Public Service Alliance of Canada BC

Ottawa – In a groundbreaking decision today, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal found that employers cannot discriminate against their employees should they choose to become parents. Fiona Johnstone, a Canadian Border Services Officer and a member of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, convinced the Tribunal that she was a victim of discrimination based on family status.

The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) refused to accommodate her request for more regular hours so she could arrange for proper child care. The CBSA told her that the only way that she could care for her kids was to work part time. Fiona Johnstone was unable to obtain child care because she and her husband both worked rotating shift schedules at Pearson International Airport.

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OTTAWA – First the Harper Conservatives cancelled the mandatory long-form census, now they’re going after the federal Employment Equity Act that depends on this data with the announcement that they will be reviewing employment equity policies and practices in the federal public service.

“The government claims to support diversity but its news release implies the opposite”, says PSAC National Executive Vice-President Patty Ducharme. “It reinforces the misconception that equal opportunity is threatened by employment equity measures and that employment equity hiring policies are not based on merit.”

The purpose of employment equity is to ensure equal access to jobs for all and to make sure that workplaces reflect the diversity of the Canadian population. The Employment Equity Act and the Public Service Employment Act already require all hiring to be based on merit and qualifications.

Less than 2% of job competitions in the federal public service are designated for equity group members, and managers have to justify the use of these designations with data showing large gaps in their workforce representation.

“In fact, the government needs to be doing more to ensure diversity throughout its workforce,” says Ducharme.

Continue reading at the national website.

Thursday July 22, 2010     NEWS RELEASE    For Immediate Release

Servisair now admits major flight delays at Vancouver International Airport due to lockout of refueling supervisors – files legal application detailing extensive delays & complaints from Air Canada, WestJet, international airlines – after Servisair and YVR administration denied delays previously

Vancouver – Servisair now admits in a legal document filed this afternoon that there have been major flight delays at Vancouver International Airport since it locked out refueling supervisors on Monday – delays it and YVR management denied publicly until now, says the supervisors’ union.

A Servisair application to the Canadian Industrial Relations Board states that WestJet complained of “quite significant” delays and that “Air Canada advised Servisair that it could not afford a repeat” of delays experienced Monday July 19 when replacement workers took over from existing trained supervisors, says Stephen Dunsmore, Regional Vice-President Pacific of the Union of Canadian Transportation Employees – a component union of the Public Service Alliance of Canada.

The Servisair application says Air Canada complained of “cost attributable to fuelling delays” and that United, KLM, Continental, Cathay Pacific, Air New Zealand, US Airways and Air North all reported fuelling delay, Dunsmore said.

A WestJet official quoted in the documents says the delays were significant and impacted well over 140 other flights in the WestJet system.

Says Dunsmore: “This CIRB application is a legal document that demonstrates irrefutably that both Servisair and Vancouver International Airport management deliberately misled the public and the media about what Servisair admits have been quite significant delays due to their lockout of experienced refueling supervisors.”

“The solution is obvious – negotiate a fair first collective agreement immediately, as the union has been trying to do from the start – and end this lockout now,” Dunsmore said.  “We were at the bargaining table Sunday night when Servisair walked away without even hearing our counterproposal and instead locked out our members.”

Dunsmore said the Servisair application is a clumsy attempt to blame refueling workers who are continuing to work under their own existing collective agreement for problems when the obvious reality is that inexperienced replacement supervisors don’t know how to manage Vancouver International Airport’s complex refueling procedures.

“There have been many documented mistakes – some of which are health and safety concerns – that these replacement supervisors are making,” Dunsmore said.  “We are now documenting safety concerns and will be making the appropriate complaints shortly to bring this to the attention of authorities.”

Dunsmore said the union is confident that the CIRB will reject the Servisair allegations, noting that the union advised refueling workers prior to the dispute that they must obey their collective agreement even if supervisors were locked out.

Employer Servisair is a Paris-based company that provides fuel to Air Canada, WestJet and other airlines at Vancouver International Airport as well as at more than 128 locations worldwide.

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For further information contact: Stephen Dunsmore UCTE at cell 778-998-1491 or Bill Tieleman, West Star Communications at cell 778-896-0964 or 604-844-7827.

Mass arrests, detentions and abuses of power are an affront to democracy

PSAC members were among 25,000 people who protested against the G20 on Saturday, June 26

The Public Service Alliance of Canada condemns the mass arrests of peaceful protestors in Toronto at the G20 demonstrations this weekend and joins the growing cry for a public inquiry into police actions.

PSAC members were among 25,000 people who protested against the G20 on Saturday, June 26. But despite a largely peaceful convergence, more than 900 people were arrested over the weekend, in an alleged attempt to apprehend the small group of people responsible for acts of vandalism.

While PSAC remains committed to non-violent, peaceful protest, the union is joining the thousands of Canadians who are critically concerned about the vicious and disproportionate nature of the police presence in Toronto on Saturday and Sunday.

Read more at the national website.

Ottawa – While giving a speech today at the Public Service Awards of Excellence Ceremony, Stockwell Day, the President of the Treasury Board, proudly announced the creation of the Employee Innovation Program.

“On a day when Treasury Board should celebrate the excellent work of federal public service workers and the quality public services they provide to Canadians, Minister Day has chosen to deflect his responsibilities onto the backs of these workers” said John Gordon, PSAC National President.

Read more at the national website.

Cuts to federal inspections are leading to disabling injuries and deaths

OTTAWA–The Public Service Alliance of Canada is demanding that the Harper government take action to prevent workplace injuries and fatalities, after a damning report revealed that it has been negligent in protecting workers under its jurisdiction.

According to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the federal government is putting workers at risk by under funding and under staffing federal safety inspection. The federal government is responsible for protecting its own employees, those at Crown corporations such as Canada Post, as well as workers in the airline and trucking industries.

The rate of disabling injuries in federally regulated workplaces increased by 5 per cent between 2002 and 2007 while the provinces have managed to cut their disabling workplace injuries by an average of 25 per cent over the same time frame.

Read more at the national website.

OTTAWA — The Conservative government’s 2010 budget will compromise public services and people’s livelihoods, to the detriment of all Canadians. That’s the message that John Gordon, President of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, delivered to the House of Commons Government Operations and Estimates Committee this afternoon.

Speaking on behalf of PSAC’s 170,000 members, the majority of whom work in the federal public sector, Gordon didn’t mince words. He criticized the Harper government for punishing workers and the public for a crisis that is not of their making. PSAC maintains that the 2010 federal budget will do little to help Canada recover from the recession, and will likely make things worse.

Read more at the national website.

Ottawa – The Public Service Alliance of Canada, the largest federal public service union in the country, will be taking swift action to prevent Canada Post from privatizing an important part of its operations. Yesterday, the crown corporation announced that it would outsource its contact centres and the National Philatelic Centre, resulting in the elimination of more than 300 jobs across the country.

Affected locations include:

• Edmonton
• Ottawa
• Winnipeg
• Antigonish
• Fredericton

“This obsession with privatization will badly damage the quality of the Canadian postal service as well as the communities it serves,” said Robyn Benson, the PSAC Regional Executive Vice-President for the Prairies. “Many regions in the country will lose local contact with Canada Post as well as jobs that are important for the local economy,” she added.

Continue reading at the national website.

OTTAWA – The Public Service Alliance of Canada condemns the Harper government’s decision to close Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) offices in Vancouver, Toronto and Halifax. The union maintains that the closure of the three offices will make it substantially harder for individuals from marginalized groups to launch human rights complaints.

The three offices slated for closure received 70 per cent of all signed complaints to the CHRC in 2008.

The union, which represents CHRC employees, says this latest attack will have a particular impact on racialized people and recent immigrants. In many cases, the closures will make it much more difficult to challenge both systemic abuses and individual instances of discrimination.

Continue reading at the national website.

OTTAWA – The largest union of federal public-sector workers is poised to mobilize against cuts in public sector programs and operations and to apply pressure on Parliament to reject the federal budget.

“This budget is a clear attack against quality public services,” says John Gordon, the national president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada. “The freeze on public-sector operation budgets, combined with an increase in deregulation and free trade, will further weaken the economy and hurt Canadians.”

Gordon argues that freezing the operation spending of government departments will mean significant reductions to the quality of public services that Canadians need in an economy that’s, at best, still undergoing a fragile recovery. Spending freezes, more expenditure review and deregulation will also mean job losses in the federal public sector.

“This runs counter to the government’s stated goal of job creation and economic growth,” Gordon says. “With this budget, the government is compromising the food we eat, the health of our environment, transportation safety and the public services that the people in Canada rely on everyday.”

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Judging from the Throne Speech, the Harper government’s strategy for containing the deficit will focus on attacks against quality public services through spending freezes, more expenditure review and deregulation.

The speech was clear that the government plans to balance the budget by restraining federal program spending overall. It will do this by freezing the total amount that government departments spend on salaries, administration and overhead, and by aggressively undergoing a review of all departmental spending.

Continue reading John Gordon’s message regarding the Throne Speech at the national website.

OTTAWA –The head of the largest union representing federal public sector workers is urging the Harper government not to cut public services or attack federal pension plans in order to pay off the deficit.

“If the recession has shown us anything, it is that Canadians need and expect more services from their national government, not less,” said the national president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, John Gordon, today during a press conference on Parliament Hill. “They expect safe food and drugs, their environment protected, their military and veterans supported and their human rights enforced.”

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Groups provide “reality check” on women’s equality – Labour, women’s groups will tell UN Canada is lagging

VANCOUVER, Feb. 22 /CNW/ – Labour and women’s groups have issued a report which they say is a “reality check” describing Canada’s lagging performance in achieving women’s equality. The report will be distributed at the Bejing plus 15 meeting being held at the United Nations in New York, March 1-12.

“Canadian women have lost a lot of ground in the past 15 years,” says Kay Sinclair, Public Service Alliance of Canada Regional Executive Vice President for BC. “Our government has sent a report to the United Nations that paints a rosy picture on women’s equality in Canada. We have written our own document and it is a reality check on what the government is saying.”

• Download the report: Reality Check:Women in Canada and the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action Fifteen Years On, A Canadian Civil Society Response (pdf)

The UN meeting in March will evaluate progress, identify challenges, and recommend policies to promote gender equality and the advancement of women. This year holds special significance because it marks the 15th anniversary of the UN’s Fourth World Conference on Women.

Sinclair continues, “We see the ravages of poverty every day in school classrooms, and rates are increasing at an alarming rate while the support mechanisms are disappearing or non-existent. With more women and girls living in poverty and being denied fundamental human rights, how can we build for a strong and prosperous Canadian future?” She adds, “Although Canada has made commitments to implement equal pay for work of equal value, the federal government hasn’t lived up to its commitments. The government removed the right to pay equity for federal public sector workers in 2009, with the adoption of the Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act. We raise this issue in this report and it will be front and center for us next week at the United Nations in New York.”

Five years ago, Canada was ranked amongst the top ten countries in the world for its achievements in women’s human rights, but in 2009 Canada had fallen to 73rd in the UN Gender Disparity Index. Changes to gender architecture, shifts in policy and programming within the government, and the government’s response to the economic crisis have been felt by the most vulnerable women and girls in Canada.

The joint report is called Reality Check: Women in Canada and the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action Fifteen Years On, A Canadian Civil Society Response. It was coordinated and produced by the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action and the Canadian Labour Congress, and is endorsed by a variety of other organizations.

Union unanimously recommends ratification

OTTAWA—Early this morning, the Public Service Alliance of Canada reached a tentative agreement with the Museum of Civilization Corporation. This came on the 85th day on the picket line for workers at the Museum of Civilization and War Museum. The union is unanimously supporting the tentative agreement and will meet with the museums’ management today to negotiate a return-to-work protocol.

“We are unanimously recommending ratification of this agreement,” said Daniel Poulin, a guide at the Museum of Civilization and the President of PSAC Local 70396. “We have made serious gains in the areas of job security and contracting-out. We are confident that our members will support this agreement and we are thrilled that will be able to return to work soon.”

John Gordon, National President of PSAC, expressed admiration for the striking workers’ courage and determination.

“These workers have shown us the true meaning of solidarity,” he said. “Their tenacity and strength have been an inspiration to the labour movement and to the entire community of Ottawa/Gatineau. When workers unite, anything is possible.”

The workers will meet soon to ratify the tentative agreement. Until then, picket lines will remain up at the two museums

OTTAWA – On the 20th anniversary of the Montreal massacre, the Public Service Alliance of Canada is calling on all Members of Parliament to reject a private Member’s bill that will eliminate the need to register rifles and shotguns and destroy more than eight million records in the federal long gun registry.

“This extreme example of violence against women will forever be branded in our collective memory,” says PSAC national executive vice-president Patty Ducharme.

“After this crime was committed, women and men across the country turned their grief into action. Yet, 20 years later, violence against women remains endemic.”

According to John Edmunds, national president of the Union of Solicitor General Employees component of the PSAC, spousal deaths by guns have been reduced by 50 percent since gun owners were required to register long guns. “The registry allows police to check households for the presence of firearms which is especially important in the case of domestic disputes.”

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Workers on strike, seeking fair working conditions and protections against contracting out

Ottawa/Gatineau – Workers are on strike at the Canadian Museum of Civilization and the War Museum.

Represented by the Public Service Alliance of Canada, the 420 workers are demanding the same protections that are in place for other museum workers in the Ottawa/Gatineau region. The Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation (CMCC) continues to deny their demands for workplace fairness and protections against contracting out.

The Canadian Museum of Civilization and the War Museum had the highest attendance and brought in more revenue than any other museum or gallery in the National Capital Region last year. Meanwhile, workers’ salaries at the two museums are lower than all of the other federal museum workers in the Ottawa/Gatineau – in some cases 40 per cent lower.

“The mandate from our members is to close the wage gap and protect them against the threat of their jobs being contracted out,” says Maria Fitzpatrick, PSAC Vice-President for the National Capital Region. “As it stands, ticketing agents and several security guard positions, as well as cafeteria and boutique employee jobs have already been contracted out to private companies. Our workers are seeking some guarantee that they won’t lose their jobs, especially in the face of an economic recession.”

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PSAC members working at the airport vote in favour of strike action

VANCOUVER, Aug. 20 /CNW/ – A possible labour disruption could cause delays for travelers arriving or departing from Vancouver International Airport in the near future. Employees working for the Vancouver International Airport Authority (YVR), members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), have voted in favour of taking strike action, should it be necessary, in an effort to bring the Airport Authority back to the bargaining table with a meaningful mandate.

“We have one more meeting with a federal Conciliation Officer in an effort to avert a disruption in service, whether that be a strike or lockout.” says Kay Sinclair PSAC Regional Vice-President for BC. “Our first two days of meeting with the Conciliation Officer proved to be an exercise in futility and our members have no choice but to take this next step.”

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OTTAWA — The Union of Solicitor General Employees (USGE), a component union of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), is launching a campaign to stop the federal governments plan to close six farming operations run by Correctional Service Canada (CSC) over the next two years.

The Save Our Farms campaign launched a website (www.saveourfarms.ca) to provide information about the farm programs and to mobilize public opinion against shutting them down. Save Our Farms hosts an electronic petition and provides a conduit for sending protest e-mails directly to Prime Minister Harper.

Also, working closely with organizations such as the National Farmers Union, the campaign is organizing protest meetings and community support events in the communities that will be most affected by any closures. Save Our Farms also intends to pursue an Access to Information request to force the government to make public the rationale for the closures contained in the Strategic Review recently conducted by the department.

The goal is to mobilize public opinion to pressure the Conservative government to reverse an incomprehensible and short-sighted decision, says John Edmunds, USGE National President.

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Vancouver – Negotiations between the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), bargaining agent for employees working for the Vancouver Airport Authority (YVR), and the Authority have broken off. The Union is seeking the assistance of a conciliation officer.

�We are asking for a meeting with a federal Conciliation Officer in an effort to avert job action, whether that be a strike or lockout.� says Kay Sinclair, PSAC Regional Vice-President for BC, �Our members have bargained in good faith, but YVR remains unwilling to discuss many significant issues, particularly flexible hours of work and a safe and secure pension plan. I find this disappointing coming from an employer that prides itself on its commitment to employee wellness.�

�Despite the fact the airport made a 12.6 million dollar profit in the first quarter of 2009, YVR has also threatened to roll back wages and benefits for some of our members.� adds Dave Clark, Union of Canadian Transportation Employees (UCTE) Local 20221 President, �PSAC members working at YVR will not stand for this – getting a third party involved is our only option.�

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VANCOUVER � John Gordon has been re-elected as the National President of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC). Gordon was first elected President in 2006 and had previously served as the union�s National Executive Vice-President since 2000. Gordon was re-elected National President at PSAC�s 15th National Triennial Convention in Vancouver, B.C.

�Over the last three years, PSAC has taken great strides to defend quality public services against the Harper government�s cynical and ideological cuts,� said Gordon. �Public services are the great equalizer � they improve Canadians� lives and help protect them against job losses and financial devastation. I am proud to work with PSAC to continue the struggle to protect public services, economic justice and human rights.�

Prior to his election as National Executive Vice-President, Gordon was the National President of the Union of Public Works Employees from 1982 to 1999. A PSAC activist since 1974, when he joined the federal public sector as a tradesperson with Public Works Canada, Gordon has held a variety of union positions in his Component.

Patty Ducharme re-elected VP

Delegates also re-elected Patty Ducharme as the union’s National Executive Vice-President for a second term. Prior to her election as National Vice-President in 2006, Ducharme was PSAC’s Regional Executive Vice-President (REVP) for British Columbia.

Prior to her election as REVP in 2000, Ducharme had worked as a customs inspector in British Columbia and served as First Vice-President of Branch 20040 of the Customs and Immigration Union (formerly known as CEUDA). She has been a PSAC activist for almost 25 years holding a number of union positions.

J�r�me Turcq was elected as the Alternate National Executive Vice-President. He is PSAC�s Regional Executive Vice-President for Quebec, a position he has held since 2000.