Report of the President - Executive Council

Bob Campbell - Item 6

Collective Bargaining:   I would like to thank all of the Locals from across the country for their continued actions in support of bargaining; you all should be very proud and please thank your members and Executives. We need to continue to build and maintain this support as we are now facing a Public Interest Commission. We have been supplying up-to-date Information to the membership in regards to the particulars of negotiations and we have held membership meetings across the country for all locals with the attendance of a Bargaining Team member to explain the process and to answer questions from the members, so that they are thoroughly informed. Thank you to all of the team members that have traveled across the country.
 
April 30th Action:   The Executive Council in March decided to strike a committee consisting of Adam Jackson, Robin Johnson, Robert Hume and Denis Lalancette to organize a national activity for April 30th. The goal was to engage our members and inform the public of the loss of services and the attacks on Public Servants. Funding was approved from the Political Action and Campaigns line item to help Locals hold these activities. I would like to thank the committee and all the activists for their hard work and support on this initiative.

National Public Service Week: The National Board of Directors of the PSAC has, once again this year, called for a boycott of employer-provided National Public Service Week activities. We have advised our Locals of this boycott, and encouraged them to respect the boycott.
 
Bill C-10 Charter Challenge:  As you may already know that the Ontario Superior Court issued a ruling on February 12th 2014, “That our right to association under the Charter was not substantially violated”. The PSAC has already committed to take this to the next court level. We were very disappointed in this ruling and will continue the fight this to the maximum. We have no further information at this time.
             
AGMs: We have been attending Annual General Meetings across the country and been talking to the members about all of the issues, including bargaining and the attacks on us. The overall attendance has been up and the support has been over whelming.  The office visits have shown a great amount of UTE swag being displayed and a great deal of support from the members. It gives us a very proud feeling to walk around the offices and see this.
 
Convention 2014: The work continues in regards to our upcoming convention. The National Office staff and Host Committee have things well in hand. The Convention Committees were held May 1st to 4th in Ottawa. All committees have completed their reports and the National Office Staff is working on getting these out to all delegates, observers and Locals. A big thank you to all the office staff, who have done tremendous work in getting all of this organized and completed.  

National Office Staffing:  I would like to welcome Sister Roxane Gunning to the National Office as a Labour Relations Officer, as a result of the competitive process undertaken recently. We have also established a list of 3 other qualified candidates from this process, to be used for any of our LRO needs in the near future.
  
Local 00042 (Sudbury) Trusteeship:  Unfortunately, the resignation of the Local Executive Officers left us with no choice but to put Local 00042 in trusteeship, in accordance with our By-Laws. (By-Laws 6 and 13)  Brother Cosimo Crupi has been appointed Trustee and an interim executive has been appointed. As well, there are a number of stewards on site to ensure on going representation of all members in the Local.  This trusteeship will be presented for consideration at this council meeting for confirmation. This will be reviewed as soon as possible.
 
PSAC WAAA Campaign:  We continue to be informed that UTE has been participating during this campaign.  This is a critical campaign and needs the support of all the leaders at all levels of this organization and the union movement as a whole.
 
Meetings with CRA:  We have had several meetings with CRA during this period on issues including: Human Resources Service Request Management System; HR Service Delivery Model; HR Priorities; HR Policy Suite Renewal and Simplification Project; Performance Management Corporate Policy Suite; and Consultation Tools for Managers. 

WEB/COMMUNICATIONS:

All of the information on our website is up to date.  We have been examining the proposals we have received for our new website.  We have selected a vendor and will be finalizing the details shortly.  We have also been working on some of the items for convention including banners and bilingual hotel maps.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY:

All IT systems have been running well. Regular software maintenance of internal computers and servers was performed. We are planning the IT requirements for the convention in Windsor. No computer products were purchased since the last report.

DONATIONS :

NON  UTE  EVENTS:

** Claim received

POLITICAL ACTION / CAMPAIGNS
At May 23, 2014

GRIEVANCES:

Since our last Executive Council meeting, forty-one (41) grievances, other than classification, were received at the National Office.
During the same period, seven (7) grievances were presented dealing with a variety of issues.  In this quarter, we received eighteen (19) grievance replies from CRA which were all denied and/or dismissed.

1. Grievor was originally identified by the CRA as being an employee of Shared Services Canada (SSC) at time of grievance.  Employee has been confirmed as an SSC employee and the grievance is held in abeyance at the request of the grievor pending changes to the SSC classification system.
2. One grievance held in abeyance at request of PSAC pending WSIB appeal and one grievance held in abeyance pending mediation.  WSIB appeal is being handled by legal services of PSAC.
3. Memorandum of Settlement has been concluded, but grievance will remain in inventory until the terms of the memorandum are implemented.
4. Three of these grievances were work description grievances and we were awaiting a hearing date from the employer’s functional authorities.  Further investigation has revealed that these grievors were not occupying the position in question and were in fact occupying another acting position at the time of filing,  We are still waiting advice from the local to confirm this information, but to date, the local has not responded.
5. Eight of these grievances have been held in abeyance with the grievors’ approval.  Six of these are being held pending a request for information under ATIP and two are held pending resolution of associated files.

There are presently fifty-seven (57) grievances in the National Office inventory which have not yet been presented at the Final Level.

As we have continuously noted in previous reports, the number of outstanding adjudications and the delays in same remain a concern for our office, but the numbers are gradually declining.  Discussions continue to be held with the PSAC, but to date, no resolution has been found. The major difficulty being experienced is the large volume of adjudications in inventory at the PSAC and the lack of Grievance and Adjudication Officers on strength to deal with them. Additionally, the Public Service Labour Relations Board is attempting to deal with its large case inventory, but they too lack sufficient human resources to deal with them. Brother O’Brien has written to the PSAC to request a meeting to discuss the PSAC’s plans to deal with our backlog of grievances at adjudication, but to date, no response has been received from the PSAC.

POLICY GRIEVANCE

During this period, there were no policy grievances filed.

CLASSIFICATION GRIEVANCES

There was one new classification grievance received during this quarter.

ACS-SP CLASSIFICATION CONVERSION GRIEVANCES

To date, we have provided representation for forty-three (43) of these grievances.  As noted in the chart below, all but one (1) (SP0632)  have been presented.  We are currently in the process of scheduling a presentation date.

INDEPENDENT THIRD PARTY REVIEWS (ITPRs)

During this quarter, nine new ITPRs were received in the National Office concerning staffing.

There are currently thirteen staffing ITPRs in our inventory requiring representation by the National Office and four non-staffing which have been referred to the PSAC for representation.  Included in the thirteen are one group of four ITPRs concerning the same selection processes and one group of six.  The remaining three ITPRs are from individual members.

CRA POLICY REVIEW GRIEVANCES

Currently there is one CRA Policy Grievance in our inventory.

May 22, 2014

President’s Itinerary
JUNE 2014

MARCH
3                      Local 00014 AGM                                                    Hamilton
4-5                  Local 00042 AGM                                                    Sudbury
6-7                  Local 00017 AGM                                                    London
10                    Convention Planning Meeting                              Ottawa
11-12              Local 30025 AGM                                                    Edmonton
13-14              Local 30027 AGM                                                    Lethbridge
17                    Meeting with CRA Commissioner                       Ottawa
17                    National Office Management Meeting                 Ottawa
18-19              UTE Executive Council                                          Ottawa
20-22              Presidents’ Conference                                         Ottawa
23                    Ute Executive Council                                            Ottawa
25-26              Local 40022 AGM                                                    Regina
27-28              Local 50021 AGM                                                    Winnipeg
31                    Conference Call with RVP NEO and
                        Local 00042 Trusteeship                                        Ottawa
31                    Meeting PSAC National President re.
                        Local 00042 Trusteeship                                        Ottawa

APRIL
2                      PSAC Pension Committee Meeting                     Ottawa
4                      UMA re-signing with CRA Commissioner           Ottawa
7                      National Office Management Meeting                 Ottawa
8-9                  Local 00001 AGM                                                    Toronto East
10                    Local 70030 AGM                                                    Ottawa
11                    PSAC Call Centre Committee Meeting                Ottawa
15                    Local 70000 AGM                                                    Ottawa
16                    PSAC Holdings Board Meeting                            Ottawa
16                    Component Presidents’ Briefing                          Ottawa
23                    PSAC Discipline Committee Meeting                  Ottawa
23                    PSAC Structure Committee Meeting                    Ottawa
24-28              PSAC BC Regional Convention                          Vancouver
30                    Fireside chat with AC/HR D. Lorenzato               Ottawa

MAY
1-4                  UTE Convention Committee Meetings                Ottawa
4-8                  CLC Convention                                                      Montreal
9-11                PSAC NCR Regional Convention                       Gatineau
15                    PSAC Pension Committee Meeting                    Ottawa
21-26              UTE BC Regional Meeting                                    Whistler
28                    Local 00013 AGM                                                    Toronto Centre
29-30              Local 00048 AGM                                                    Toronto North

MEMBERSHIP

Respectfully submitted,

Bob Campbell
National President