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Report of the June 2007 Strategic Planning Session
of the PSAC National Board of Directors
NBoD Strategic Priorities 2007-2009
The PSAC’s National Board of Directors held its Strategic Planning Session June 4-8, 2007, and set out goals for collective action in three key areas of the union’s work:
- Defending Quality Public Services
- Membership Renewal
- Collective Bargaining and Mobilization.
The NBoD’s focus on these three areas emerged from a consultation process led by a planning committee comprised of Board members. After interviewing each Board member about their expectations for the session, the Planning Committee selected these three topics for discussion, and designed the agenda to allow the Board to set strategic goals in each area.
In setting out these goals, the NBoD took account of the direction set by delegates to the 2006 PSAC Convention. The goals also reflect an awareness of the current social, economic and political context, in particular the expectation that we’ll soon be in the midst of another federal election, the fact that the PSAC’s membership composition is changing, and the recognition we face a very busy schedule of collective bargaining and mobilization work.
The overall theme of the strategy session was “Working Together as Leaders.” An important focus of the discussion was how the members of the NBoD can strengthen their contribution to the union’s work in these three areas, both individually, and collectively as a Board.
At the same time, the Board recognizes leadership comes from many different places in the union. The PSAC’s ability to further the interests of our members and working people in general depends on collective action at all levels of the union. Board members committed themselves to promoting these goals and engaging leadership at all levels of the union: members, activists, Locals, Components, staff, equity-seeking groups, committees and Regional and Area Councils.
In addition to setting out goals in these three areas, during the strategy session the Board also heard a report from its Roles, Responsibilities and Structure Committee, and provided them with feedback on a plan for advancing their work and priority topics for discussion. Board members also discussed how to use regular NBoD meetings to continue their strategic planning work, which is briefly summarized in the “Next Steps” section at the end of this document.
Defending Quality Public Services
The Issue
Delegates to the 2006 PSAC Convention adopted a broad policy statement committing the PSAC to take on “concrete and comprehensive actions to ensure that quality public services are preserved and remain publicly delivered.” The adoption of the policy included a dues increase of 17 cents per member per month, bringing the dedicated budget for DQPS to $1,000,000 throughout the 2007-2009 budget cycle. Subsequently, the Alliance Executive Committee adopted a more detailed framework for action, which reinforces the importance of incorporating the theme of Defending Quality Public Services into many areas of the union’s work.
The decision to focus on DQPS as part of the Board’s strategic planning work is a natural extension of its identification of “linking globalization to members’ lives” as a 2003-2006 strategic priority. Due to globalization, public services have been under attack through cutbacks, privatization, the sale of public assets to for-profit corporations, contracting-out, de-regulation and the signing of trade agreements which restrict the scope of government action. The DQPS framework involves building on members’ negative experiences of these processes, and linking these to the concerns of the broader public.
The goal of the DQPS work is for the PSAC to make an active contribution to building a just, inclusive, secure, prosperous and sustainable society for workers and their families. We will emphasize the important role that quality public services play in addressing social and economic inequities, and improving social cohesion.
Building on public support for quality public services, and a growing willingness of our members to engage in public campaigns and lobbying, the DQPS program is designed to:
- Promote the scope, range and value of public services provided by the PSAC membership.
- Engage the PSAC membership in concerted campaigns to defend quality public services, protect public sector employment security, and fight privatization.
- Build alliances with other unions and progressive organizations on DQPS.
- Expose the level of contracting-out taking place within the federal public sector and campaign to stop further contracting and to contract back-in work previously contracted out.
- Demonstrate the critical role of government regulation as a component of quality public services, and how globalization and de-regulation are undermining public and worker safety, consumer protection, and environmental protection.
Union Goals
Within the DQPS policy and framework, the NBoD identified several goals for the union’s work in this area. In the next three years, we will:
- Develop concrete, issue-based campaigns in support of quality public services that will engage our members and gain public support.
- Increase the level and sophistication of our political action work, and in particular increase the lobbying our members do around DQPS issues.
- Gain increased public and media attention and profile to DQPS issues affecting our members and the public:
- Strengthen our capacity to respond quickly to emerging issues in a timely and coordinated way (the Board did some specific planning around the sell-off of federal buildings as an example of this).
Actions as Leaders
The NBoD will work together as leaders to support these goals, and encourage other leaders within the union to support these goals. Specifically we will:
- Work across Components and Regions in an integrated way, wherever possible supporting each other on specific campaigns.
- Ensure and support central coordination of campaign work, especially in areas of media and public relations work.
- Share information on a timely basis, and ensure effective means for distributing information within and beyond the Board.
- As Board members, take advantage of opportunities to speak to members on common DQPS issues, across regional and component lines.
- Personally participate in joint lobbying work.
- Include DQPS as a theme in planning all national PSAC conferences, and in planning Regional and Component Conventions.
Membership Renewal
The Issue
Like unions across the country and around the world, the PSAC is facing significant changes in our membership composition. Our largest employers (the federal government, national separate agencies, and territorial governments), are in the midst of an unprecedented wave of retirements and new hiring. The diversity of work done by our members is also changing as a result of our highly successful organizing efforts. Members’ relationship to their union is also changing, as we follow members whose work has been devolved to separate agencies and employers, and adjust structures due to government re-organization. Some facts and figures:
- More than 16 per cent of federal public service employees are over the age of 55. In many PSAC classifications, the proportion of employees over 55 is greater than 25 per cent.
- The PSAC’s 2006 bargaining survey found that nearly 1 in 4 Treasury Board/Agency members plan on leaving the federal public sector within five years.
- Our poll also shows that the federal government has been hiring thousands of new employees: 18 per cent of the members surveyed have been with the government 4 years or less, and are involved in their first round of bargaining with the PSAC.
- The profile of the new group of members is different than the group leaving. There are more women (59% of the employees under 4 years, as compared to 45% for those planning to leave in 5 years). There are more members from equity-seeking groups, particularly racially visible. Education levels are also increasing: over 50% of members with 4 years or less have a university degree, compared with an overall average of 31%.
- Our newest members are also much more likely to be term employees. As terms, they face a more precarious work situation, which can inhibit involvement in the union.
- We also face challenges in protecting the scope of our membership. As noted in the Student Employment Policy adopted at the 2006 PSAC National Convention, many new employees are being hired as students when they should be in the bargaining unit. Public Sector employers are also making increased use of temporary help-agencies and contract employees.
- The proportion of our membership employed outside the federal public sector continues to grow: more than 30,000 members now work outside the federal government, for airports, ports, museums, hamlets, housing associations, First Nations employers, casinos, building security, municipalities, and mining.
- The PSAC’s presence in the North is particularly significant. More than seven percent of our members work in the territories, and 1 out of every 4 workers employed in the territories is a member of the PSAC.
- One of our fastest growing areas of membership is the university sector. We now have seven university units, with more than 7,500 members working as teaching assistants, research assistants, or sessional lecturers. Needless to say, these members are young, highly educated, and mobile.
The issue is not so much one of renewing members – that will happen automatically as existing employers hire new employees and we organize new units. The issue is how well we renew membership involvement and engagement in the face of such rapid change.
The PSAC has many programs and initiatives underway to address renewal, particularly in education, organizing, Local development, human rights and equity programs, and campaign work such as DQPS and students. But some NBoD members reported that employers are ahead of the union in providing new groups of employees with opportunities for networking and renewal. Board members feel the union must look beyond integrating new members, to consider issues of how the union changes and adapts its practices, programs and structures given the expectations and goals of newer members.
Associated with membership renewal, the union faces issues of leadership and staff renewal and succession planning, as the wave of retirements we are seeing in our membership is also affecting the elected leadership, the core activists across the country, and staff.
Union Goals
The NBoD members identified several goals for the union’s work in this area. In the next three years, we will:
- Continue to work membership renewal goals into all areas of the union’s work.
- Place a renewed importance on outreach to new members, emphasizing the need for all Locals to contact newly hired employees, orient them to the union, and ask them to join as full members by signing membership cards.
- Ensure that we take advantage of collective agreement provisions to introduce new workers to the union during their orientation; negotiate these provisions where they don’t exist; and use workplace union-management committees and grievances to expand our rights to engage in this orientation.
- Create opportunities for younger workers to talk to union leaders about their issues, about the union, and how to increase participation in the work of the union.
- Promote issues of concern to newer and younger members and remain relevant in face of significant generational change.
- Continue to expand the participation of women and members from equity-seeking groups within union structures at all levels.
- Continue to modernize our forms of membership communication, ensuring that we are effectively reaching newer and younger members.
Actions as Leaders
The NBoD will work together as leaders to support these goals, and encourage other leaders within the union to support these goals. Specifically we will:
- Engage in the exchange of information, tools, resources and experience, across regional and Component lines, related to membership outreach and renewal.
- Work to break down information “silos” by encouraging local and regional leaders within Components and regional structures to actively share information and engage in membership renewal.
- Personally encourage newer members, younger members, women and equity-seeking members to become more involved in the work of the union – particularly given the membership poll result showing that 60 per cent of members interviewed agree with the statement they would “get more involved in union activities if they were asked.”
Collective Bargaining and Mobilization
The Issue
Our Union’s successes at the bargaining table, and our ability to negotiate improved wages and working conditions for all our members, regardless of where they live and work, is key to our ability to engage the membership, and ultimately, to build our Union. Ultimately, our collective successes at the bargaining table give us the license and the power to fight to defend the interests of working people in our workplaces, our communities, here in Canada and beyond our country’s borders.
The PSAC has been actively changing its approach to collective bargaining and mobilization. Following the last round of TB/Agency bargaining, the union made several changes to the process: expanding the input call process; offering more negotiations training; increasing equity group participation; improving communications. The National President has committed to continuing the process of reviewing and improving our approach to bargaining so that all parts of the Union – Bargaining Teams, Locals/Branches, Components, Regions, Area Councils, Human Rights and Women’s Committees, the strike/strategy structure, and the PSAC national structure – have the opportunity to mobilize to fight for collective bargaining gains.
In setting goals for 2007-2009, several considerations were in front of the Board:
- The PSAC now has almost 250 bargaining units. Just 16 of these are national in scope. Another seven are territorial units where members are located in many different communities. The remaining 225+ are regional bargaining units – i.e. separate employers, territorial units, provincial units, Directly Chartered Locals, etc. The employees in these bargaining units all live and work in a single municipality.
- While negotiations have become increasingly regional in nature, most bargaining units are still contained within a few sectors, where bargaining in one region can significantly impact on bargaining in other another region. This is particularly true for airports, museums, ports, hamlets, housing associations, university units, building security/Commissionaires. This reinforces the importance of national coordination.
- The schedule for collective bargaining is particularly heavy throughout 2007 and early 2008. Not only are we negotiating with Treasury Board and the three national agencies (CRA, CFIA and Parks), but nearly 150 of our other units will be completing or starting negotiations within this time frame.
- With our successes in organizing, we currently have at least 20 sets of first contract negotiations underway. We can expect this level to grow somewhat during the next three years.
- Federally, we’re bargaining under new legislation affecting arbitration, conciliation, strike votes, essential services, and our timelines. We are also bargaining under a conservative minority government, and the majority of our members expect this to be a tougher round. Another change is that the TC unit (Table 3) is now on the arbitration route.
- We have already set out a more focused strategy for TB and Agency negotiations. Teams have selected a more limited number of breakthrough demands, and given greater attention to workplace demands.
- Several of our bargaining demands are being complemented by lobbying and campaign work: DQPS demands, student employment demands, and the campaign to eliminate regional rates of pay.
Union Goals
The NBoD members identified several goals for the union’s work in this area. In the next three years, we will:
- Get to the table before expiry, and steadily build mobilization to achieve the best possible collective agreements for our members. Effective communication with our members will be a key tool for this goal.
- Continue to make breakthroughs in our collective agreements and defend against employer attacks.
- Give greater profile and attention to the work involved in bargaining and mobilization for the regional bargaining units across the country.
- Build membership support and solidarity across bargaining unit lines, particularly when it comes to first contract negotiations and strikes.
- Enhance the importance of political action and lobbying as elements of our strategy for collective bargaining.
Actions as Leaders
The NBoD will work together as leaders to support these goals, and encourage other leaders within the union to support these goals. Specifically we will:
- Emphasize the importance of the role to be played by all members of the NBoD during mobilization for collective bargaining.
- Work to strengthen cohesion and cooperation between AEC, Component Presidents and negotiating teams on bargaining and mobilization.
- Thinking of the smaller units in particular, we will support effective collaboration between the Local, Component, Regional Office and PSAC Negotiators.
- Actively encourage solidarity across bargaining unit, region and Component lines, particularly when negotiations for a particular unit get to a critical stage – we will share information across the union so that Locals can support each other.
- Create a forum for those Components with regional units to share experiences.
Next Steps
The strategy session ended with an agreement that this report will be made widely available to the secondary leadership of the PSAC and staff. To that end, Component Presidents are being asked to distribute and promote the report to their executives, as well as their staff. PSAC REVPs are being asked to do the same with Regional Councils. The report will be distributed and promoted to PSAC staff in both Headquarters and Regional Offices.
In the coming months, the NBoD will review our progress in these areas. The Board will look at how various parts of the union are contributing to this work, and bring to the table debates and discussions about how to strengthen our capacity to achieve our goals in these areas. They’ll use this process to help plan for Regional and Component conventions in 2008, and the next PSAC Convention in 2009, where delegates will once again have the opportunity to set direction for the PSAC’s work over the next several years.
At the strategy session, the Board also committed itself to strengthening its ongoing strategic planning role. The setting of goals in these three areas is not intended to diminish the importance of the union’s work in other areas, such as representation, classification, human rights, health and safety, social justice, workplace issues, education, etc. The Board will use its regular meetings to look at other areas of our work and set goals and direction for the union. As noted above, the NBoD also committed itself to further work on roles and responsibilities within the PSAC’s structure, and to work together to improve the operation of the NBoD.
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