The unions forced the contract through against significant opposition, and it resorted to widespread censorship of its social media pages and other forms of intimidation in a bid to suppress and isolate opposition to a deal containing major concessions.
Workers are voting through Wednesday night on a contract which contains wage increases below inflation, no solution to understaffing and which commits the union to helping management further cut costs.
There is enormous support for engineers from nurses and other health care workers, but the strike has been systematically isolated by the health care unions.
At Wednesday’s meeting, the first since the deal was announced more than two weeks ago, no rank-and-file workers were allowed to speak or ask questions, a clear indication of the unions’ nervousness about opposition to the deal among health care workers.