Union News - December 2021
In November 2020, a new collective agreement was signed between the Union of Taxation Employees and the Canada Revenue Agency. The December 2020 edition of the Union News had an extensive article explaining additions to the collective agreement along with changes negotiated to existing language in the collective agreement.
It has been over a year since this collective agreement was negotiated and during this time there has been extensive hiring of new employees. The committee felt it would be valuable to highlight areas that would affect a significant portion of the new hires. It is also quite likely that many of our new members have never seen the collective agreement or possibly have very limited knowledge of the information and rights afforded members, contained therein.
This excerpt will attempt to do that. This article is not meant to be a legal interpretation, but rather the intent of the clause from the union’s perspective.
We also want to provide our members some directions or suggestions relating to what information we believe that you should provide when requesting leave under various provisions of the collective agreement. This will hopefully minimize problems that members occasionally face when requesting leave.
Lastly in some instances we will include the full text of the new or revised collective agreement clause or alternately we would ask that members review the information that will be available on the UTE website (www.ute-sei.org) under Bargaining.
ARTICLE 42 – Leave with Pay for Family Related Responsibilities
42.01 For the purpose of this clause, “family” is defined per Article 2 and, in addition, a person who stands in the place of a relative for the employee whether or not there is any degree of consanguinity between such person and the employee.
This was a significant change in Article 42. This change means that for most clauses in Article 42 where a reference is made to family, the member can have access to leave granted under this clause for persons who are not defined as family as noted in Article 2. It is the Union’s opinion that under clause 42.02 all situations listed should qualify. With the new collective agreement being in place for over a year we have seen little indication that the employer is interpreting this article in a manner contrary to the position that the union holds.
We encourage members to review and become familiar with article 42, there are 9 sub-clauses listing situations for which family related leave can be requested and approved.
Several scenarios are listed below:
- taking a family member for medical or dental appointments or for appointments with school authorities
- to provide for the immediate and temporary care of a sick member of the employee's family and to provide an employee with time to make alternate care arrangements where the illness is of a longer duration
- for the care of a sick member of the employee's family who is hospitalized
- to provide time to allow the employee to make alternate arrangements in the event of fire or flooding to the employee's residence
- to provide for the immediate and temporary care of a child where, due to unforeseen circumstances, usual childcare arrangements are unavailable.
Please note that the total amount a family related leave available to a member in any given fiscal year remains unchanged at 45.0 hours.
Hint: When requesting leave in situations where the individual is standing in place of a relative, it is suggested that you advise your team leader or manager that the leave is being requested under 42.01 advising it is for a medical/dental appointment, care of a sick individual etc. and that it is for someone not defined as family per Article 2. It is the union’s opinion that no other personal information is required.
Article 44 - Domestic Violence Leave
An extremely important addition to the collective agreement was a provision to protect and support members who may be experiencing domestic violence. We invite members to review the article, as it is fairly lengthy, we will just highlight some of the details.
For the purposes of this clause, domestic violence is considered to be any form of abuse or neglect that an employee or an employee’s child experiences from a family member or someone with whom an employee has or had an intimate relationship.
There is a total of 75 hours leave with pay available to the employee in any fiscal year. The article lists a number of reasons leave may be required such as receiving counselling, relocation either temporarily or permanently.
This leave does not have to be taken in a single block and can be taken in increments meeting the needs of the employee up to the maximum of 75 hours as noted above.
New Members – Printed Copy of the Collective Agreement
It is likely that many members who started at the CRA in early 2021 would have never received a printed copy of the collective agreement. During the last round of bargaining the employer pushed for an electronic version only, the union resisted this position and a compromise was reached. Members who were working at that time were given the option to request a paper copy and one would be provided to all members requesting one. It was also agreed to, that new members could request a printed copy of the collective agreement from the employer, and one would be provided. We encourage members who would like to have a paper copy of the collective agreement to request one from their manager, the employer is committed to providing one.
Article 40 - Parental leave without pay
During the last round of bargaining the Union of Taxation Employees (UTE) was able to negotiate improvements to the Parental leave without pay provision of the collective agreement.
This allowed members accessing this leave to choose between a standard option of up to a 37 week period or an extended option of up to a 63 week period.
However, we were not successful in negotiating the extended parental allowance to top up Employment Insurance (EI) to 93% of weekly salary to cover the extended Parental leave without pay period. This means employees need to be aware of the rules in place and the consequences of the options that are chosen. Not only for the employee, but for the other parent of the child. This is clarified below under the reference to section 40.02 on Parental allowance.
Article 40 is quite lengthy which may have contributed to some situations where the option chosen turned out not to be the most advantageous depending upon the situation. This article will try to provide some guidance and clarification however, this does not replace contacting either Compensation or Service Canada to ensure the member is aware of all the implications of their choices.
An important factor to consider is that when the mother chooses either the standard or extended parental leave the spouse or partner must request the same option.
In section 40.02 Parental allowance, the first paragraph refers to options: 1: standard parental benefits or 2: extended parental benefits.
A significant consideration when looking at options is that under option 1, the employee could receive a parental allowance which will top up their EI resulting in a benefit of 93% of their weekly salary. When choosing option 2, the employee could receive a parental allowance which will top up their EI, however for the entire period, members will receive a reduced allowance resulting in a payment representing 55.8% of their weekly salary.
Unfortunately, there have been situations in which employees were not aware of the differences which resulted in some unforeseen financial hardship.
The goal of this article is to provide guidance and understanding to our members when requesting leave under this article.
Lastly, during the upcoming round of bargaining it is hoped we will be successful in achieving the parental allowance top up of 93 % of weekly salary to be applied to the extended parental allowance period.
Gary Esslinger
Chair of the Communications Committee