In the May 24, 2017 communiqué, the AFS Group provided information concerning the settlement reached on May 9, 2017, in regard to the volunteer to personal day grievances.
The purpose of the present communiqué is to provide supplemental information to the May 24, 2017 communiqué.
Grievors
Topic: Retroactive Pay and Bill C-27
From: Your Union - The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC)
To: Members of the AV Group (CO, PG & AU Classifications)
When: Tuesday, July 25, 2017
Time: 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Location: RCAF Officers' Mess, 158 Gloucester Street, Ottawa, ON
Your AFS Negotiation Team requested meeting dates as soon as possible following our last bargaining session held May 9-12. On July 14th, CRA agreed to another bargaining session on September 19-21. We look forward to resuming negotiations with the aim to conclude a collective agreement.
As previously communicated, we are continuing to pursue a Memorandum of Agreement that will commit the Agency to long overdue classification reform. The work of our AFS members is evaluated on a discriminatory decades old classification system. It is time for this to change.
The Executive of Health Canada NCR Branch presents
The Holland Cross IMGs Town Hall, July 31, 2017 – 10 am – 11:00 am
President Debi Daviau calls all IMGs (Foreign trained medical doctors) working in HC- HPFB to a town hall to discuss:
“The future of IMGs in the public service”
Town Hall Honorary Guest, the Honourable Andrew Leslie
Orleans MP, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs
(Canada-U.S. Relations) and member of the Privy Council
Your Bargaining Team reached a Tentative Agreement with the Sunnybrook Mechanical and Electronic Technologists (SUN-MET) to renew the Group's Collective Agreement. On July 11, 2017 members had the opportunity to vote on this and a strong majority of members have ratified the Tentative Agreement.
Your bargaining team,
Thanks.
While the current government has been right to criticize the last one for laying off hundreds of compensation staff before it rolled out Phoenix, it’s the decisions around outsourcing such projects in the first place that demand a rethink.
On June 1, the RE Group Collective Agreement was signed. We are going to see the first effects on our pay on July 12. The pay of most RE members will be adjusted based on the new hourly rate. There will also be a partial or full retroactive payment.
I am pleased to report that our initiative to recruit and train CSs to work on Phoenix is making good progress. I made a strong case for building the government’s in-house capacity at my recent meeting with the Cabinet Committee of Ministers tasked with fixing the beleaguered Phoenix pay system.
So much of what went wrong with Phoenix stems from the former government’s wrongheaded decision to outsource the technical work of testing and implementing the project to a large multinational IT company. Now we are left not only with a faulty system but with integration and end-to-end issues that are exacerbating the problems.
Bringing in more public servants and training them sends not only a message that we are turning a corner on an ideological approach to IT modernization but also initiating an approach that makes economic sense. The government already employs over 13,000 CSs, making it one of the largest IT employers in the country. Why would the Canadian government not use their own in-house resources?
Stay tuned for a joint call out from Public Services and Procurement Canada for CSs to train and work on Phoenix – an exciting opportunity to showcase public service talent, get much needed access to training and help get our colleagues paid on time and correctly.
Chalk this one up in the victory column for public servants and for common sense!
Better Together!
Debi Daviau
President