Our FB Bargaining Team spent this past week in negotiations with Treasury Board/CBSA.
Wages: In bargaining we re-iterated our position with respect to compensation. CBSA is a law enforcement agency and employees should be compensated accordingly.
Astonishingly, the government asked about whether there are recruitment and retention problems at CBSA. With CBSA at the table on management’s side, we pointed out that recruitment and retention problems are such that CBSA has created YouTube recruitment videos and are asking officers to handout recruitment pamphlets to the public at POE’s and visit colleges to promote CBSA.
We made it clear that CBSA should be advocating for appropriate wages and working conditions for its staff, and that we have no interest in a settlement that doesn’t address the lack of parity between CBSA workers and those at other federal law enforcement agencies. We expect a response when we meet next.
Hours of Work – Shift Work and Compressed Work Weeks: This past week, we discussed our proposals to enhance rights and protections for shift workers, including the elimination of potential ‘6 and 2’ schedules being implemented by management. We are also raised our demand for fairer rules with respect to employees having the opportunity to relocate to different ports. With respect to day workers, we again reiterated our proposals to introduce protections against management unilaterally revoking compressed work weeks.
Sick Leave: Our position on the employer’s Short Term Disability Plan remains unchanged but we continue to seek either a renewal or improvements to the current sick leave regime.
We indicated to management that we are ready to meet again and are expecting answers from them on key issues that we’ve raised in this round of bargaining, including our proposals on telework and enhancement of protections for front-line officers in the context of firearm recertification and control defence tactics training.
For more information concerning FB negotiations and our next scheduled bargaining dates, be sure visit the FB Group bargaining section on the PSAC website.
Download the PDF version of this update (bilingual document).
