
	Thursday August 21, 2008

MEMORANDUM

XO/14/07

July 10, 2007

To/Destinataire: National Board of Directors

From/Expéditeur: John Gordon National President

Subject/Objet: Use and Abuse of Term Employees

Keeping in mind our recent decisions at the Strategy Session and the focus on Defending Quality Public Services and Membership Renewal, I am writing to you regarding the use and abuse of term employees and temp agencies.

We were recently involved with other Bargaining Agents at a consultation session concerning a number of policy areas. During the session, there was a presenter who spoke quite enthusiastically on the topic of Public Service Renewal. During this presentation, there were many platitudes which we have heard many times about how they are going to get it right, now! We, the PSAC, took the opportunity to pose two questions:

When were we going to see less reliance on term employees filling what are actually ongoing positions? and
When would we see the end of the reliance on temp agencies.

The speaker was far more candid than we have heard to date. The response sounded like one of our own assertions when the speaker stated that the reliance on term employment and temp agencies in such a situation was an indicator of poor management and planning. She further stated this type of staffing would be targeted in the future and managers would actually see this reflected in their performance reviews.

Following this exchange we did a couple of things; we conducted some research and went directly to the source for confirmation.

Our research showed us that similar comments were made to APEX members in May 2007 by Margaret Bloodworth. She asked the question; what are the processes supporting Renewal? And she answered the question with:

DM Committee on Public Service Renewal
Advisory Committee on the Public Service
Clear guidance to Deputy Ministers
Committee of Senior Officials (COSO)
Clerk’s Annual Report on the Public Service

In the medium term regarding employee development, she stated three goals:

Medium-term

Development programs for functional communities
Performance management to emphasize people management
Talent Management for all EX levels

The confirmation for us was the statement of “Performance management to emphasize people management”.

In our further effort to have this confirmed the PSAC wrote directly to the Clerk of the Privy Council, Kevin Lynch. The pertinent paragraphs follow:

“The presenter painted a very clear picture that all managers would have this issue included in their performance measurement and that in fact the reliance on this source of labour is an indication of a definite lack of human resource planning on the part of the department/agency concerned.

I would certainly be anxious to hear if these views are indeed echoed by the Clerk. It would be a definite plus if these current attempts to renew the public service were one where the actions of the government as employer were consistent with the statements made concerning the anticipated renewal. This unfortunately had not been the case for PS 2000 or La Relève.”

This correspondence resulted in a response from the Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet, Senior Personnel and Special Projects Secretariat. The response did indeed confirm what we had been told:

“I can indeed confirm that the Clerk, the Deputy Minister's Committee on Public Service Renewal and the Prime Minister's Advisory Committee on the Public Service have all made observations on this topic. The common thread from all the above is that there is currently too much reliance on these forms of temporary employment and that the balance needs to be shifted to a larger proportion of indeterminate employment.”

The Deputy Secretary went on:

“The overall objective will be to conduct much better integrated business and human resources planning so that long term and predictable staffing and skills requirements will be largely met through indeterminate staffing processes, while temporary staffing measures will be largely reserved for genuinely cyclical or unpredictable requirements”.

My reason for writing and quoting at such length is so that it is readily understandable that the people at the top of the public service have apparently finally understood that running organizations with terms and temp agencies is a poor way of doing business. This finally comes at a particular time in the public service that staffing has now been delegated to the lowest rung possible in the organization, thanks to the Public Service Modernization Act (PSMA) and the Public Service Employment Act (PSEA).

It is important that Components and Regional Councils give this document wide circulation. In doing so, our members who have to sit with local managers can remind them how they are about to be graded on their performance with respect to staffing. They can tell them further that the local is documenting hiring patterns and shall be reporting them to their union who will in turn bring it to the attention of very senior management in Departments, the Treasury Board and every high level Public Service Renewal Committee we can find.

This is an opportunity for Members, Locals, Components and Regions to work together defending quality public services in a concrete way. We have received confirmation that those in high positions have pronounced themselves on this topic, so there is a downward pressure on managers to conform. Our members at the worksite can apply upward pressure at the same time and perhaps among us all we may be able to positively influence an issue which has plagued us for years. Should members provide you with any evidence of inappropriate staffing regarding terms and temporary agencies, please forward it to Mike MacDonald. We will be placing this correspondence on the web site with a link to send information directly.

In Solidarity,

John Gordon
National President

c.c. Directors’ Team

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