[Tb-bargaining] Message from the National President, John Gordon

[Patrick Bragg]

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 on
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:

    * 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!
    * 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.
    * 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:

    * Improving the definition of family,
    * Improvements to bereavement and compassionate care leave,
    * Funding for the Joint Learning Program has been extended for the
life of the collective agreement,
    * Improvements to maternity and parental leave,
    * A strengthened Workforce Adjustment Directive that requires the
government to review the use of contractors and consultants in order to
avoid layoffs,
    * 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 Auditor General,
    * 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.