Public Service Alliance of Canada BC

With the summer drawing to an end PSAC members in BC were busy keeping bargaining front and centre while enjoying the weather … here are some photos & brief reports.

Throughout the summer members of CEIU Local 20961 are holding payday actions. They plan to continue until a collective agreement is reached.

On August 21, just before the Canada Post bargaining team returned to the table, members of UPCE Local 20101 working at the Main Post Office in Vancouver held a Day of Action barbecue - the day started out with cloudy skies but the blue sky and sun arrived at nooon. Members passed out “Stamp Out Deregulaton” leaflets to the public while members from CUPW, APOC and CUPE all showed their support.

On August 22 a small but spirited group of PSAC Young workers and their supporters came out to Trout Lake Park for some fun and barbeque.

Scroll down or click ‘continue reading’ for more, click on the thumbnails for a larger version, and click the photos to advance the slideshow.

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Your bargaining team, buoyed by membership support from coast to coast tabled a thoughtful and comprehensive offer of settlement with Canada Post this week.

The offer of settlement addresses the key priorities identified by you. They include:

• Monetary proposals to ensure a fair general wage increase
• Improvements in the Cost of Living Clause
• Improvements to the bilingual bonus, travel and meal allowances
• Improvements in medical benefit entitlements - Article 37
• Bargaining Unit Protection – Article 7
• Workload management improvements for those who work in Contact Centres – new language on Preparatory and Wrap Up time
• Pay and benefit entitlements for actual time worked – Article 4 for part-time workers and article 26.08 for all employees who work overtime
• Improvements in grievance language in Article 19
• Stronger anti-harassment language in Article 14
• Adequate funding for child care centres
• Family Related Leave Improvements in a variety of clauses in Article 42
• Protections against unreasonable measurement and surveillance of individual employees – new language
• Improvements in Appendix M dealing with the access to and provision of training for members who have received formal surplus notice

Your team is not prepared to negotiate any concessions and is interested in moving forward towards the goal of workplace fairness. Your team cannot achieve these goals without your help - support your bargaining team actively over the coming weeks! Canada Post is expected to respond to the union’s offer of settlement on Monday, August 25.

Your Bargaining team in front of the wall of member support — left to right: Seth Sazant, Andrew Baranowski, Erna Post, Richard des Lauriers, Hélène Arbique, René Fredeen and Larissa MacFadden.

Over the summer months, your bargaining team has worked hard to make sure that your bargaining proposals have been fairly presented and fully understood by Canada Post. For its part, Canada Post has been reluctant to commit to any proposal of substance, and in fact, applied for conciliation before your team presented detailed financial proposals.

It is clear that Canada Post is not interested in seriously discussing the issues that matter to members. Without a doubt, Canada Post needs to change its approach if it wants to achieve a fair collective agreement that builds true workplace respect by contract expiry. Our contract will expire at the end of the month and, in addition to bargaining a fair wage increase, much work remains to be done.

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Canada Post applied for conciliation on August 6th. With this action, the employer has short-circuited the bargaining process by applying to a third party before the union had the opportunity to present a complete set of proposals.

What does this mean for the membership?

• Your bargaining team will continue to bargain in good faith
• Your bargaining team will ensure that your issues receive a fair hearing and the respect that they deserve

Note that the bargaining dates that were previously established by both parties will be adhered to. While your bargaining team is very displeased with the employer’s tactics, remember: Together we can make a difference.

PSAC/UPCE at Canada Post | Stronger Together

The impact of increased workloads due to restructuring (Bulletin #4) goes far beyond the workplace; it goes to the heart of how members try to balance increasing workloads with family obligations.

At the same time that members face workplace change, they are also coping with increased family demands brought about by cuts to education and to social and health services. Both younger and older UPCE members feel caught between the competing priorities of work and home. Recent research has shown that these ever increasing demands are pushing up stress levels and prompting the increased use of leave and more unplanned absences.

The result is that more and more employees — regardless of their length of service — need to take time off to care for parents and children. Our current agreement is not consistent with respect to these leave provisions. A minimum of two weeks leave without pay to care for pre-school age children is provided for. The minimums are higher for the care of older children but they are subject to operational requirements. Leave for elder care is similarly subject to operational requirements. Our contract should be consistent and provide us with the time that we need in order to care for our children and our parents. To begin to address this inconsistency, the bargaining team has tabled the following language with Canada Post:

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Our collective agreement with Canada Post guarantees extended benefits to our members, including coverage for prescription drugs, physiotherapy and dental care.

Canada Post would have PSAC members believe that our health and insurance benefits under Article 37 of the collective agreement make the employer uncompetitive compared to other companies that do the same work.

Is this true? Not really.

Canada Post’s current benefit costs are similar to the payroll costs of other large employers. The company will realize significant tax savings once changes to the Alberta provincial health plan come into effect in 2009. PSAC/UPCE’s membership represents approximately 4 per cent of Canada Post’s total payroll. This means that the total benefit plan costs of PSAC/UPCE members are not as critical in affecting the company’s bottom line.

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Our national bargaining team met with Canada Post from July 22 to July 25.

Most of the unions’ proposals with the exception of monetary items have been discussed at least once during this week of bargaining. Some priority items such as leave entitlements, bargaining unit work, hours of work, contact centre proposals and staffing have been discussed several times to date.

Canada Post tabled an initial proposal on dental health and vision care. Because PSAC/UPCE and Canada Post will not be discussing monetary items until the next set of bargaining dates in August, these proposals are not complete and will remain confidential until all of the appropriate information has been received and bargained between the parties.

Canada Post also tabled proposals that would fundamentally alter the current bidding and scheduling practices for contact centre workers. These concessionary proposals were immediately rejected by your bargaining team.

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Since PSAC signed the collective agreement with Canada Post four years ago, there have been a lot of changes in the way that work is organized and who does that work. The drive for “increased flexibility” has led to reorganization, increased use of term and casual employees and duties being moved outside the bargaining unit.

In 2006, Human Resource Management (HRM) and Production and Control Reporting (PCR) were reorganized and new reporting systems were introduced. Canada Post’s expectations increased, workloads increased and yet fewer people were left to do more complicated work. For example, in 2002, 50 jobs were created in Montreal to handle increased workloads and now only 17 people remain in those positions. The workload has not decreased.

Members are now finding that they have to monitor and correct work that is being done outside of the bargaining unit. This work used to be part of their job.

While PSAC recognizes that there may be some situations that call for term or casual staffing, the union is concerned about the increasing use of these strategies instead of simply staffing positions on a permanent basis.

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Earlier this year, the Trial Division of the Federal Court of Canada decided to overturn the 2005 Human Rights Tribunal decision that had awarded pay equity to current and former PSAC members in the CR group at Canada Post. The Court also dismissed the PSAC’s appeal to have the Tribunal’s award doubled. The Tribunal had reduced by 50 per cent the amount of money it awarded.

Both the PSAC and the CHRC have filed appeals. These appeals will be heard at the next level, the Federal Court of Appeal. This Court recently issued an order that sets out the procedure and timetable for PSAC and Canada Post to provide their written arguments to the Court.

This all started back in1983 when the PSAC first filed the pay equity complaint against Canada Post with the Canadian Human Rights Commission. Because of the complexity and the size of the written record in this now 25-year old case, it will be the spring of 2009 before the written submissions from PSAC and Canada Post are completed.

It is expected that the Federal Court of Appeal will hear oral arguments from the union and Canada Post in either the summer or fall of 2009.

The federal government is in the midst of a “strategic review” of Canada Post. The future of the post office and the people who work there is being decided by a panel of government-appointed “experts”, all behind closed doors, with little input from the public.

While the government has said that it won’t privatize Canada Post, it hasn’t ruled out deregulation. Deregulation of Canada Post would threaten the quality and availability of mail delivery across Canada, lead to massive job losses and could increase postal rates. It could also threaten the privacy and security of the mail.

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Filing a grievance is one of the most effective ways that you can stand up for your rights on the job, making a difference for everyone in the workplace. When PSAC/UPCE sits down at the bargaining table during this round of negotiations, we will be working hard to improve the grievance process at Canada Post, so that complaints can be resolved more quickly and efficiently.

Your collective agreement

Your collective agreement is the contract with Canada Post that union members fought hard for in previous rounds of negotiations. This contract spells out the gains that we made in protecting human rights, salaries, job security, vacation leave entitlements, benefits and the right to freedom from harassment, among many other issues.

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Our union, UPCE/PSAC, has the duty to fairly represent all members. While the current collective agreement contains provisions that protect against discrimination and sexual harassment, our members have told us that unfairness in the workplace still exists at Canada Post. The bargaining team has proposed a number of changes to broaden the definition of discrimination and define different forms of harassment beyond sexual harassment.

Employers are ultimately responsible for acts of work-related harassment. The Supreme Court has said that the goal of human rights law is to identify and eliminate discrimination.

In agreeing to our proposals, Canada Post would be taking a leadership role in working with the union to reverse the negative effects of harassment. This would help to ensure a healthier and fairer work environment for everyone.

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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:

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The complete list of PSAC/UPCE demands for the current negotiations is now available at the national website (pdf).

Bargaining Workplace Fairness

Our PSAC/UPCE National Bargaining Team met with Canada Post in Ottawa to exchange bargaining proposals on June 4th. We presented a series of specific, detailed proposals based on the input we received from members across the country.

We have, among other proposals, suggested ways in which bargaining unit work can be better protected, (no contracting out), signalled to the employer that there is no tolerance for personal harassment or abuse of authority and have again reminded the Corporation that our members have the fundamental right to work in a harassment free environment.

We have also tabled proposals that will simplify and improve the grievance process, tackle subjective and unfair staffing practices and will improve the working conditions of part-time workers and Contact Centre workers.

The team was generally very disappointed with the Corporation’s approach to our first day of bargaining. It appears that through “corporate speak” the Corporation will be targeting our hard won Vacation Leave entitlements, Health Care Benefits, Staffing and Pay.

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OTTAWA - Due to the lack of transparency by Canada Post in refusing to reveal its development plans for this public service, members of the Union of Postal Communications Employees (UPCE) of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) will support a citizens’ action against the Crown Corporation on Monday, June 19, at noon.

“We hope to obtain answers to the questions we have been asking Canada Post management for months,” explained UPCE President Richard Des Lauriers.

“Unfortunately, instead of getting firm answers as to the impact of the Corporation’s development plan on services to the public, we have received meaningless slogans. The time has come to go over to Canada Post offices and get the answers.”

The UPCE and PSAC are therefore supporting the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) citizens’ search that will take place on Monday, June 19, at noon at the Head Office of Canada Post at 2701 Riverside Drive in Ottawa. This is when union members will peacefully enter the offices of Canada Post and seek the documentation that they have been asking management for but have been unable to obtain.

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Older news and information pertaining to Canada Post bargaining and strike are archived in our old webspace. This section will be updated as time goes on.