Public Service Alliance of Canada BC

PSAC members take pride in the work that they do for Canada Post, and more often than not, those contributions are not recognized or valued. This is the first in a series of information bulletins that will highlight our workplace issues and what we want to achieve this round of negotiations to build a better workplace.

• View all the PSAC/UPCE demands for the current negotiations at the national website (pdf).

Surveillance

Contact Centre workers work in an electronic production environment that has been called the “factory of the new economy”. From the moment they go to work people are timed, measured and watched. Emails are measured for efficiency and productivity and calls are measured by calls per hour, talk time, not ready time. Supervisors have unfettered access to workers’ calls and emails, and conversations with clients can be listened in on by a supervisor at any time. It is becoming increasingly the norm for Canada Post to change and apply unreasonable standards to individual employees in measuring work performance and in surveilling employees.

Our bargaining team has proposed the following collective agreement language changes to address this problem and to introduce workplace fairness:

Group Measurement

It is recognized that volume measurement is necessary to obtain an objective evaluation of the level of production of a group, a section or an office and there shall be no individual work measurement.

Surveillance

Watch and observation systems cannot be used except for the purpose of protecting the mail and the property of the State against criminal acts such as theft, depredation and damage to property. At no time may such systems be used as a means to evaluate the performance of employees and to gather evidence in support of disciplinary measures unless such disciplinary measures result from the commission of a criminal act.

Workload – Prep time and Wrap up

Unmanageable workloads have become much more widespread for PSAC members at Canada Post, including workers in Contact Centres. Because members deal with people and their problems, they can’t stop in the middle of a conversation because it is the end of a shift. Naturally they put the customer first, but don’t get credit for all of the unpaid extra time that they work either at the end of a shift or at the beginning of a shift.

Our bargaining team has proposed the following collective agreement language changes to Article 25 to address this problem and to introduce workplace fairness:

Contact Centre Preparatory and Wrap Up Time

(a) Employees working in Contact Centres shall not be required to take a call during the first ten minutes of their shift.

(b) Employees working in Contact Centres shall not be required to take a call within the last ten minutes of their shift.

Let’s work together for a fair collective agreement – support your Contact Centre co-workers.

Download this info bulletin as a .pdf file.