National Blackmark Budget Protest: Lethbridge

Saturday, June 2, 2012
1-3pm
Galt Gardens


"By trampling our democratic rights, gutting our environmental protections, and hollowing out our economy, the Harper Conservatives' budget bill would put a blackmark on Canada.

Let’s work together to clean up our democracy. Let’s create an economy that’s built to last for all generations. Let’s say “enough” and stand together against the Blackmark Budget Bill."http://www.leadnow.ca/blackmark

We will meet at the Amphitheater at Galt Gardens at 1pm. Feel free to bring signs and acoustic instruments. We will make our way to Jim Hillyer's campaign office around 1:30pm. If mobility is an issue, please consider meeting us at Hillyer's office at 1:30. From there, coffee will be served and any person or group that wants to address those attending may do so.If anyone is interested in getting involved with this in an organizational capacity, please let the organizers know by emailing lethbridgestopc38@gmail.com.

This is not affiliated with any political party. This is being held on a Saturday afternoon so that as many people as possible will be able to attend. 


Facebook event here - https://www.facebook.com/events/158419397621340/

Upcoming Educational Sessions in Lethbridge

We have a few educational sessions coming up in June. These are open to all members of Local 30048. If you have any questions, please contact a member of your local executive.

Strike Preparation
Saturday, June 16, 2012
8:30am-12 noon or 1pm-4:30pm

This is strongly recommended for AAFC Table 2/TC members (EG group). Others in AAFC and CFIA are welcome to attend.
This is a half day course. Please sign up for either session.
Registration Deadline: June 7, 2012

Contact a member of your local executive to sign up.


Work Force Adjustment
Friday, June 22, 2012
6pm-9pm

Please register as soon as possible at lethbridge_and_district_area_council@hotmail.com providing your name, PSAC ID #, contact information.
The Lethbridge & District Area Council strongly encourages membership participation in this educational opportunity.
Information will be provided regarding current and upcoming job cuts and Workforce Adjustment. If you have any information regarding impending or current cuts in your workplace, please bring that information with you to the Workshop.




Talking Union Basics course
Saturday, June 23, 2012
9am-5pm

Please register as soon as possible at lethbridge_and_district_area_council@hotmail.com providing your name, PSAC ID #, contact information and which of the three sessions you wish to attend.
The Lethbridge & District Area Council strongly encourages membership participation in this educational opportunity.


Facing Management
Sunday, June 24, 2012
9am-12noon

Please register as soon as possible at lethbridge_and_district_area_council@hotmail.com providing your name, PSAC ID #, contact information and which of the three sessions you wish to attend.

The Lethbridge & District Area Council strongly encourages membership participation in this educational opportunity.
Local union representatives meet with management representatives as equals for various reasons – grievance hearing, union management consultations and sometimes for collective agreement negotiations. This session will develop your knowledge, skills and confidence to effectively
consult with or confront management to enhance the union’s presence at the workplace.


Steward Assembly
Sunday, June 24, 2012
1pm-4:30pm

Please register as soon as possible at lethbridge_and_district_area_council@hotmail.com providing your name, PSAC ID #, contact information and which of the three sessions you wish to attend.
The Lethbridge & District Area Council strongly encourages membership participation in this educational opportunity.
This course will provide an opportunity to share experiences, network and build plans, ensure members understand the political context which has motivated cuts to the Federal Public Service (FPS), actively engage members in support of the PSAC Fight-Back Campaign and intervene effectively in the Work Force Adjustment (WFA) process in their workplace.


Please see the calendar to stay up-to-date on upcoming events.
http://www.local30048.ca/calendar.html

Local 30048 to speak with MP Jim Hillyer

A group of PSAC Local 30048 members will be speaking with our MP, Jim Hillyer, about the budget cuts. If you'd like to join, please contact Dave Pearson <pearddATtelusplanet.net>  ASAP. Your name needs to be included on a list for Jim.

Wednesday May 23 2012 at 12 noon. - note change of date.

Speaking out on the Conservative budget

How will this budget bill hurt your family or community?


Take 5 minutes and fill out this survey. As a public servant, this budget puts your job at risk, affects your daily work, and modifies your pension and retirement. As a Canadian, this budget has far reaching implications for environmental legislation and democracy itself.

http://budget2012.ndp.ca/

Bargaining climate difficult in face of cuts - Bargaining | PSAC

May 10, 2012

Bargaining continues to be difficult for the Technical Services (TC), Border Services (FB), Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) and Parks Canada units of the federal government. The climate has worsened considerably since the federal budget, which slashes the size of the public service. Parks and CFIA in particular have been heavily targeted for job reductions.

At the TC, FB and CFIA tables, the union is ready to bargain but the employer is making little effort to achieve the compromises required to close new deals. In each case PSAC has decided to refer bargaining to conciliation, asking the Public Service Labour Relations Board (PSLRB) to establish Public Interest Commissions.

Rather than the more familiar process of conciliation, the Public Service Labour Relations Act requires that a Public Interest Commission (PIC) be appointed. PSAC has requested that the PSLRB establish a three person (a chair and two side-persons) PIC for TC, FB and CFIA. As part of its deliberations, the PIC must take into account several factors including the state of the Canadian economy and the Canadian government's fiscal circumstances. The PIC issues recommendations for resolving the differences between the parties. PSAC's website (psac.com) will be updated with meeting dates once the PICs are established.

At Parks, both the union and the employer have agreed to hold bargaining in abeyance until at least the fall while the parties sort through the fallout of about 50 per cent of the membership hit with Workforce Adjustment notices.

Bargaining climate difficult in face of cuts - Bargaining | PSAC

PSAC triennial convention opens with acrimony, ends in solidarity - Ottawa Citizen

By KATHRYN MAY, The Ottawa Citizen May 4, 2012

Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/PSAC+triennial+convention+opens+with+acrimony+ends+solidarity/6569411/story.html#ixzz1uCW3FsXC

OTTAWA — Canada’s largest federal union, rent by internal strife, put aside its differences this week, elected a new grassroots president, increased dues to help fill a war chest and planned strategies to fight the government’s spending cuts and defeat the Conservatives at the polls.
The spending cuts were at the top of the week-long agenda at the Public Service Alliance of Canada’s triennial convention, but nothing focused the more than 800 delegates and observers than the thousands of job notices sent to employees on the day the gathering began. More than 12,000 PSAC members have received notices over the past month that their jobs could disappear.
“It was a concerned delegation that’s very worried about the next three years and they took it very seriously. Nothing focuses the mind like what’s going on with all the cuts. We came out of this really solidly united,” said John MacLennan, president of PSAC’s Union of Defence Employees.
As the largest and most militant federal union, delegates marched on Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office on May Day where they yelled, chanted and did all the protest histrionics one expects from a union. But back at the convention hall, the placards were dropped and they got down to business of getting the union’s finances in order and ensuring workers who lose their jobs are treated fairly and as many as possible find new jobs.
But the biggest issue facing the union was how to mobilize its members and Canadians against what it sees as a hostile government that is taking away union jobs, the right to strike and reshaping the role of the public service.
Delegates sent the union’s finance committee back to the drawing board several times to find enough money for the biggest war chest — $6.7 million — in the union’s history. The money is needed to launch a campaign over the next three years to harness public opinion in the union’s fight to stop the erosion of public services and save what outgoing PSAC President John Gordon called “Our Canada, not Stephen Harper’s Canada.”
“It’s pretty obvious from this convention that the PSAC has positioned itself to fight the cuts and the kind of fight it’s going to be is in the court of public opinion,” said Larry Rousseau, regional vice-president for the National Capital Region.
“We’re going to organize the unorganized... and we’re going to take political action. We will create alliances with other unions, the labour movement and we’ll look for political allies and the NDP is an obvious choice... to help take on Harper.”
The most controversial decision was a hefty dues increase, which could jack up rates as much as $7.84 a month if job losses in the public service drive the union’s membership below 140,000. PSAC’s dues are already the highest among the 18 federal unions and an increase is always highly unpopular with the rank-and-file membership.
The biggest increase would come from an emergency levy that could hit up to $5, but it only kicks in if PSAC’s 186,000 strong membership falls below 170,000 because of job cuts over the next three years,

Robyn Benson, the newly-elected president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, said she knows members hate dues increases but they were “democratically” voted for at the convention and it’s up to the union to show they get value-for-money in its fight-back campaigns.
“I think we have set a clear direction for us in term of political action and about reaching out to members and communities to help build that plan,” she said.
The union backed the $5 levy as an insurance policy to shore up revenues. The union built its budget over the next three years on dues revenues from 170,000 members at an average salary of $51,340, and it will monitor the impact of the cuts every six months and progressively implement a levy if membership shrinks below that threshold.
Union leaders aren’t worried about membership slipping below 170,000 in this round of $5.2 billion spending cuts, but they are worried about more and deeper cuts in the government’s 2013 and 2014 budgets. The levy only hits $5 if membership sinks below 140,000.
The union took further steps to deal with the reality of a smaller, aging membership of largely public servants and gave independence to the fastest growing members — the more than 30,000 mostly university workers who have joined the union in the past six years.
PSAC has made big inroads in organizing university workers such as researchers and teaching assistants, especially in Quebec where more than 20,000 have joined the union. It has more than 6,000 workers at McGill University and recently signed up 1,700 more.
They are young and smart, and many are strong supporters of the student protests in Quebec and the turbulent tuition hike battle being waged across that province. Those members consider the issues facing students and workers to be the same, and are logical allies for PSAC.
“For us, it’s not just about improving pensions and saving jobs. I’m worried about whether I will ever have a pension or a permanent job,” said Carol Anne Gauthier a research assistant at Laval University.
The delegates approved funding for a youth regional council and rejected proposals to force these workers to join one of the component unions under the PSAC umbrella that represents mostly federal workers. These thousands of young members belong to direct charter locals, the vehicle PSAC created in 1994, to recruit outside the public service. They operate on service agreements with the PSAC to handle issues like grievances and collective bargaining.
Delegates rejected a proposal to roll these small locals into one of the 17 unions or for the locals to form their own component union under the PSAC umbrella.
“Whether we join one or create a component, it should be our choice,” said Gauthier.
The union plans to keep up its organizing drive at universities and resolved to organize any workers who take public service jobs that are privatized or contracted out.
The cuts have raised a slew of thorny issues in the workplace that the union promised to examine. It approved a study on the abuse of term employees as the government sheds full-time workers and wants a crackdown on student programs that departments are ‘exploiting’ as a short-cuts to hiring students without competing the jobs. Many expressed a growing concern about “precarious” jobs and the growing number of departments, especially Parks Canada, that are using volunteers to do jobs once done by public servants.

Delegates approved campaigns to protect public servants’ pensions and explain to Canadians that they aren’t as costly and unfair as the Canadian Federation of Independent Business and C.D. Howe Institute portrays them. They put money into a social justice fund, supported environmental advocacy and gave money to the David Suzuki Foundation and Equiterre. It approved campaigns to stop bullying in the workplace, and ensure First Nations have access to safe drinking water.
Many expected the convention would erupt in acrimony or recriminations over two flashpoints — severance pay and a now derailed plan to boost the pension plans of PSAC executives.
It was PSAC’s first convention since it negotiated a deal to surrender voluntary severance pay owed to public servants when they retired or quit. The deal deeply divided the union and was narrowly approved in a 52-per-cent ratification vote. Members assailed the union leadership for making an unprecedented concession as part of a 5.3 per cent wage deal. Severance is still an issue at the bargaining table for several PSAC groups and other unions, but the government made clear in its budget that it was being “eliminated.”
The fireworks never materialized on the convention floor, but many say the tension helped determine the outcome of the election with Benson, considered a grassroots leader sensitive to the demands of members, who was selected over her closest rival Patty Ducharme, national executive vice-president.
In his final speech, Gordon acknowledged some of board of directors decisions weren’t popular and created “a lot of upset” among the rank-and-file.
“We don’t always need to agree, but we do need to work together, even if we disagree with one another.”
“We can’t be divided. We can’t allow the Conservatives — or anyone — to divide us. Anger can be power, so long as we direct it and use it effectively. We have to put our differences aside, and realize our collective power to create a positive change.”

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/News/Canada/6569411/story.html

Staff reductions will make food system unsafe: union - Western Producer

Posted May. 4th, 2012 by Barry Wilson

The impact of $56 million in federal budget cuts on the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and food safety continues to fuel a war of conflicting claims in Ottawa.


Last week, Public Service Alliance of Canada union president Bob Kingston said announced cuts will make the Canadian food system less safe, creating a system of “cross your fingers” and hope for the best.


Agriculture minister Gerry Ritz fired back that the issue is saving money by finding efficiencies in CFIA. 


“We would never put food safety at risk.”


And while it would not make a senior official available to respond to union charges, CFIA issued a statement insisting it is “strengthening its approach” to food inspection. 


“The bottom line is clear — protecting the safety of the Canadian food supply remains the agency’s top priority.”


At an April 24 news conference, Kingston offered a far different version of the impact of changes at CFIA.


Citing comments made by operations vice-president Stephen Baker at private meetings with employees to explain the changes, he said the future includes:


• the end of pre-clearing imported meat before it gets to the border

• a major revamp of inspecting product labels

• a new inspection system that “will radically alter the way in which we actually do verification and compliance and enforcement activities in the inspection space”


In answer to a question about the impact of a 10 percent CFIA budget cut and claims that front-line inspectors will not be affected, the union says Baker replied: “I don’t know how you can take 10 percent of your budget and not deal with the front line.”


Kingston said the clear message from agency executives is that while some front-line inspectors will remain, they will not be experts in the commodity they are inspecting but rather generalists whose main job will be to review company records of what they have done and decide whether they followed the rules.


“With fewer resources and inspection staff, CFIA is being forced to water down food safety inspection and introduce more industry self-regulation,” he told the Parliament Hill news conference.


In its statement, CFIA said the end of pre-clearance for imported meat is part of an “inspector modernization” plan. 


“The CFIA is planning to supplement traditional inspection methods that focus on the processing environment and the end product with more sophisticated science and risk-based approaches in order to verify that industry’s controls are effective and that industry is producing safe food on an ongoing basis,” it said.


During a news conference, Ritz said changes at the agency are meant to move it from the world of paper records to an electronic information technology age.


Meanwhile, CFIA announced on its website last week that within two years it will be closing three prairie quarantine stations that it says are no longer used — at Monchy, Sask., Coutts, Alta., and Nisku, Alta.


It said services will not be affected and no inspector positions will be eliminated.

http://www.producer.com/2012/05/staff-reductions-will-make-food-system-unsafe-union%E2%80%A9/