The Public Service Alliance of Canada and the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada filed the grievance with Treasury Board, arguing job swaps aren’t happening because there isn’t a system to manage them and departments are refusing to participate. Treasury Board has 30 days to respond. Unions can then appeal any decision to the Public Service Labour Relations Board.
The unions’ collective agreements allow “alternation,” or job-swapping, when employees are facing layoffs. Public servants who are declared surplus and want to stay can swap positions with employees in similar jobs who want to go.
In the grievance, the unions say that departments are breaching the contract by failing to “maintain adequate processes” for swapping. Without them, employees can’t find matches.
Unions have been complaining about how few swaps have been approved since the latest rounds of cuts began after the March budget. Surplus employees only have 120 days to find a swap, and that deadline is looming for those who found out in the first wave of notices they were being laid off. After 120 days, they must decide whether to go on a surplus list for a year hoping to land another job in the public service or leave government with a buyout, pension waiver or education allowance.
The unions want departments to be ordered to allow swaps. They are also demanding a system be set up to facilitate the process and they want the clock to be turned back to Day 1 for anyone in the 120-day waiting period.
“The alternation process was designed to help our members, but with so many departments not living up to their obligations it just cannot work,” says PIPSC president Gary Corbett.
The unions argue that some departments are flatly refusing to consider swaps involving employees from other departments. Others departments say they aren’t “ready” to consider swaps, or are refusing people who may be close to retirement.
“Some departments have refused to participate in cross-departmental alternation. Others have refused alternations altogether or have failed to set up the process,” says PSAC national president Robyn Benson. “Treasury Board has failed to force these departments to participate and to set up an effective public service-wide alternation system.”
Treasury Board set up an intranet site that is supposed to function like a matchmaking service, bringing together employees to trade jobs. Unions say swapping worked effortlessly in the mid-1990s when they were managed manually, but the website is a failure because no one is responsible for it.
During the Liberals’ historic downsizing in the 1990s, which eliminated more than 45,000 jobs, swapping sparked an unexpected stampede of workers looking for someone to swap with so they could cash in on generous buyout and early retirement packages. Unions expected swapping would reduce the number of involuntary layoffs this time, too.
Other departments named in the grievance are:
Agriculture and Agri-Foods Canada
Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency
Canada Border Services Agency
Canadian International Development Agency
Canadian School of the Public Service
Citizenship and Immigration
Correctional Service of Canada
Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
Department of National Defence
Department of Veteran’s Affairs
Health Canada
Human Resources and Social Development Canada
Industry Canada
Natural Resources Canada
Original Article
Source: ottawa citizen
Author: KATHRYN MAY
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