Saskatoon transit workers have been without a contract for four years. Now, the transit union and the City of Saskatoon are back at the negotiating table for the first time in months.

Hundreds of transit employees from across Western Canada gathered outside Saskatoon city hall Saturday afternoon to rally support for members of the union representing these workers, who are still without a contract.

“It's been four years. We're working on 2012 wage rates,” said Jim Yakubowski, a Saskatoon transit worker. “There's a substantial amount of pay that is owed to us from our perspective in terms of retroactive pay.”

Union members were locked out in the fall of 2014, which was later ruled illegal by the Saskatchewan Labour Relations Board.

Pension and wages remain the outstanding issues in negotiating a contract. The parties haven't met for several months, but Yakubowski said the issue needs to be solved soon.

“Hopefully, with the least amount of impact to the citizens of Saskatoon—they've suffered enough,” said Yakubowski. “They've been used as pawns in this issue.”

The city has offered a 10 per cent wage increase over four years. The union says that's still less than the average wage in other western cities. As for pension, the city says it's the same package offered to all employees in the general pension plan.

“As the economy has turned down a bit, it's even, I would say, above fair when it comes to what's going on outside of our city operations,” said Marno McInnes, City of Saskatoon’s director of human resources. “I think, at the end of the day, it's competitive, it's fair, and the other eight or nine associations have accepted it.”

Either way, both parties agree now is the time to settle negotiations.

“We've got collective bargaining again, so that happened in September where we're basically able to start bargaining with the other unions,” explained McInnes. “So we really have some need to actually get this last round finalized and move forward.”

The city and the union met formally for the first time in months on Friday, and these discussions are set to continue next week.

Based on a report by CTV Saskatoon’s Taylor Rattray