News

CUPE 104 NEWS
2022-01-31

To ALL CUPE Local 104 members

HEARING DATES FOR OUR 2016 2.3% RAISE/STATUTORY FREEZE:

We have finally received the dates for a hearing in front of the Federal Public Sector Labour Relations and Employment Board (fpslreb-crtespf.gc.ca) concerning our 2016 2.3% raise, officially known as “Duty to observe the terms and conditions – during application for certification – s. 56”.

• Hearing Session 1: May 16th to the 20th 2022.
• Hearing Session 2: June 7th to the 9th 2022.

BARGAINING UPDATE:

We have already had two bargaining sessions with the employer since early January 2022 and we have been able to get several more articles signed off. We have more bargaining sessions scheduled almost every second week well into June 2022 (check the CALENDAR for exact dates). We are working very hard towards our first Collective Agreement.

We’ve said it before, we must bargain in good faith and respect the confidentiality of the bargaining process. This allows us to have fair and open negotiations with the employer. Please remember that once we have reached a tentative agreement, it is you – the membership – who ultimately decide whether to accept the agreement.

It is especially important that all of us show solidarity with each other throughout the bargaining process. The stronger we are as a Local, the stronger our position is at the bargaining table. Please keep supporting each other, your stewards and your executive. We are getting there.
Please continue to reach out directly to your Stewards or Regional Chairpersons if you have questions or concerns.

UPCOMING ELECTIONS and BY-ELECTIONS:

An announcement for election and by-election dates for the following vacant CUPE 104 Executive posts will be sent to your personal email very soon:

• Election for Vice-President,
• Election for Secretary-Treasurer,
• By -Election for the Eastern Region Telecom Operator Chairperson.

UPDATE TO OUR MEMBERSHIP LIST INFORMATION:

As we progress in our bargaining, we are asking ALL OF YOU to please update all your information by filling out the MEMBERSHIP INFORMATION FORM at https://104.cupe.ca/membership/  

We especially need your personal email and work location (exact name and address of your office location). This form gets sent directly to the CUPE 104 Recording Secretary who maintains the Membership Master List. Your information is protected and only used by the Executive to contact you.

Having your updated information will help us communicate timely information to you during bargaining and when we get to voting on our first collective agreement. We need to be able to reach you during this critical time and the ONLY way is if you give us your information.
Please pass this request on to all your colleagues in case they didn’t see this message.

In Solidarity,
Your CUPE 104 executive
Kathleen, Robbin, Myles, Robb, Cyrus, Marc-Étienne, Alex and Ron.

Contact us

2021-11-19

We all know that staffing shortages in our Centres is nothing new and it’s only getting worse. We frequently hear of instances where our members are working in extremely understaffed situations. We work in a highly demanding and stressful job where our priorities are always officer and public safety. When we are required to work longer and harder with fewer staff on duty, both officer and public safety suffer. Equally as important, your health and safety suffer.

Providing enough staff to properly manage the workload is an employer responsibility. Every centre that our members work in has statistics and studies that should be used to accurately determine the number of full-time employees who are required to manage the expected workload of the centre. Most of our centres are not adequately staffed based on these statistics and studies. These numbers are not new. The trends of increasing workload, increasing sick leave, increasing turnover, increasing attrition, and increasing vacancies are not new. The employer has been aware of these trends for years and yet, we are all still working with significantly fewer colleagues than we should be.

We are extremely worried about our members. You are consistently being overworked, underpaid, working overtime, working through breaks, and missing out on vacation and days off. Down time, vacation, and regular days off are critically important to your health and recovery after dealing with high stress and trauma. Many of us have dealt with or are currently dealing with mental health trauma. We have seen several of our members leave their jobs due to medical illness and those who remain are continuing to get sick. Most distressing of all are our friends and colleagues who have died from suicide.

As an executive, we have been advocating relentlessly for our members when it comes to both staffing and mental health supports. In every meeting with the employer, we always talk about the staffing shortages and the dangerous situations being created by the lack of adequate staff to safely conduct our work. We have members on local, divisional, and national health and safety committees where we consistently bring up the staffing shortages in our centres and the impacts on our mental health. We also have members on the divisional and national labour management consultation committees where we always talk about mental health and staff shortages.

We frequently talk to the Commissioner of the RCMP and Treasury Board about the mental health needs as well as the extreme staffing shortages at our work sites. The lack of adequate staffing has created dangerous situations for us, for the regular members, and for the public. We can only do so much work with the available resources that we have. The regular members and the public are having to wait longer and longer for service and the risk to our members of making a mistake is increasing. We are all highly trained professionals who excel at providing top notch service in life and death situations. We cannot be expected to consistently perform at our high standard when we simply do not have enough staff to manage the existing workloads in our centres.

We know that you may be feeling helpless and hopeless. We are all fearful that errors are going to be made due to these dangerous work conditions. These shortages are creating unnecessary trauma on all of us. We need to unite and continue to look out for each other.

As a supervisor, if you or anyone on your team experiences any sort of trauma or critical incident due to a staffing shortage at your work site, please ensure you submit a Hazardous Occurrence Investigation Report (LAB1070) to your manager indicating the details of the shortage. If there is a hazard created by a staffing shortage that impacts public and / or officer safety, a LAB1070 should be completed as well. These can be filled out for each occurrence and can be requested by any employee.

The LAB1070 process is the only official way of documenting the health and safety hazards being created by these critical staffing shortages. If anyone tells you that the LAB1070 is not for this purpose or that you can only put in one “blanket” LAB1070 instead of a new LAB1070 for each occurrence, they are wrong. There is no other way to report this “clear and present danger” to our members, police officers, and the public. Contact your local Steward or Regional Chairperson immediately if you encounter any issues when submitting a LAB1070. Also, feel free to let us know of any hazardous occurrences by e-mail to secretary@cupe104.ca .

It is very powerful for us when we are able to bring up these specific examples when we are meeting with RCMP Management, the Commissioner, Treasury Board, and any other Employer representatives. We will continue to advocate tirelessly for our mental health and proper staffing at our worksites at every opportunity.

2021-11-15

Electronic ballots were sent out today to the email address we had on file from your membership form. This email will come from Simply Voting; remember to check your junk / spam folders. Voting will start on 2021-11-15 and remain open until 2021-11-22. Results will be communicated on or before 2021-11-29.

If you do not receive a ballot by 2021-11-16 and you have checked your junk / spam folders, please contact the elections committee at elections@cupe104.ca . Missing ballots must be reported before 2021-11-18 to ensure a new ballot can be issued in time.

In Solidarity,

CUPE Local 104 Elections Committee
https://104.cupe.ca/

Executive e-mail addresses: https://104.cupe.ca/contacts/
Membership Form: https://104.cupe.ca/membership/

2021-10-23

We continued our “at the table” bargaining sessions with the employer earlier this month. It went well and it was a productive week. We were able to continue negotiations on several articles and signed off a few more as well. We feel that we have a good momentum going with the employer and we have several more “at the table” sessions already locked in over the next few months including several days in November.

As we’ve said before, we must bargain in good faith and respect the confidentiality of the bargaining process. This allows us to have fair and open negotiations with the employer. Please remember that once we have reached a tentative agreement, it is you – the membership – who ultimately decide whether to accept the agreement.

We are striving toward a collective agreement that will apply to both categories and both groups of employees to eliminate the disparity caused by the employer. We must make sure that we are recognized for our critical and specialized roles as Public Safety Communicators.

It is especially important that all of us show solidarity with each other throughout the bargaining process. The stronger we are as a Local, the stronger our position is at the bargaining table.

Please continue to reach out directly to your Stewards or Regional Chairpersons if you have questions or concerns.

On October 6, the employer published their COVID-19 vaccine policy.

Their policy requires that all employees must complete an attestation by October 29 or they will be placed on administrative leave without pay as early as November 15 until they meet the employer’s vaccination requirement. Those with valid human rights exemptions (for example medical and religious) may be accommodated through means such as telework, rapid testing and increased health and safety requirements.

The employer will require an attestation (written statement from the employee) of vaccination from every employee and they may request proof of vaccination. The employer can request proof of vaccination at any time following the attestation and has indicated there will be severe consequences for any misrepresentations.

We have analyzed the employer’s position and engaged CUPE National’s legal and research specialists and we have confirmed that this policy falls within their legal rights when it comes to ensuring the safety of the workplace.

If you are unvaccinated and believe you have a reason to seek an exemption, you are encouraged to request an exemption from the employer. If you have questions about their policy and how it may impact you, you are encouraged to talk to your manager.

If you are placed on leave without pay as a result of this policy, or if your request for an exemption is denied, you are encouraged to contact your Steward or Regional Chairperson and we’ll look at it on a case-by-case basis to determine if the policy has been followed.

The policy can be found at:

(https://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/pol/doc-eng.aspx?id=32694)

2021-09-05

We are still waiting for disclosure of certain documents from the employer. They continue to claim that they cannot release them due to cabinet confidence. The employer has advised that these documents are still with the Privy Council Office (PCO), and we are awaiting a decision on when they will be released to us.

While we wait for the PCO to make a decision, our lawyers have requested a case management conference between us, the employer, and the Federal Public Sector Labour Relations and Employment Board (FPSLREB). A case management conference is different from a full hearing. A case management conference is where both sides can engage in discussions in front of a member of the FPSLREB. We made this joint request with the employer earlier this summer and are waiting for a date from the FPSLREB.

We are hopeful that the case management conference may lead to a satisfactory resolution faster than waiting for the full FPSLREB board hearing. There is nothing stopping the employer from righting this wrong at any time by offering to give us back our 2.3% Market Adjustment.

2021-08-26

The Government of the day announced that COVID-19 vaccinations would be mandatory for all public servants. The Prime Minister also said that only those who have a valid medical reason will be exempt. Just days later, he called an election. We know this caused anxiety for a number of our members as he mentioned that non compliance could result in disciplinary action. CUPE 104 has been very clear with the employer that we will not support any disciplinary action or termination related to protected grounds (Canadian Human Rights Act).

CUPE 104 and other federal public service agents met with the employer, Treasury Board, last week and earlier this week to discuss the issue of mandatory vaccines. Treasury Board committed to ongoing consultation with the bargaining agents in the development of the vaccine requirement policy/framework. They also confirmed that no new policy will be implemented until a new Government is formed, after the federal elections.

Nothing should be different in your workplaces at this time and until such time as new guidance comes from the Treasury Board, there should be no changes. Nobody should be asking you for your vaccination status and you are not required to divulge this to your supervisors, managers, or Health Services. Nobody should be making new rules or invoking new policies locally while we await the final guidance and if they do, we encourage you to report this to your Local Steward or Regional Chairperson.

2021-08-26

We continue to be fully engaged in our efforts to bargain with the employer. We had an ‘at the table’ session with the employer a couple of weeks ago and it went well.

As for the recent election call, we do not have any specific details from the employer to share; however, at this point, Bargaining has certainly not stopped.

The employer likely would not be able to sign a contract during the campaign period but that was not going to happen within the next month anyway. In the meantime, we are continuing all our bargaining work.

We did not have an ‘at the table’ meeting scheduled with the employer in September due to previous scheduling conflicts so there’s no effect there.

Certainly, a new party gaining power could affect things moving forward but it’s unlikely to affect the work that has been done up to now. We do a ton of work in between ‘at the table’ sessions. As articles are tabled back and forth, we are still working on responses / rationale / counter proposals / research / etc.

It’s hard to update on bargaining because the only thing we can really say at this point is that bargaining is going well, it’s a slow process and we need to get it right. Salaries are a crucial component of our negotiations and there are many other important items in our first contract as well – all our benefits and terms and conditions of employment.

Please continue to reach out directly to your local Steward or Regional Chairperson at any time. We would much rather interact with you personally than rely solely on publicly posted updates.

2021-06-12

Bargaining with the employer is continuing to go well. Last month, we achieved a major milestone when we exchanged initial proposals. Since then, our team continues to meet regularly. We are in regular contact with the employer, and we have virtual “at the table” sessions scheduled throughout the summer.

We are fully prepared for these more formal sessions and although we wish things were moving faster, it is of paramount importance that we get this first collective agreement right for all of us. It is especially important that we show solidarity with each other throughout the bargaining process. The stronger we are as members of our Local, the stronger our position is at the bargaining table.

We must strive toward a collective agreement that will blend both categories of employee and both groups to eliminate the disparity caused by the employer. We must also ensure that we are recognized for our critical and specialized roles as Public Safety Communicators.

We will continue to bargain in good faith and respect the confidentiality of the bargaining process. It is in all our best interests to do this so that we can have fair and open negotiations with the employer. Rest assured that when we have reached a tentative agreement, it is you – the membership – who will decide whether to accept the agreement.

Based on some feedback and questions we have we received, we want to share some background information on our Union, our bargaining team, and how some of these things work.

CUPE Locals are autonomous. This means that we, as a Local, decide what our priorities are based on what the membership wants. We have access to all kinds of resources from CUPE National such as researchers, negotiators, staff representatives, and lawyers. However, we decide the direction and mandate of our Local and we have our own bargaining team that negotiates directly with the employer.

Our bargaining team includes our lead negotiator from CUPE National, our President, and our six Regional Chairpersons. Our President and our Regional Chairpersons are all members of our Local: CMs and PSEs, IMs and TOs. This is our contract too. Our lead negotiator is also our CUPE staff representative who we have been working with closely for several years. He is an extremely experienced negotiator with previous law enforcement background. Since our inception, we have been working with our negotiator on our proposals. Even when we are working on other important tasks and representing our members, the research, learning, work, and re-work on bargaining has been continuous.

We know this is taking a long time. We are frustrated too. It is an extraordinarily complex process and scheduling with the employer does not always go as quickly as we would like. That said, we are on the right track and things are picking up. We really appreciate your continued support – the kind messages and words of encouragement go a long way to keeping us excited and energized about this historic process.

Please continue to reach out to your Stewards or Regional Chairpersons directly if you have questions or concerns.

For CM’s: We have been advised that all outstanding pay stubs will be delivered to Epost by June 2nd, 2021. Information is being posted on the RCMP InfoWeb.