- UNASSIGNED UTE MEMBERS
As mentioned in my President's Report, the process to fill an Administrative Assistant position at the National Office is now complete. We wish to increase our staffing levels in order to greatly reduce the list of unassigned UTE members. Of all the applications received that met the selection criteria, only two candidates were successful, Guylène Lepage and another candidate, both of whom were external.
As you know, following two interviews that I conducted, Guylène accepted the offer of employment as Administrative Assistant to the National President.
We made an offer of employment to the other successful candidate for the Administrative Assistant position. She had verbally indicated that she would accept our offer. I asked the Executive Committee to endorse the proposal. The committee members unanimously agreed to do so. However, the candidate subsequently informed us that she could not accept our offer for personal reasons. Our Senior Labour Relations Officer, Shane O'Brien, has had to reorganize the workloads of all the Administrative Assistants in order to address the backlog of new member applications.
Starting the week of May 30th, Natasha Larose and Louise Dorion will be working full time on a weekly rotation to handle new memberships. Natasha will be the first to start processing applications and Louise will start the following week and they will rotate weekly. During this time, while they are working on membership, they will not be available to provide administrative services to the Labour Relations Officers (LROs). Connie Nunez has agreed to provide administrative services to the LROs during this time.
In addition, Connie will be responsible for monitoring the new member inbox and responding to routine inquiries or forwarding emails to the appropriate staff member, Local, or RVP for action. Connie will also process membership requests for address changes. Requests for changes or transfers between Locals will remain the responsibility of Louise and Natasha.
These changes will remain in effect until we are able to clear the backlog of unassigned members.
In addition, I have spoken with both the Chief Human Resources Officer and the Commissioner of the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). In my discussions, I requested the cooperation of the CRA in allowing our Local Officers to have access to the organizational charts of their respective offices and, if possible, to use the employer's e-mail system to contact our members allowing our Locals to provide them with the contact information of our representatives and to indicate to which Local they belong. I have also requested that the employer respect the article in the collective agreement regarding orientation meetings with new employees, especially in the virtual work environment currently in place for the vast majority of our members. I have also added this issue to the agenda for our next National Union-Management Consultation Committee meeting on June 9.
We will continue to monitor the situation very closely and will keep you informed of any developments on this issue.
Respectfully submitted,
Marc Brière
National President