Striking Greyhound workers have narrowly voted to accept a tentative agreement, which will end a week-long strike.

Just 51 per cent of the employees who voted were in favour of the deal reached late Wednesday. About 1,150 unionized employees were eligible to vote.

The Amalgamated Transit Union said the two-year deal will provide wage hikes of three per cent each year.

The union said some employees could return to work as soon as this weekend.

Service in areas west of Ottawa was suspended May 17 after contract talks between the Amalgamated Transit Union and the Calgary-based company broke down.

Jim Higgs, president of Local 1374, said earlier that the offer includes improved wages, but doesn't address the union's other two concerns — working conditions and contracting out.

"It's tough to recommend something that hasn't really been any different from the last offer," Higgs said, although he added the union is endorsing the deal.

"If people can accept this and get us back to work, perhaps we can better our plight in the next go-around."

The deal will run until Dec. 31, 2008. Higgs said he expects talks for a subsequent contract would begin before then.

No details for tentative agreement

Neither Higgs nor Greyhound Canada would disclose details of the tentative agreement.

However, Gary Galbreath, the ATU representative for the Edmonton area, said the company has promised a three per cent wage increase this year and the same increase next year.

At a picket line outside the main bus depot in downtown Edmonton earlier, several workers expressed dismay with the proposed contract.

"I'm afraid I have to turn this down," said Mike Buda, an Edmonton driver who has worked for Greyhound for 21 years. About a dozen other workers nodded their heads and said they would be voting against the offer.

Buda said he considered the wage increase insufficient to cover the rise in the cost of living and he was prepared to continue striking while waiting for a better deal.

"We're just tired of being treated the way we have been," he said, adding he has watched the condition of depots and buses deteriorate in recent years.

Company too 'Americanized'

Kim Plaskett, spokeswoman for Greyhound, had said she hoped employees would accept the proposed deal.

"We're going to certainly make every effort to earn our customers' business when we do resume operations," she said from Dallas, Texas.

Laidlaw International Inc., based in the Chicago suburb of Naperville, took over Greyhound in 1997. Higgs and the union have complained that since then, the company has become too "Americanized" and hundreds of Canadian jobs have disappeared.

Greyhound is Canada's largest bus line. It serves about 700 communities with 1,000 departures daily across the country.

Plaskett pointed out that Greyhound Canada is operated independently from Laidlaw, and much of its management and virtually all its employees are Canadian.

"The only tie [to the United States] is that its parent is now in the U.S.," she said.