(Ottawa) The collective agreements of several thousand federal civil servants have been ratified by Ottawa, announced the Treasury Board and the Canada Revenue Agency on Friday.
Some 177,000 employees are concerned by these agreements which will be signed in the coming days.
On the side of the Treasury Board, the agreements are renewed with the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), the Canadian Association of Professional Employees (CAPE), Local 104 of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) and the Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers (PAFSE).
These unions represent 138,000 public servants who work in administration, translation, technical services and economics, as well as 911 operators.
Public servants will get salary increases and other improvements within the agreed timeframe, the Treasury Board said in a statement. The PSAC adds that the department has 180 days from the signing to apply the new rates of pay and pay the retroactive pay.
“I am very pleased that we were able to renew the collective agreements of 66% of all public servants represented,” said Treasury Board President Mona Fortier in a press release.
In fact, out of 28 collective agreements, 10 have now been approved and 16 other units are in the process of negotiation. There are also two units for which agreements have not yet been reached since the 2018 round of negotiations.
At the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), the agreement is renewed for the 39,000 employees of the Public Service Alliance of Canada – Union of Taxation Employees (PSAC-UTE).
It will be signed on Tuesday and covers the period from 2021 to 2025. Here too, the provisions and remuneration will be applied retroactively.
These federal public service and tax workers went on strike in April, making it one of the largest walkouts in the country.
Salary and telecommuting were the main points in dispute. The PSAC believed, when its members ratified the agreements in May and June, that it had made important gains on both counts.
It referred to “cumulative increases totaling 12.6% over four years”, running for the years 2021 to 2024.
On telework – a key issue in both the federal and provincial public service and in many private companies – the PSAC felt that it had obtained “the best protection in the country”.