An Ottawa city councillor is calling for "immediate" arbitration to end a six-day-old transit strike.

Clive Doucet issued a news release Monday afternoon saying the strike is "crippling the city and damaging business during a time of severe economic downturn."

The city and the transit workers union are fighting over a proposed change to scheduling that the city says will cut costs by $3 million a year and eliminate the need for 20 more buses and 100 more drivers.

But Doucet said the cost of the strike to residents and businesses in Ottawa is not worth it, and he wants arbitration to be imposed so the strike can end within the next two days.

Doucet added that he believes the scheduling issue can be resolved by phasing in the city's proposal as older transit workers retire.

No vote on city's final offer: union

Earlier Monday, it appeared that both the union and the city remained in a stalemate.

In response to a challenge from the mayor of Ottawa, a spokesman for the transit workers union said members will not get the chance to vote on the final offer issued by the City of Ottawa because they already voted overwhelmingly against a very similar offer.

"This offer has been turned down with the exception of one-quarter of a per cent," Randy Graham, international vice-president for the Amalgamated Transit Union, said on Monday, adding that the strike, which started Dec. 10, is not about money, but about scheduling.

Mayor Larry O'Brien has repeatedly challenged the union to allow members to vote on the offer issued by the city two days before the strike, which the city said was its final offer to 2,300 transit drivers, dispatchers and maintenance workers represented by ATU Local 279.

"I ask you to continue to inquire with your union executive as to why you're not being given a chance to vote on this very fair offer," O'Brien said, addressing workers via a news conference Sunday.

Graham accused the mayor of political posturing and said it was about "public relations."

He said the offer differs very little from the one union members rejected in a vote on Dec. 3, when they voted 98 per cent in favour of a strike.

In addition to holding a news conference, O'Brien and OC Transpo head Alain Mercier issued a letter Sunday to union head Andre Cornellier, describing in detail the city's contract proposal on scheduling, the main point of disagreement between the city and the union.

The proposal pairs up morning and afternoon shifts for the same day. Drivers currently choose morning and afternoon shifts separately. The city says the new proposal will spread out work more evenly among more senior and less-experienced drivers, reduce the amount of travel required between morning and afternoon shifts, and ensure drivers get enough rest between consecutive work days.

Mercier said the offer is equitable for drivers, increases public safety by assuring rest periods and also ensures Ottawa's transit service will be more efficient in the future. He reiterated that the city is ready to go back to the bargaining table.

The union calls the city's proposal "block booking," and says it infringes on workers' abilities to arrange their own schedules.

Graham said the proposal is "not palatable to us" and it's wrong for the city to say the proposal will benefit transit workers.

"If it was actually better for the worker, would we not buy into it?" he asked.

"We intend to maintain the work rules that we currently have," he added. "If there's something that would be better, definitely we'll talk about that, but we don't have to do that during this round of negotiations."

Union officials said they too are ready to resume bargaining, but only if the scheduling proposal comes off the table for negotiation at a later date. Graham said that is the compromise that a federal mediator has proposed.

Graham said he is speaking on behalf of the union instead of Cornellier in order to take some of the attention away from Cornellier, who has received some "significant threats" against himself and his family. Police have been called to investigate the matter, Graham said. In the meantime, Cornellier is concentrating on the business of administering the strike, he said.

Strike takes toll at home

Meanwhile, some people who work in Ottawa say the transit strike has kept them away from their homes and their families.

Susan Bright, who lives in Embrun, Ont., about 25 kilometres southeast of Ottawa, said both she and her husband work downtown, and since the start of the transit strike last Wednesday, their commute has gone from one hour to three hours due to the increase in traffic.

"We've got kids at home, so now they're fending for themselves for dinner," she said. "So yeah, it is frustrating."

She said she's considering telecommuting instead of trying to get to work during the rest of the strike.

Shawn Tiffin said that without the use of public transit, he can't get from his home in Ottawa's south end to his job downtown. He is making a temporary home for himself at the apartment of someone he knows close to his work.

"'Cause I have no way to get home otherwise," he said.