Another labour battle has begun for the city and the union group CUPE, who is now moving to block an attempt by the city to remove 18 employees from the collective bargaining agreement.

Upset feelings are following the decision to make a proposal to remove the almost 20 positions as the city of Moose Jaw sees them as mostly managerial.

"The issue is that the employer is attempting to remove or making at least a submission to the board, that 18 members of our current bargaining unit... they consider to be largely supervisory and are making an attempt to remove them from our bargaining unit, referring to them as out of scope," explained CUPE local union President Stacey Landin.

She argued that it could be considered exclusionary and that the people to be picked are not managers at all.

"They are people who are working shoulder to shoulder with other members.. and we believe that a large part of their positions are not supervisory, so we will be challenging that with the labour relations board."

Landin also mentioned these potential new supervisors would be detained from performing their own duties while making sure other people are completing their work.

"These are people who are on job at excavations, accountants, those types of folks. That largely would not be supervising (and) would actually be doing the work, as their coworkers do."

The Director of Human Resources, Al Bromley, had a different opinion towards the new movement, saying he belives it could actually be an upgrade for the city.

"Under the definition, within the new provisions, there were clearly provisions that defined the role of a supervisor. We felt that in the best interest of the city, that it would actually be an enhancement to our current organization."

Bromley went on to say they took a lot of areas into consideration before making their decision to make a submission.

"We looked at some of the issues, like in terms of perhaps performance assessment of employees, grievance situations and discipline, can created a conflicted situation when the supervisor and employees were in the same bargaining unit."

He added that the city wasn't purposely meaning to remove positions from local workers.

"I don't want to get into the what 'if's' of our application, I think those kinds of decisions may not be in our hands. It's clearly a new prevision within the Saskatchewan Employment Act, and it's not our intention to affect the employment of those supervisors identified."

Since this is new territory for both sides, no one is really sure how long this will take to sort out. Until then, it's status quo until the application is heard.

The Union has been without a contract since 2014 and voted in favour of a strike last year in October. They have yet to take strike action.