- UNASSIGNED UTE MEMBERS
At the last Presidents' Conference, several people expressed their dissatisfaction with the issue of unassigned members causing the loss of union dues to some of our Locals.
As mentioned repeatedly, I reiterate my commitment to try to find a solution to this problem.
We had a meeting with two of the PSAC Membership Administration Section managers on this burning issue. At this meeting, I was accompanied by our 1st National Vice-President, my Executive Assistant and Louise Dorion who is the person responsible for processing membership cards for the UTE.
We have once again raised the fact that this issue is very important to our Locals as the shortfall can amount to thousands of dollars for some of them. We also told them that during this dark period (March 2016 to October 2018), our Locals continued to send us cards signed by their members. In addition, we asked why there are members who have been assigned to a Local for several years and suddenly disappear from their list.
Here is what the PSAC Membership Administration Section managers told us:
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Despite the fact that the employer's payroll system, Phoenix, was not able to read the change file from the PSAC, the Unionware software recorded and stored all the changes that were made during this period. The PSAC will test whether the system is able to extract statistical data by Local and only includes members who were added during the period when Phoenix was not able to read the change file, from March 2016 to October 2018.
We continue to follow up on this matter.
- On the second issue, the fact that members already assigned to a Local suddenly disappear from their list, the PSAC told us that the problem only occurs when a member changes classification level, specifically when he/she moves from a SP position to an MG position. In such a case, the system automatically transfers the member from its Local to the list of unassigned members. To address this issue, they asked if we would accept that they change the current rule to keep the member in his home local before the change in their classification level. We agreed with them and pointed out that for the vast majority of members who change levels, this change generally occurs in the same office, so they remain in the same Local. Currently, the PSAC is conducting tests and the managers of the Membership Administration Section should be able to implement the change starting in January 2020.
Following the transfer to the PSAC of the last unassigned membership list of 1917 people, we have updated it again and generated a new report containing the number of unassigned members. This new list contains 750 unassigned members. As a result of the agreement with the CRA, the number of members not assigned to a Local should no longer be significant.
In order to be more efficient, and to help our National Office employees more easily to identify which Local the unassigned members belong to, I have asked each Regional Vice-President (RVP) to obtain from each of their Locals the addresses of all CRA offices where they have members.
I would like to thank all of you for your cooperation on this issue.
Respectfully submitted,
Marc Brière
National President