More News from Local 517

CTO Policy Grievance Update - April 7/09

Grievance Officer Brother Scott Andrews, MCSCS Vice Chair, Brother Gord Longhi along with myself met with Regional Director Marg Welch and three Employee Relations Staff today for the Stage 2 meeting on the above subjected matter. Thank you to the brothers for their assistance and support. The parties went through a comprehensive two hour meeting where the Union emphasised the need for staff to be allowed to continue to bank compensating time off. Some of the reasons presented included: Mutually beneficial for the parties due to:a) High stress levels associated with rotating shift work; b) Poor work environments; c) Aging work force; d) Family care, elder care, and our own health issues; e) The Employer’s need for staff to be willing to perform overtime work;We asked the Employer to explain the change to the long standing practice of allowing locals to negotiate CTO agreements (similar to CWWA) and the Employer stated that they had concerns regarding an inability to staff the institutions without incurring significant additional costs through pyramiding, i.e. having to pay overtime to cover the hours that staff are off on compensating leave. As well, the lack of consistency in CTO agreements across the province has caused the Employer concern. We emphasized that there are numerous agreements on CTO across the province and that the language of Articles COR8.5 and COR8.6 as well as Article 16 of the Collective Agreement supported such agreements and are similar to the locally negotiated CWWA:COR8.5 Where there is mutual agreement, employees may receive compensating leave in lieu of pay at the overtime rate or may receive pay at the overtime rate in lieu of compensating leave.COR8.6 Compensating leave accumulated in a calendar year which is not used before March 31 of the following year, shall be paid at the rate it was earned. The March 31 date may be extended by agreement at the local or ministry level.ARTICLE 16 - LOCAL AND MINISTRY NEGOTIATIONS16.1 It is agreed that all ministries may enter into local and ministry employee relations negotiations such that are appropriate as not being excluded by the provisions of the Crown Employees Collective Bargaining Act, 1993. Such negotiations shall not be subject to the mediation and arbitration procedures under the Act, provided however, that nothing shall preclude a grievance alleging a violation of the Central Collective Agreement, as provided in the said Act. We took the position that if the MERC table, which is where this issue belonged from the beginning, cannot come to an amicable agreement then:1. We expect the Employer to abide by those local agreements, a number of which do not have expiry dates or caps attached to them. In total, we will be reviewing 31 adult institutions and 4 youth facilities to determine the contents of each agreement, which includes various notice period for change. A Policy Grievance for the Youth facilities has also been filed.2. No corporate direction can nullify all of the bona fide local agreement where the Collective Agreement language (which did not change), and the long-standing history supports these very agreements.3. Compensating time off allows staff to decompress and to cope with life/workplace stressors which is important to avoid further absences due to illness which could push the total absences over the target thresholds. Failure to meet the threshold on January 1, 2010 is a lose-lose situation for everyone.4. We are not conceding at this point in time that proper notice was provided to the Union prior to the ratification of the current Collective Agreement.5. A labour dispute that eliminates CWWA and the HPRO system are again in no one’s best interest and that chaos will ensue within the institutions if a resolution is not agreed to.Marg Welch assured us that there would be a speedy response to the Stage 2 meeting. During our conversation we also questioned why the line staff were being treated one way, yet managers and others were not being treated the same way in regards to compensating time off being removed, as the management rank have the same issues as the correctional officers regarding sick time and pyramiding? They informed us that management is governed by different policy and that’s why they were not given the same letter/memo. Our response was; “Are they still not ultimately governed under Ministry of Government Services”….after some thought the answer was “yes managers are still managed by MGS”. The Ministers Office of MCSCS has contacted the Presidents office, we are still waiting to confirm on a meeting date with Minister and the Deputy. Spoke with Glenna and she has her first MERC meeting with employer tomorrow. In Solidarity, Eddy