By Lindsey Cole
The Oshawa Express

Oshawa is not among six DriveTest centres resuming partial operations as the three-month long strike continues for driving examiners across the province.
Recently, DriveTest, whose employer is Serco DES Inc., announced some essential services would resume after employees rejected the latest offer at the advice of the United Steelworkers local 9511 union.
Oshawa is one of 55 full-time DriveTest locations across the province, but was not among those selected to resume tests for commercial road licences.
“It is time to take action to minimize the impact this strike is having on so many Ontarians,” says DriveTest’s Managing Director Paul Dalglish.
“We were focused on negotiating an agreement for settlement of the strike, but our employees rejection of our offer means we now need to focus on the resumption of our services without those employees. We will be giving priority to the people whose livelihood has been most impacted by this strike.”
DriveTest will offer limited services for customers who need their licence for employment or who have registered for driver training, states a press release.
Written tests for all licence classes, road tests for commercial classified licences only and out-of-province, out-of-country licence exchanges will be available. That means DriveTest will not be conducting road tests for G2, G or D1 licences.
“We are very disappointed that our employees noted to reject our offer,” Dalglish adds.
“We have even gone so far as to offer binding arbitration by a neutral arbitrator to end this dispute, but even this has been rejected by the USW.”

The strike has been going on since late August and concerns stem from job security. This is a big issue and talks have been going on since February, states the Canadian Press.
According to a DriveTest release, the latest offer consists of more than 50 collective agreement changes that were at the request of the USW. This includes the request that part-time employees be converted to full-time if they average more than 34 hours per week over two years, increased vacation for part-time employees and a top-wage rate increase to $23.74 per hour, to name a few.

The two parties will continue to negotiate. Serco is a private organization that signed a 10-year deal with the Ontario government to run driving tests in 2003.