Report of the President - Executive Council

Bob Campbell - Item 6

EXECUTIVE COUNCIL CHANGES:  Brother Denis Lalancette has taken his well deserved retirement and we welcome Brother Jérôme Martel to the Executive Council as Regional Vice-President for the Québec Region. An election for the Alternate position of that region was held and we welcome Brother Hughes Bolduc as Alternate RVP for the Québec Region. 

Collective Bargaining:  As of the writing of this report, we have reached a tentative agreement with CRA. The ratification votes will be held between August 29^th and October 12^th. The results will be announced on October 13^th. This round has been very frustrating and a strain on all of our executives and members. The team has worked very hard to achieve a fair agreement. They have negotiated some improvements and pushed the employer as far as possible. None of this would have been possible with out the support of the membership. I would like to personally thank all involved through out this long process. I want to make special mention of some team members that started this round of negotiations but were not there at the end. Brothers Denis Lalancette and Jean-Pierre Fraser, the late Brother Sabri Khayat, and Sister Dawn Hardy.

If this tentative agreement is ratified, we are hoping there will be a cooling-off period before beginning our next round of negotiations. Our first priority after ratification must be a campaign to lobby the Government to return the CRA to its former independent bargaining status.  We have proven in the past this is the best for the Agency and its employees.

BILL C-10 CHALLENGE: The Ontario Court of Appeal upheld the Ontario Superior Court decision that Bill C-10, the Expenditure Restraint Act, did not violate our Charter rights. Bill C-10, passed by the former Conservative government in 2009, rolled back negotiated wage increases for our members for years 2011 and 2012. We are very disappointed with this latest ruling as we believe that Bill C-10 violates our right to collectively bargain. The PSAC has 60 days to apply for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, and they are currently reviewing their next steps.

HISTORY OF UTE: We have engaged the Workers’ History Museum to produce a book and a video on the History of UTE. Although both projects have been delayed past our original expectations, they are now completed and we will be distributing them at the September Presidents’ Conference.

NATIONAL OFFICE STAFFING:   We welcome Sister Connie Nunez to the UTE family as Administrative Assistant in the National Office. We thank Sister Michele Laplante-Brière for many years of dedicated service to UTE, and wish her all the best as she moves onto another position in the Alliance building. We also welcome back Sister Andrea Holmes as Labour Relations Officer.

AGMS: The AGM season is due to start up again in the fall and we would, once again, ask the Locals to coordinate their AGMs with other Locals in the same region to facilitate travel by our National Officers and to ensure a National Officer presence at every AGM.

UTE TRIENNIAL CONVENTION:  The next triennial convention will be held in Ottawa in July, 2017. Preparations are well underway by the Host Committee, which is now chaired by Sister Andrea Kaiser. We will keep you posted as more details are confirmed. The committee has selected a Convention Logo. We have developed our Letterhead and Posters. The UTE website has a dedicated convention 2017 page.

Meetings with CRA:  We have had very few meetings with CRA during this period mostly due to the deteriorating relationship with CRA management. As well, a new Commissioner of the CRA, Bob Hamilton, has just replaced outgoing Commissioner Treusch in August. The Executive Council will now revisit our return to productive union-management relations with the CRA, if a tentative agreement has been accepted. 

WEB/COMMUNICATIONS:

Our website is working well.  We produced two videos (in English and French), one regarding the return to the bargaining table and another one on the latest round of ratification votes and these were well received. The poster for the 2017 Convention has been produced and will be distributed at the September 2016 Presidents’ Conference. The UTE calendar for the years 2017-2018 is in production and will be shipped to the Locals in October 2016. We are up to date on all current items.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY:

All IT systems have been running well. Regular software maintenance of internal computers, servers and network was performed. We replaced a network switch which connects our servers to the network. The new network switch will allow better visibility of the traffic flowing to and from the servers.

DONATION / SPONSORSHIPS: as September 2nd, 2016

NON-UTE EVENTS: as of September 2, 2016

GRIEVANCES:

Since our last Executive Council meeting, the National Office received thirty-nine (39) grievances, other than classification.

During the same period, sixty-two (62) grievances were presented dealing with a variety of issues. In this quarter, we received fifty-six (56) grievance replies from CRA, eleven (11) of which were allowed or partially allowed and forty-five (45) were denied.  Ten (10) grievances were withdrawn by the grievor and/or UTE and two (2) were settled by a Memorandum of Settlement.

[1] Grievance held in abeyance at request of PSAC pending judicial review of WSIB appeal.
[2] Job content grievance – settlement reached awaiting implementation of provisions of settlement.
[3] Grievance awaiting information from ATIP. 
[4] Settlement reached – awaiting implementation of provisions of agreement.
[5] Two of these grievances have been settled through an MOA and will be withdrawn when the terms of the settlement are implemented.

* Many of these grievances were previously recorded as group grievances and dealt with hours of work.  It later became necessary to record these as individual grievances, as the Agency allowed some and denied others.  Some have not been presented to date or are waiting reply.

There are presently five hundred and two (502) grievances in the National Office inventory which have not yet been presented at the Final Level. Included in this number are one hundred and thirty-five (135) grievances dealing with Hours of Work, ninety-six (96) with Article 1, ten (10) with PSTAR and two hundred and four (204) with Bargaining.

The hours of work grievances had previously been held in abeyance pending the statutory freeze complaint.  The 96 Article 1 grievances and the 204 bargaining grievances are still being held in abeyance and will be withdrawn should the tentative agreement with the employer be ratified by our members.  With respect to the 10 PSTAR grievances, we have recently concluded a Memorandum of Settlement and these grievances will be withdrawn when the terms of the settlement are implemented.

POLICY GRIEVANCE:

There were no new policy grievances filed during this period.

CLASSIFICATION GRIEVANCES:

We did not receive any new classification grievances received during this quarter.