Updates

The Federal Court of Appeal has ruled in favour of the right of adjudicators to rule on cases of termination resulting from revocation of reliability status.

“For years, the employer has been using the revocation of reliability status for 'administrative reasons' as a way to prevent PSAC members and others from challenging these types of termination decisions using the collective agreement grievance process,” said Robyn Benson, PSAC National President.

We are pleased to announce that PSAC and Treasury Board have signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) that details how salary protection will apply to employees included in the two groups covered by our policy grievance.

Our signing of this MOA comes in the wake of the Federal Court of Appeal decision on May 24, 2017, which upheld our grievance victory. The salary protection grievance involved PSAC members who transferred into the core public service from separate agencies.

Two groups of workers are affected

The House of Commons Government Operations and Estimates Committee has unanimously called for better protection for federal whistleblowers.

Their latest report, Strengthening the protection of the public interest within the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act, addresses all of PSAC’s recommendations to the committee.

“Federal public service workers who have raised issues of wrongdoing have not received the support they deserve from their employer and have often suffered unjust reprisals as a result of their action,” said PSAC national president Robyn Benson. “Employees need to be assured that if they speak up in the public interest, they won’t suffer as a result.”

PSAC National President Robyn Benson has met with the Ministers of the cabinet working group on Phoenix to discuss recommendations by the union for fixing pay system problems.

“This was an opportunity to share information that we are hearing from our members who work directly with the pay system,” said Benson. "I reiterated our recommendations, including the need to engage IBM to address the technological issues still plaguing the Phoenix system as well as ensuring the human resources capacity continues to be expanded and rebuilt.”

The Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) and its component, the Union of National Defence Employees (UNDE), have written to Prime Minister Trudeau demanding the government revisit its decision to contract out maintenance and other related services in new multi-billion-dollar shipbuilding plans.

PSAC-UNDE have grave concerns about the scope of industry influence in Strong, Secure, Engaged: Canada’s Defence Policy.

“This shipbuilding plan puts significant military intelligence and operations in the hands of a private company,” says John McLennan, UNDE president. “It’s a security risk and a warning sign that more and more of our security apparatus could be sold to the highest bidder. That’s a trend we’re seeing throughout the Defence Policy Review.”

Our bargaining team met with the employer in Ottawa from June 20 to 22, 2017.

After much delay, the two parties met for three days in Ottawa and were able to sign off on a few amendments to the collective agreement including:

• definition of the family
• no discrimination
• leave for family related responsibilities
• bereavement leave

The Employer also removed their demand to roll-back sick leave provisions in the collective agreement.