Ottawa city council is willing to reopen negotiations on scheduling, the main issue behind the city's 37-day-old transit strike. But it wants to appoint an independent fact finder to explain the issue first.

Council unanimously passed a motion Thursday supporting the new direction in transit negotiations after councillors emerged from a closed-door session that took up much of both Wednesday and Thursday.

They had been discussing how to respond to a Jan. 8 vote by striking transit workers, in which 75 per cent rejected the city's latest offer. That offer, issued on Dec. 23, included a new scheduling proposal that the union said would reduce transit drivers' ability to balance their work and family lives.

The offer also included a one-time $2,500 "productivity" bonus for each of the roughly 2,300 striking workers. The city said the bonus was a share of the cost and efficiency savings that the city expected from the new scheduling system, which it alleged would also be safer and fairer.

Thursday's motion cut the productivity bonus from the offer pending the review of scheduling. and specified that any new offer would not cost the city more than the Dec. 23 offer.

Union disappointed

The motion did not seem to please leaders of the union representing striking transit drivers, dispatchers and maintenance workers.

André Cornellier, president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 279, stormed out of city hall and said he would not provide any comment until Friday morning.

Craig Watson, scheduling representative for the union, said transit workers wanted to speak to council and "give them the truth" but council chose not to hear from them.

"We're very disappointed in council, we're very disappointed in Mr. Mercier," said Watson, referring to Alain Mercier, general manager of OC Transpo, the transit company owned and run by the city.

"He obviously doesn't get it, he doesn't want to understand it, he wants this to continue and we feel sorry for the citizens of this great city. They have been let down again by this council and this mayor and Mr. Mercier."

Doucet apologizes

'My words should have been more considered,' Coun. Clive Doucet said Thursday about his public criticism of the mayor two days earlier. (CBC)The motion on negotiations was not the first order of business after the closed-door council session. Before it could be introduced, Mayor Larry O'Brien said Coun. Clive Doucet had a statement to make.

Doucet said he was sorry for not choosing his words more carefully two days earlier when he expressed his frustration over the strike and its impact on residents.

"My words should have been more considered," he said. "It is never useful to personalize these types of conflicts, and it was certainly not my intention to do so."

On Tuesday, Doucet suggested the city should replace its negotiating team, saying it was "out of touch" with what is needed to end the strike, and the city's approach to the situation has been "irresponsible." Doucet also called Mayor Larry O'Brien "badly qualified" and "maladapted" to deal with the strike. O'Brien is supposed to be council's official and only spokesman on strike-related issues.

On Thursday, Doucet apologized specifically to the mayor and council for implying that the mayor had misled him about last week's vote. The mayor earlier said he was cautiously optimistic union members would vote in favour of the contract.

Doucet also apologized to city staff on the negotiating team, adding that they were simply carrying out instructions from city council.

OC Transpo, union reach deal to help disabled

Para Transpo is the door-to-door transportation service for the disabled run by OC Transpo. (CBC)Earlier on Thursday, the city had announced a morsel of good news related to the transit strike — an extra 20 city-run vehicles will be on the road to carry Ottawa residents with disabilities next week, and the vehicles won't be threatened by the transit strike.

A deal to boost Para Transpo, OC Transpo's door-to-door transportation service for people with disabilities, was announced Thursday afternoon by Alain Mercier, the city's general manager of transit, and André Cornellier, president of the striking transit union.

Under the deal, the city-owned and city-run transit company OC Transpo will hire 20 extra drivers and lease 20 extra vehicles for its Para Transpo service, and those extra drivers will become part of ATU 279, the union that is currently on strike.

ATU 279 members walked off the job on Dec. 10. No talks have been held since the city issued its most recent offer on the night of Dec. 23. Union members voted 75 per cent against that offer on Jan. 8, after being ordered to vote on it by federal Labour Minister Rona Ambrose at the city's request.