Author Archives: Pierre St-Jacques

Register to cast your ballot in PA, TC, EB, SV and CRA ratification votes (and get answers to your questions)

image vote ratification

The PA, TC, EB and SV groups as well as PSAC-UTE have reached tentative agreements with their employers, and PSAC members will now have the opportunity to vote on their new collective agreements.

PSAC has organized ratification votes between August 24 and September 29 in each PSAC region to allow you to cast your ballot.

 

PSAC filing legal challenge against Canada Border Services Agency

Earlier this month, Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) management at Toronto Postal Operations created new shifts and began assigning students – without managerial supervision – to work these shifts. CBSA management has also refused to offer these shifts as overtime to Border Services Officers (BSOs).

Our PSAC-CIU bargaining team has made proposals in national negotiations concerning protections against unilateral changes to schedules and to protect our bargaining unit work. We’re in favour of students getting training and opportunities for work experience, but they should not be used to replace trained officers at CBSA ports of entry. Our proposals in negotiations would ensure that students are not being used as cheap labour by the employer.

Labour law guarantees that while we are in bargaining, our current terms and conditions are frozen, unless the union consents to changes CBSA wants to make. We are opposed to BSOs being replaced by students. We do not agree with CBSA’s scheduling changes.

As a result, PSAC has filed a statutory freeze complaint with the Federal Public Sector Labour Relations and Employment Board against CBSA and Treasury Board.

PSAC will also be taking legal action against CBSA over unilateral scheduling changes implemented at the Vancouver International Mail Centre.

We will uphold and defend our rights.

Negotiations

Last month, Treasury Board announced that its negotiator for the FB group is leaving. After our bargaining team reached out to Treasury Board demanding an update, we were notified that a replacement has been hired. We’ve proposed dates in September to resume negotiations. We are ready to get back the table and get CBSA/Treasury Board moving on workplace issues that need to be addressed.

To review the package of proposals that we tabled as well as those of the employer, visit psacunion.ca/fb-group and ciu-sdi.ca/issue/fb-group-bargaining. We’ll continue to provide updates throughout the bargaining process.

The original version of this article was first posted on the PSAC website.