To all proud IT Group members,

A tentative agreement has been signed and will be presented to the members once the translation is available. In the coming weeks, we will be sending all members a ratification kit and will be scheduling information sessions. Following these, we will be opening the voting period online. We aim to have sent the ratification kits by early to mid November, and will aim to host information sessions throughout November and into early december. The voting period should be completed by mid to late December. More details with exact dates will be communicated to members as they are scheduled.

Ratification of this new collective agreement is in the hands of the IT Group members. If members vote for this tentative agreement, the collective agreement will be ratified. If members vote against this agreement, the Group will present a case in front of an arbitrator in the coming months, who will make a binding decision.

Over the past months of meetings with the Treasury Board (TB), your bargaining team has worked hard to get you the best deal possible. We have arrived at a deal that your IT Group Bargaining Team believes is the best path forward for IT Group members.

At the beginning of bargaining, I shared with you the bargaining priorities that your bargaining team extracted out of surveys, emails and numerous meetings with IT Group members. Your bargaining team has fought hard to address those priorities. This deal makes important progress on fair pay, improved training and career advancement, and supports and protects our collective agreement language against contracting out. It will put more money in the pockets of thousands of workers and will finally resolve our longstanding and unfair lack of pay parity.

Your bargaining team is proud to report that after years of fighting, we have reached pay parity with the IT workers at the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), and this parity will be applied at the first year of the collective agreement. This means that IT members are the only federal public servants that will have received more than the 1.50% pay increase in 2021. This also means that IT Group members that were in the Group in 2021 will see a significant increase to their retroactive pay. A long time injustice is finally corrected for all our members, and this correction will be applied to the very first day of this collective agreement.

With almost $5 million a year of new money for a dedicated Training and Development Fund, IT Group workers will have better access to the professional training they deserve. This will support career advancement and help reduce contracting out in a time of rapid technological change.

For years PIPSC has been leading the way on the fight against contracting out – with our IT Group members leading the way. This deal preserves language in the collective agreement against contracting out, despite the government’s efforts to remove these protections.

While the government is finally taking action to crack down on wasteful contracting out, make no mistake, we’ll keep up the pressure until we get the job done.

Detailed information, which will include the full text of the tentative agreement, will be provided in the upcoming weeks once it has been fully translated. In the meantime, here is a brief summary of improvements according to your listed priorities.

Duration

This is a 4 year deal, starting December 22, 2021, and ending December 21, 2025.

Pay

Wage Rate Increases

Date	% Increase	Total % increase	Total % increase (Compound)
December 22, 2021 - increase to rates of pay	1.50	1.50	1.50
December 22, 2021 - additional Pay Line Adjustment (parity)	1.50	3.00	3.02
December 22, 2022 - increase to rates of pay	3.50	6.50	6.63
December 22, 2022 - wage adjustment	1.25	7.75	7.96
December 22, 2023 - increases to rates of pay	3.00	10.75	11.20
December 22, 2023 - pay line adjustment	0.50	11.25	11.76
December 22, 2024 - increase to rates of pay	2.00	13.25	13.99
December 22, 2024 - wage adjustment	0.25	13.50	14.28

December 22, 2021 – Additional Pay Line Adjustment (parity) for the IT-05 level of 1.0% for a total of 2.50%, to be applied to every step.

The agreement also includes a $2500 one-time pensionable lump sum allowance that will be paid to all employees in the bargaining unit on the date of signing of the collective agreement.

Allowances

Correctional Service Specific Duty Allowance (CSSDA)

Increase the allowance by 7%, from $2,000 to $2,140

Contracting Out

At the beginning of the round, it was clear that the employer had set removing our contracting out protections from our collective agreement as their highest priority. This was reiterated throughout the bargaining process, at every meeting. It was not something that your bargaining team would entertain.

In order to reach this tentative agreement, the IT Group will put the over 3000 contracting out grievances it has filed against TB in abeyance and has agreed to withdraw them if this tentative agreement is ratified by IT members. This is without prejudice and in no way prevents us from pursuing our Contracting Out Action Plan moving forward. We will continue to review federal government IT contracts and grieve those that contravene Article 30. If the IT Group members vote against this tentative agreement and it is therefore not ratified, PIPSC will go ahead with its adjudication hearing scheduled in April on the test cases we have identified.

The IT Group and the Contracting Out Action Team have led the way in the fight against wasteful and unfair contracting out. After years of pressure, the government has finally launched a crackdown on outsourcing. With our collective agreement protections still in place, we have means at our disposal to keep the government to account. We stopped the government from taking away this important tool while securing benefits for our members. We will remain vigilant and will continue to enforce our collective agreement.

Remote Work

Attempts have been made in the past number of rounds of bargaining to get remote work language in the collective agreement to no avail due to management’s steadfast refusal to even entertain a discussion around remote work. This round has seen some movement.

While the language we have obtained is still technically not in the collective agreement, it is a significant step in providing some protection against the employer making changes based on a whim.

We have secured a letter of agreement with the employer which indicates that remote work is voluntary, can be requested by the employee, and that decisions will be made on a case-by-case basis. Should a remote work request be refused, the refusal must be provided in writing.

In addition, whereas previously the decision of the employer was final, with no recourse, the letter also establishes a separate grievance process that includes a joint employer/PIPSC panel which will review grievances that have reached the final step of this process.

Finally, management has agreed to establish a Joint consultation committee for the review of the Employer’s Return to Office Directive, Co-Chaired with equal representation. This committee will meet within 90 days of signing and complete work within one year.

Training and Development Fund

The new IT community Training and Development Fund is a jointly managed fund that allocates an additional four million seven hundred and twenty five thousand dollars ($4,725,000) worth of training annually dedicated exclusively to IT Group members. With this newly introduced fund, members now have access to additional resources to continue their professional training and development.

Work-life Balance

Our goal in this area was to improve your work-life balance through improvement in areas such as flexible work hours and increased premiums for certain situations. Here are some of the improvements in this area:

• Part-Time employees
  • Article 37.05 - The premium part-time employees receive in pay for the designated holidays has been increased from 4.25% to 4.6%
    • New language to provide for an increase of 0.38% in the event an additional designated holiday is proclaimed by Parliament.
       
• Increased flexibility
  • Article 7.18 - An eligible employee may request hours of work schedule between 6 am and 6 pm.
     
• Shift and weekend premiums
  • Shift premiums have been increased from $2.00/hour to $2.25/hour between 1600 and 0800
  • Weekend premiums have been increased from $2.00/hour to $2.25/hour
     
• Right to disconnect
  • The Employer will consult with the Institute after changes to the Canada Labour Code come into force and will collaboratively generate a new policy.

Leave

Time off is vitally important. It has an impact not only on our physical health but also on our mental and emotional health as well. Here are some examples of what we have achieved in this area:

• The time required to get 4 weeks of vacation leave has been reduced from 8 years to 7 years.
• The National Day of Truth and Reconciliation has been added to the list of designated holidays.
• NEW Article - Leave for Indigenous Cultural Practices - 5 days leave (2 paid, 3 unpaid) may be taken for participating in Indigenous Cultural Practices.
• Leave for Religious Observance amended to permit the use of personal leave days.

Mental Health

Since 2020, it has become exceedingly clear that mental health is vitally important in the day-to-day lives of our members. There are numerous ways that we are attempting to improve the ways in which the collective agreement will provide mental health support for our members.

• Bereavement Leave
  • Article 17.02 Expanded the language to add son-in-law and daughter-in-law to the definition of immediate family, increasing the amount of bereavement leave from 1 day to 7 calendar days;
  • Article 17.02 (b) Aunt and uncle added to those family members for which you are entitled to 1 day of bereavement leave;
  • Article 17.02 (c) Addition of 3 days of still-born bereavement leave.
     
• Care Leave
  • 17.09 (a) - Son-in-law and daughter-in-law have been added to the definition of immediate family.
     
• Leave with pay for family-related responsibilities
  • NEW Article 17.12 (c) (vi.) - Language expanded to include visiting a family member who, due to an incurable terminal illness, is nearing the end of their life.
  • 17.12 (c) (vii.) -  Increasing the number of hours which may be used under this clause for financial, legal or professional appointments to 15 hours from 7.5.
     
• Domestic Violence Leave
  • 17.19 (b) Expanded the language to include abuse or neglect experienced from a family member.
  • 17.19 (c) Employees are no longer required to provide written documentation under this article.

Other Improvements

In addition to the above, there are a number of other areas in which improvements have been made to the collective agreement, some of which are noted below:

• Grievances
  • Language has been added to clarify that all three steps are not mandatory
     
• Medical Appointments for Pregnant Employees
  • Language has been added to clarify that 3.75 hours can be used for each routine medical appointment.
     
• Gender Neutral Language
  • The IT Bargaining team worked with the Treasury Board to make the entire collective agreement gender neutral and is the first group within PIPSC to accomplish this.

Implementation

Appendix L – Implementation of the Collective Agreement

• Implementation is subject to ratification by the IT Group Membership and Treasury Board
• Prospective compensation increases and retroactive amounts payable to employees will be implemented within one hundred and eighty (180) days after signature of the Collective Agreement where there is no need for manual intervention.
• Prospective compensation increases and retroactive amounts that require manual processing will be implemented within four hundred and sixty (460) days after signature of the Collective Agreement.

In addition to the above, there are a number of other purely administrative changes which were agreed upon such as replacing all references to the Computer Systems and CS with Information Technology and IT, addition of a section heading, renewal of references to Government of Canada policies, and changing Her Majesty to His Majesty.

The IT Bargaining Team appreciates the strong support of our stewards and members. A full ratification package will be sent electronically to all Regular IT members prior to voting. Contract information sessions will be held for members. 

To vote on this tentative agreement, members of our bargaining unit must be Regular members of the IT Group. If you have not signed up yet for membership, please complete the online form at member application.

In Solidarity,

Robert Scott
IT Group Bargaining Officer