98th Annual General Meeting President’s Speech

November 17, 2017

• Together, we negotiated provisions to protect against the muzzling of scientists.
• Together, we secured collective agreement language to reduce the federal government's over-reliance on outsourcing.
• Together, we saved the federal sick leave system and created an opportunity for genuine negotiations on meaningful improvements.

But that’s not all.

Yukon Hospital Corporation members secured their first negotiated agreement.

New Brunswick crown prosecutors are no longer the lowest-paid prosecutors in the country.

And members of the University of Ottawa Information Technology Professionals recently reached an agreement-in-principle with their employer, avoiding a strike.

We also scored victories outside of the bargaining process.

Our longstanding call for more investments in the Canada Revenue Agency was heard in the federal budget.

We've made our voices heard in opposition to Bill C-27 and its threat to defined benefit pensions – one of the vital safeguards of middle-class incomes for retired workers.

A lot of these efforts and achievements are vital not just to our members but, as Alex Himelfarb has said, to “the common good”.

Our members, like most Canadians, don’t want us bogged down in small, inward-looking struggles. They want and need us to fight the bigger battles that benefit them and everyone.

The work we have done advocating public interest bargaining, fashioning common demands, and building solidarity among our groups has served our members – and Canadians – well.

More science and evidence-based public policy benefit everyone. So does a tax system that can tackle offshore tax havens. So does a government that hires full-time, permanent, unionized professionals.

The model of collective action represented by our Strategic Bargaining Committee therefore needs to continue. It needs to continue so that we can fight more effectively for our members on issues such as real job security, better sick leave, stronger pensions – and set a path that others in the country can also follow to win.

This is a message I will continue to champion over the next year as PIPSC’s President and in my newly elected role as a Vice President on the Executive Committee of the Canadian Labour Congress.

I’m very proud of what we’ve accomplished over the past year. I’m equally proud of what our members do every day for Canadians.

And I know that others deserve to know and celebrate it too.

For that reason, we launched this year the first issue of a new publication, Better Together, which showcases our members, the variety of the work they do, and the value they bring to Canadians. We’ve given a copy to every MP. We’ve also produced a set of accompanying videos. You’ll see some of these on the screens at different points throughout this AGM. And we’ve also launched an ad campaign in bus shelters, office buildings, and online.

But celebrating our title as the best public service in the world isn’t enough. We have to work together to keep our number-one status.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives reported last year that “the federal government is the smallest it’s been since before the Second World War.” That needs to change if we’re to meet the challenges of the future.

So we’ve continued to work hard to convince the federal government to invest more in Canada’s public service.

In our pre-budget consultation submission to the federal finance committee, we called on the government to do three things:

• restore Canada’s public science capacity
• reduce over-reliance on outsourcing of government services, and
• ensure the integrity of our tax system.

Like most things worth doing these require money. But most of all they require us to convince politicians. So, late last month we took that message directly to MPs on the Hill.

I love it when ministers pose for a photo holding our message.

There’s no doubt we’ve made a lot of progress on many fronts.

But there’s one particular issue on which a lot more progress needs to be made.

We know the one.

The best public service in the world deserves far better than the Phoenix payroll system.

As of August 8, 156,035 federal employees – that’s more than half of the public service – had opened a file about incorrect payment by Phoenix.

And the problem has not got better. Yesterday, the government informed employees by email there are now over half a million outstanding transactions.

Meanwhile, contract costs with IBM have grown from $5.7 million in 2011, when IBM was hired to develop and implement Phoenix, to $185 million in 2017.

Of course what the numbers don’t tell us are the stories of stressed-out employees, some of whom have gone months without any pay at all.

Last spring, the Institute filed two policy grievances against the employer – our only legal means of pressuring the government to repair the system and properly compensate all our members who have been harmed or impacted.

We filed three more policy grievances this fall, when the federal government failed to meet its obligations in implementing new collective agreements for members of the AV, RE and SP groups. We’re about to file two similar policy grievances for members of the CS and SH groups.

All this has come after assisting literally hundreds of members in filing individual grievances, many of which have been resolved. In addition, we’ve

• written to and met with ministers,
• argued – successfully – that members be reimbursed out-of-pocket expenses,
• worked with the media to keep the issue in the public eye,
• offered loans to those particularly hard hit,
• organized many of our members to protest,
• and lobbied – again, successfully – for more money to be spent on fixing the system.

In late June, I met with the new ministerial working group responsible for fixing Phoenix. I made a case for closer collaboration between the government and some of our CS Group members in finding solutions. I still hope this will lead not only to eventual Phoenix fixes but also to better appreciation of our members’ professional contributions and a change in the government’s outsourcing practices.

But here’s the thing.

No one I know likes Phoenix. I mean, no one. Our members don’t like it. We don’t like it. Taxpayers don’t like it. Rick Mercer doesn’t like it.  I’m sure the ministerial working group set up to fix it doesn’t like it either.  

So, why defend it?

Phoenix doesn’t work because it wasn’t designed to work for an operation as large, as complex and, let’s face it, as subject to shifting ideological and economic pressures as the federal public service.

That’s not the fault of the public service. And it’s certainly not the fault of collective bargaining.

It’s the fault of people from the last government who wanted to cut payroll costs and hire for-profit contractors. It’s the fault of the current government for not seeing the error of the last government’s ways soon enough to pull the plug. And it’s the fault of blind faith or dumb policy in endlessly renewed, ever-expanding corporate contracts.

About the only people who really like Phoenix are those who stand to profit from it. Why are we surprised?

Earlier this month we did a quick informal poll of our members and asked them: Do you think Phoenix can be fixed? Eighty-seven per cent said no.

No one should be surprised by that result. I’m not.

That’s why earlier this week I put the challenge to the government to forget Phoenix, cut its losses and invest in building a new system. One that works. One that’s tested. One that’s built by and for public servants.

It can be based on the same PeopleSoft program. It won’t be cheap. It won’t be built overnight. But it will be cheaper, faster and more effective in the long run than forever patching a faulty system that was programmed to fail from the start.

Most important, it will work.

In the meantime, our members need to be paid, and paid properly. The only way that seems possible is for the government to spend the money needed to hire more staff now to assist members with their payroll problems.

That’s why we are asking members of our consultation teams to meet with management in their workplaces and issue one simple demand: Either hire more staff to assist our members or face more grievances.

Until a new system that works can actually be built by our members, our only hope for real solutions to these ongoing problems is through hiring more staff or the threat of more grievances.

Our stewards are critical to this initiative. So we’ve prepared special Phoenix grievance toolkits that will be available to them, online through their portal accounts, starting Monday, November 20. These kits will guide stewards step by step in helping members file more grievances when and where they’re needed.

We’ve argued from the start that Phoenix’s problems had their origin in an over-reliance on outsourcing. Any hope to fix Phoenix rests with federal IT professionals, not IBM. Any hope of having a system that works longer term also rests with a new system designed and implemented by federal IT professionals. And any hope of providing more immediate solutions rests with our own efforts to pressure the government now to hire more staff or face more grievances.

This doesn’t need to be a story with an unhappy ending. We’ve seen what we can do when we work together. We’ve bargained successfully to prevent the muzzling of scientists, to reduce outsourcing, and to save sick leave. We can apply the same concerted pressure to save our members from Phoenix.

We have the skills and resources – as union members, Canadians and public employees – to make a difference in our members’ and others’ lives.

In fact, one of the most hopeful new tools PIPSC has launched recently is a new website – action.pipsc.ca – specifically for members looking to get more involved in PIPSC. It features notices of special member events, activities, surveys, and other ways you can get involved in your union. You can watch video interviews with the members profiled in Better Together. You can also sign our online petition calling on the government to invest more in Canada’s public service.

Member engagement in such actions is important because, however effective we may be individually, our ultimate success as public service professionals is measured by what we do together.

Better Together is no longer just a slogan. It’s a promise – a measure – of our collective success. As our accomplishments of the past year and the challenges before us demonstrate, we all have a stake in ensuring we remain better together.

Thank you.

President’s Opening Address