This from Nick Gamache...

It was a close one... a very close one. Yet at the end of the day, André Cornellier is still the head of ATU local 279. The election to pick a new executive was seen as a referendum on Cornellier's leadership. A lot of drivers have been unhappy with the way he's handled the tentative "no strike/no lockout" deal with the city. Unionized workers say Cornellier has yet to explain to them why that deal would be good for them. They even forced the executive to postpone the vote on the issue until September. So the table was set this week for a changing of the guard... But that didn't happen. Cornellier was running against three opponents. If you combine the votes of those three candidates, a lot more people voted against Cornellier than for him. The final results: Cornellier 689 votes; Garry Queale 616 votes; Farah Abesteh 303 votes; and Normand Deschamps 288 votes. The opponents split the vote and Cornellier survives to fight another day. He says he's relieved he won. He knows how close the vote was (especially when you consider he got 50 per cent of the vote just three years ago). Cornellier says his next task is to explain to his fellow workers why the "no strike/no lockout" deal is a good one... Given this week's results, it looks like that won't be an easy sell.