Updates

With the New Year comes new members! USGE is pleased to welcome CSC employees whose positions were recently returned to the bargaining unit.

The end of January will prove to be an important time for our members working in the field of offender education. An evaluation team has been tasked with the assessment of CSC’s education programs in advancing offender academic development and achieving improved correctional outcomes. The focus is on the continued relevance of education programs and their effectiveness and efficiency. 

In a misguided attempt to save a few dollars on the backs of its employees, Treasury Board recently provided direction to Departments advising of changes to the method employed to calculate rates of pay upon promotions, deployments and actings for employees covered by the SV collective agreement.

During this meeting, the group approved Terms of Reference, an Action Plan as well as a draft Strategy for what will ultimately be a five year project. USGE is the only public service bargaining agent representative on this committee, a relatively tight-knit group that will be dealing with heavy meeting schedules and tight response deadlines. 

In an recent InfoBulletin, François Guimont, Deputy Minister and Robin Kers, USGE LRO, co-chairs of the National Labour Management Consultation Committee at PSC, issued a joint statement where the importance of employee involvement as representatives in occupational health and safety and union activities was recognized and encouraged. 

USGE is pleased to announce that Terms of Reference for the Administrative Support Positions Review (ASPR) have been signed. The committee is now prepared to resume the consultation process.

The Harper Government’s mantra seems to be more of “do as I say, not as I do” when it comes to transparency, how it informs the Canadian public and how it chooses to work with the federal public service unions. The latest case in point is the omnibus budget bill, Bill C-4. 

The following is a letter sent by John Edmunds to our Locals, explaining the Union’s right to chose its own OHS representatives.

As was indicated in a previous article, the Administrative Support Positions Review (ASPR) was developed to examine positions, mainly within Federal Policing, to determine whether the work descriptions were complete and current and to develop new generic work descriptions that would be applicable throughout the Force.

Your bargaining team went back to the bargaining table on December 19 with the goal of concluding a fair collective agreement for employees at CSIS. We soon discovered that the employer is either unwilling or does not have the mandate to move on the key outstanding issues at the table, including Workforce Adjustment (WFA).