I am writing to stand up for the 25,000 Union of Taxation Employees members that are employed with the Canada Revenue Agency, in light of recent negative press coverage.
The CFIB and internal CRA survey results are very disheartening to the members of the UTE. We are very dedicated and hardworking public servants that have endured the destruction of services to the public by the Harper Government over the past few years. We have seen the closure of payment counters and elimination of face-to-face counter service at all of the Tax Services Offices, the privatization of the storage of tax records, and the budget cuts and loss of over 3000 jobs.
Our members are being asked to do more with less, to keep up with complex legislative changes, and to affect training with reduced resources. The sheer mass of information that must be absorbed and interpreted is staggering. A continual influx of new or returning employees through the increased use of term, part-time and student workers has severely restricted the ability of employees to provide consistent and accurate information to clients.
The members of UTE do everything possible to provide accurate and meaningful assistance to the public. This is extremely difficult in a call centre environment where there is constant surveillance, close monitoring of time on calls, short call handle times, and a between-calls allowance of only seconds (7 to 10 seconds). This new way of doing things puts quantity over quality. These poor working conditions generate a high level of staff turnover in these pressurized workplaces that, in turn, affects the level of quality service.
The government’s constant attacks on their own employees, the continual erosion of employee benefits, and the government’s public statements that their employees are less productive than those in the private sector have caused an all-time low morale in the public service.
We have been in negotiations with the CRA for over two and a half years and we are nowhere near concluding an agreement. This is the same two parties that have negotiated the previous two collective agreements before they expired. Now the Government has put us under the thumb of Treasury Board, who will not let the two parties work out an agreement. Their influence on negotiations and union-management relations has been nothing but negative.
The recent expenditure cuts have had a significant impact on services to the public. The idea that we can maintain adequate and effective services to the public with less and less has been shown over the last couple of years to be unrealistic. We only need look at Veterans services, food inspection, Employment Insurance services, and now tax information. It is impossible to make blanket cuts to budgets and reduce the number of people providing services without negative effects.
This is how the cuts to services at Canada Revenue Agency have affected you:
- Over 3000 positions eliminated;
- Counter and cashier services eliminated across the country where taxpayers used to receive help with tax inquiries, pick up forms and pay their tax bills;
- Criminal Investigations centralized from local units to only major urban centres;
- Privatizing the records storage centres to eliminate jobs and outsourcing the custody of taxpayer documents;
- Moving away from in-person service to electronic services;
- Elimination of personalized tax forms and discontinuance of the Telefile service.
The members of the Union of Taxation Employees are very hard working and conscientious public servants who deserve to be treated with respect and deserve to be given the proper training, resources and support to do their jobs in order to provide quality service to Canadians.
Robert Campbell
National President, UTE