OTTAWA: Thousands of employees at Canada’s tax agency have “strongly” rejected a controversial contract, putting them on the road to a strike unless a deal can reached.
Robert Campbell, president of the Union of Taxation Employees (UTE), said the ratification vote held across the country over the past six weeks, drew more than 16,000 members who cast their ballot on whether to reject or accept the Canada Revenue Agency’s last offer.
The union’s leadership recommended that members reject the offer. Campbell wouldn’t reveal how many voted against the proposal but said it was “well over 50 per cent.”
Campbell said he was meeting CRA’s deputy commissioner John Ossowski on Friday to discuss a possible return to the bargaining table. Commissioner Andrew Treusch retired this week and Ossowski is filling in until his replacement begins.
“Our intention is this vote will be pressure to bring them back to the table,” said Campbell.
“If they force a strike, we can do a lot in a short period but that’s not good for Canadians. We’d rather get back to the table and sort this out. We don’t want to inconvenience anyone.”
The CRA is the largest agency in the federal government, employing about 40,000 people. The two sides have been negotiating for more than four years and the big obstacles are wages and surrendering accumulated severance pay.
The agency’s offer would force employees to accept the same yet-to-be-negotiated raises that all other public service employees will get, a move that Campbell said takes away the union’s right to negotiate.
The union also didn’t want to surrender severance pay without being compensated for the concession, either with a bigger raise or some kind of lump-sum payment or monetary improvement. The union estimated severance was worth a two-per-cent-a-year increase, rather than the .75 per cent it was offered.
The government has already negotiated deals with all other federal unions to surrender the accumulation of severance pay, which public servants used to receive in lump-sum payments when they voluntarily retired or resigned.
The UTE is the only union that has yet to give up severance benefits for public servants who quit voluntarily. And it’s the only large union that isn’t at the table in the current round of collective bargaining to negotiate the government’s demand to replace the existing sick leave regime with a new short-term disability plan.
The agency wants he union to accept “me-too” clause that would impose whatever wage settlement is reached with the Public Service Alliance of Canada at the current round of bargaining with the other 18 unions.
This means the taxation workers have been offered raises of 1.75 per cent retroactive to November 2012, followed by a two-per-cent raise for 2013 and whatever the PSAC group negotiates for 2014 and 2015.
The government has offered public servants a 0.5-per-cent increase a year over three years. PSAC has countered with a three-per-cent-a-year hike.
