruption to our hockey season has come at the most inopportune time given that the majority of the association is in their league playdowns/playoffs.

HMHA almost exclusively utilizes the City of Cambridge’s arena’s for our practices and home games which means it has impacted every player, every team including our IP programs which is our 4 to 7 years of age groups.

With all due respect to the negotiation process, HMHA and from what we understand all other user groups were not given adequate notice of a possible work disruption and even though we’ve received availability offerings at privately owned or other municipalities, it’s proving to be for the most part unsatisfactory given that either their minor hockey associations or user groups have scheduling priority.

We as a board we would like to thank you for your patience during this frustrating time and we assure you that we are committed to continue to search for feasible and reasonable offerings. With that said, we want to express our sincere appreciation to our leagues and minor hockey associations for their assistance with getting the players on the ice. Please go to our home page for continued scheduling updates.

Talks are to resume on Tuesday February 7, 2017. For the most recent updates regarding the status of discussions between CUPE LOCAL 32 (32.CUPE.CA), and the City of Cambridge (www.cambridge.ca), please visit www.cambridge.ca/labournegotiations.

Best Regards,
John Murray
President, Hespeler Minor Hockey”

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