In particular, critics would like to see a change to the way the government is thinning its ranks — notifying a large number of public servants that their jobs are in jeopardy then making them compete against colleagues for the jobs that remain.
“I think the current system is inhumane and cruel and unusual punishment that should be avoided,” said Liberal Treasury Board Critic John McCallum.
Chris Aylward, national executive vice-president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, said the workforce adjustment system has not been doing what it is supposed to do.
“The problem is the implementation of the process. The process is there, the process is in place but the Treasury Board is simply not following it.”
However, Treasury Board President Tony Clement’s office says it is just carrying out the process previously negotiated with public service unions and is willing to sit down and talk with unions if people feel changes are needed.
The comments come as the government nears the anniversary of the implementation of its strategic and operating review, a sweeping exercise designed to cut 19,200 jobs from the federal public service over three years and balance the government’s books.
In November, the government announced that it had already cut 10,980 positions — 7,500 of them through attrition. Another 1,220 people whose positions were eliminated found new public service jobs.
The past year has also marked the first time since the Conservative government’s SERLO policy (Selection of Employees for Retention or Lay Off) was introduced that it has been used to carry out large scale job cuts.
Aylward says the sometimes arbitrary nature of the SERLO process and government secrecy over what is being cut has sent stress levels in the public service soaring. There has been a sharp increase in crisis calls to employee assistance counselors. One justice department lawyer committed suicide, unable to face the prospect of having to compete with his colleagues for the jobs that remained.
“Our members are not only worried about their jobs and their futures and the future of their families. They are also worried about the services they provide to Canadians.”
Aylward said he would like to see changes to the selection process.
“Make the SERLO process or some sort of selection process more fair and up front and transparent so that everyone knows what’s happening. We wouldn’t mind going back to some sort of a seniority ranking as well.”
Aylward said Treasury Board has also botched the alternation process. While the process, which allows an employee who wants to leave the public service to switch places with one slated to lose their job, worked well during the last round of large scale cutbacks in the 1990’s, this time Treasury Board failed to put it in place before government departments started serving notice to public servants that their jobs were in jeopardy.
“Going right back to last April, when the first round of cuts were announced, the alternation process was not in place, was not even in place by Treasury Board to be able to deal with that and subsequent to that it wasn’t working even when they came out several months later and said we have an alternation process in place now.”
Aylward said the alternation process also seemed to be confined to a few departments like Public Works.
“It certainly wasn’t open to the greater public service.”
Fixing the alternation process would go a long way to help public servants, said Aylward.
McCallum said the system is flawed.
“I think this has been really terrible for public servants. From what I hear, the morale in the public service is very low and what I understand is that there may be three or four times more people getting letters saying they might lose their jobs than people who actually lose their jobs.”
“So instead of just being a burden to those who lose their jobs, they scare and intimidate a much larger group who may or may not lose their jobs but they are not told for some time down the road.”
“It leads to a situation where people at a workplace will be competing to see who stays and who gets let go, or sucking up to their boss or however it works. It creates a very unpleasant atmosphere where so many people have this ax hanging over them and not knowing whether or not the axe will fall.”
Ideally, the government should trim the public service by attrition, reducing positions as people retire, McCallum said.
McCallum’s comments came during a press conference called by the Liberal Party to release a list of the 10 least transparent government bodies when it comes to telling Canadians what they are cutting to achieve their spending reduction targets.
However, McCallum’s critique of the government’s secrecy came just as Clement’s office made public new statistics on its job cuts showing that there will be very little change in the regional distribution of public service jobs once the cuts are completed. While the National Capital Region is expected to dip from 32.4 per cent of jobs to 32 per cent, jobs in the Prairies are expected to rise to 14 per cent from 13.7 per cent.
“We are shrinking the size of government while minimizing the impact on employees and the regions,” Clement said in a statement.
However, Clement’s press release gave no detail of what jobs and services are being cut.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics.ca
Author: Elizabeth Thompson
No comments:
Post a Comment