November 25, 2008
Treasury Board Negotiations
Message from the National President, John Gordon
I am pleased to inform you that the Public Service Alliance of Canada and Treasury Board have reached tentative agreements for more than 100,000 members in the main bargaining units governed by the Public Service Labour Relations Act.
The membership should be proud of the work of their bargaining teams, who worked very hard over the weekend to reach these tentative agreements.
I am proud to say that these tentative agreements contain some gains, and no concessions.
We feel this is an accomplishment, given the challenging bargaining environment we are now in.
This has been a difficult round of bargaining – it has been a real roller coaster ride for the membership.
When our negotiations began, the economy was strong.
So our members had a reasonable expectation of having economic issues addressed in bargaining.
But times have changed, and we all had to adjust our expectations in order to achieve these tentative agreements.
You know that the Treasury Board has mandated wage increases across the federal public service of 2.3%, 1.5%, 1.5%, and 1.5%.
While these increases are less than what our members expected when bargaining began, we have to recognize that circumstances have changed and many Canadians are now facing the prospect of layoffs and the loss of pension benefits.
We felt it the responsible thing to do – for our membership and the communities in which they live – to return to the bargaining table and try and negotiate agreements that contain significant improvements in a number of areas of long-standing concern to our membership.
After some hard bargaining, I am proud to say that we have advanced the employment and economic security of our members in a number of areas, including:
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National Rates of Pay for the trades members in the SV bargaining unit. This ends a 41 year struggle to end pay zones. This is a huge achievement!
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A commitment in the collective agreement to classification reform beginning with the PA group and later to be extended to other PSAC bargaining units. This has been another longstanding PSAC priority.
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A $4,000 lump sum pensionable payment to all members of our PA and EB bargaining units. This is in recognition of the need for classification reform, which was the resolution we were seeking when we filed our complaints with the Canadian Human Rights Commission for these two groups.
While these complaints are being withdrawn as part of this settlement, we will be holding Treasury Board to meaningfully consult and conclude classification review – for both these groups and for other PSAC / Treasury Board bargaining units
We have also made progress on other issues, including:
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Improving the definition of family,
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Improvements to bereavement and compassionate care leave,
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Funding for the Joint Learning Program has been extended for the life of the collective agreement,
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Improvements to maternity and parental leave,
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A strengthened Workforce Adjustment Directive that requires the government to review the use of contractors and consultants in order to avoid layoffs,
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New grievance language and improvements to callback pay.
And we have achieved a first collective agreement for the Frontière Border (FB) group that reflects the nature of the professional services they provide and compensates them accordingly.
Important operational issues have been addressed, as well as conversion of FB members to a new wage grid.
All of this was achieved without making any concessions. This is a huge accomplishment, given how difficult these negotiations were.
One of our groups, the Technical Services (TC) group, was unable to conclude a tentative agreement this weekend.
They will be proceeding to arbitration, as we continue to seek resolution to some of their key issues.
The tentative agreements achieved this weekend serve to protect and enhance the employment and economic security of PSAC members and provide the government with a predictable wage bill until 2011.
We will be moving to ratify these tentative agreements as soon as possible.
Our Parks Canada and Canadian Food Inspection Agency bargaining teams are also presently back at the table trying to reach tentative agreements.
And our bargaining teams at the:
- National Capital Commission,
- Communications Security Establishment,
- Canadian Security Intelligence Service,
- Statistical Survey Operations,
- Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions,
are all returning to the table this week as well.
We are working hard to achieve tentative agreements with as many of our federal public service bargaining units as possible this week.
Given these tough economic times, we feel this is the responsible thing to do.
But this doesn't mean we are prepared to do concession bargaining.
We expect employers to come to the table with fair offers that meet the needs of the membership.
I hope the tentative agreements we have reached this weekend will be the model for other PSAC employers.
We are proud of what we were able to accomplish in these difficult economic times.
I want to recognize that membership mobilization and solidarity helped the teams reach tentative agreements without any concessions.
Continued membership solidarity will be needed in order to protect membership rights, now and into the future.
Date Modified : 2010/01/29
