In an important victory for our members participating in the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) Officer Induction Development Program (OIDP), the Federal Public Sector Labour Relations and Employment Board (FPSLREB) has found that the Agency failed to provide Officer Trainees with a complete and current statement of duties, violating the Statement of Duties provision of the FB collective agreement. This decision — Chase v. Treasury Board (Canada Border Services Agency) — is a major step towards ensuring the employer properly classifies the job our OIDP members do on behalf of Canadians.

  Read the decision here  

Background

Following graduation from Rigaud, new Border Services Officers (BSOs) are hired as Officer Trainees (OTs) at the FB-02 level as part of the Agency’s 12-to-18 months OIDP. As part of the OIDP, OTs initially shadow BSOs (FB-03s), honing their skills as officers. As OTs progress through the program, such shadowing becomes less and less necessary, with FB-02 Trainees eventually performing similar duties as FB-03 BSOs.

CIU members grieved that the OT job description failed to account for this shift in responsibility:

The grievors sought to modify the OT job description, to remove certain qualifiers that the employer added to distinguish their duties and responsibilities from those of the BSOs. […] Broadly described, the grievors objected to their work being “under the guidance” of others and to their responsibilities being limited to “learning how” or “developing” or to having only “basic” or “fundamental” knowledge or skills. (218)

In addition to grieving that this constituted a breach of article 54 (now article 56) of the FB collective agreement, and seeking a modification of the OT job description, grievors also asked for FB-03 acting pay for time spent in their FB-02 positions.

While the FPSLREB did not find that it had jurisdiction regarding the acting pay component of the grievance, it did agree with the grievors that the employer had violated the collective agreement and that the job description did “not provide a complete and current statement of the duties and responsibilities of the OT position, as […] the collective agreement requires” (244). The adjudicator found that while OTs were initially “[…] expected to be “learning how to” perform the tasks or “developing” the skills identified in the OT job description […]” (311) they eventually “[…] were expected to perform those tasks, not simply develop or learn how to do them” (311).

The adjudicator therefore ordered “the employer to change the grievors’ job description by removing all the disputed qualifiers that the grievors identified that are reproduced in this decision” (364).

Why this victory matters

CIU has long argued that FB-02 Officer Trainees going through the OIDP effectively fulfill many of the same duties and responsibilities as FB-03 Border Services Officers, and that their job classification should reflect this. By ordering the employer to remove “developmental” qualifiers from the job description, the FPSLREB opens the door to the OT statement of duties being revised and, subsequently, possibly reclassified at a higher level.

Of particular note are the adjudicator’s findings regarding the change in expectations as OTs progress through the OIDP, making it clear that, by the four-month mark at the latest, Officer Trainees are performing full-fledged BSO duties:

[…] lower expectations changed around the four-month mark. It was undisputed that at that point, the OTs were performing the same tasks as the BSOs (except for the few that are irrelevant since not all BSOs perform them). The OTs were assigned duties and responsibilities, just like any other BSO. They were not provided with tasks that were different, limited in scope, or less complicated or that required lesser skills or knowledge. They worked independently, and their decisions were not subjected to any special review by a superintendent or another BSO before being actioned (other than those instances that applied to all officers). (230)

Next steps

The employer has 120 days to comply with the Board’s order, and it is unlikely that CBSA will appeal the decision. Once the statement of duties has been revised by the employer and approved by the union, a new classification assessment, which could take up to a year, will be required to determine where the revised job description falls on the grid — whether at the FB-02 or FB-03 level.

CIU and PSAC will be keeping the pressure on CBSA to ensure the Board’s order is respected. The outcome of the job description revision and the classification assessment, along with how the employer chooses to handle the overall process, will dictate which avenue the union should pursue moving forward. We are reviewing different courses of action based on how the next steps unfold, and we will make sure to keep you informed of new developments.