On September 16, 2025, members of the USJE National Food Service Officers (FOS) working group met virtually to touch base and discuss the campaign’s next steps.
Following opening comments provided by USJE National President David Neufeld and RVP Laurie Ann Wesselby, the group provided regional updates.
Issues Raised:
- Inmates are increasingly conducting bargaining unit work.
- This increases the risk of inmates becoming more violent towards each other where offenders could be put in a position of telling other offenders how to do their job.
- In the kitchens, inmates are surrounded by equipment that can potentially be used as weapons.
- There are long delays to fix broken equipment which increases the risk of injury for both employees and offenders, slows production down and adds to the workload of employees.
- There remain ongoing challenges related to recruitment and retention of staff;.
- FOS workers are being asked to make food deliveries to other institutions from the Regional Food Production Centre which are not duties that fall under their job descriptions.
Stephane Charron, Senior Manager of Food Services, at CSC’s National Headquarters and Patrick Larose Senior Human Resources Consultant, Food Services listened attentively to the members’ concerns and committed to further discussions within CSC.
In the meantime, they provided feedback about how to address some of the issues identified and emphasized that there is no staffing freeze currently, but there are staffing control measures in place.
RVP Wesselby reminded members of the Working Group that there should be daily, weekly and monthly maintenance and cleaning schedules. If this is not happening, she encouraged members to immediately raise this at the site as an urgent Occupational Health and Safety issue. Any workplace issue is best dealt with at the local level before pursuing recourse at regional and/or national levels.
USJE would like to thank Barbara Bell, Lorna Thorburn and Justin Jardine for their participation on this Working Group, under the leadership of RVPs Laurie Ann Wesselby and Kirk McIntosh. A special thanks to Stephane Charron and Patrick Larose for taking the time to listen to our frontline members.
Take Action
- Send this email to your local management team and CSC Commissioner, Anne Kelly.
- Volunteer and apply to serve on the FOS National Working Group that meets virtually twice a year by reaching out to RVP Kirk McIntosh or Laurie Ann Wesselby.
- Read: USJE Appeals to federal Public Safety Minister to Halt Proposal to replace USJE Members with Inmate Labour in federal Correctional facilities as Budget Saving Measure