This week, our PSAC/CIU bargaining team for the FB group will participate in the final hearing date of the Public Interest Commission (PIC) process at the Federal Public Sector Labour Relations Employment Board (FPSLREB). In negotiations and in our PIC hearing last week, the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) continued to push for concessions.
Some of these include:
- CBSA wants to make Leave Without Pay for Care of the Family “subject to operational requirements”. Also CBSA is proposing to increase the minimum leave period from 3 to 12 weeks.
- Our contract states that management must provide 7 days’ notice of shift change, otherwise the employee receives time and a half for the first shift worked. CBSA is looking to reduce the notice from 7 days to 48 hours.
- CBSA wants the prerogative to take VSSA bargaining away from local decision-making and give CBSA National (in Ottawa) the ability to take control of VSSA negotiations.
- CBSA has made proposals to bypass the National Joint Council Travel Directive so that some employees would not receive additional compensation when “temporarily” assigned to a port other than their home port.
Our union and our bargaining team have made it clear that we are not interested in concessions. Our position with CBSA and Treasury Board is that we are looking for improvements, not steps backwards. PSAC has successfully defended our sick leave. Our team has every intention of defending our other hard-fought contract rights.
We’ll be sure to provide updates as things progress. If you have questions be sure to follow up with your CIU Branch President.
A version of this article was first published on the PSAC website.
