CIU Local 16

To all members

President’s report

Ottawa, March 2009

It is hard to believe that almost six months have passed since my last report. At the local level it has been a relative quiet time. In February of this year we had our first Union/ Management meeting in almost two years. A variety of issues were discussed and will be posted for you to read. We will once again have our own website in Niagara Falls and will be open to all. We will post local and national issues so they may be sooner available to all. We will also post grievances being filed by our members, although no names will be mentioned. This should enable all members to see whether or not their rights are being abused and should file a grievance. Many links of interest will also be added to help you with a variety of needs. At Rainbow we have for some time been working on a new schedule for our officer’s, and it would appear we are going back to the drawing board. The main issue appears to be we will have to work more weekends. I am sure with a change of management at the top a good compromise can be reached.

I am very happy to have been a member of the bargaining committee for the last two years. It took a while but I believe we have a contract that is not perfect, but lays the foundation on which to built and improve for the future. I believe we are now finally getting paid what we should have been paid years ago, but still have some way to go. 2011 is not that far away, and at that time we will once again have to dig in our heels to come away with an even better contract.

For the CR’s, I have the feeling we are getting stonewalled by management and may need to file a reclassification grievance. It is in your contract, but management has said NO for so long they can’t seem to say yes for any reason, even saying yes to some of the hardest working people in our district.

At the meeting of the National Board of Directors in Ottawa during the last week of April, I rose on a point of personal privilege to rise out of respect to the fallen soldiers in Afghanistan. One minute of silence was observed by all board members, and a card of sympathy will be delivered to Kelly Maxwell, one of our officers, on behalf of the board for her loss.

Terry Sangster has now been appointed Chair of the PA table. Terry should therefore be contacted should non-officers have any concerns or questions. As your representative at the executive meetings, I am sure your concerns will be heard.

Students will be a thing of the past starting September 1, 2009. No more students will be working as BSO’s at Canadian border crossings, at least at posts where there is an armed presence. I am not sure at this time what will happen at airports at this time but will keep you informed.

Respectfully submitted,

Fred Milligan

President

CIU Local#16

Niagara Falls

Collective Bargaining

From the report of the National President

During a time when every industry is being hit by a recession, when job loss is rising at an alarming pace, and when Canadians are in the midst of seeing their pension fund and/or other investments dwindle disastrously, all of us were very pleased with the outcome of the most recent round of collective bargaining.

While the yearly percentage wage increases on their own are certainly modest, bargaining units have made considerable advancements in other areas such as classification conversion, pensionable lump-sum payments, or with the elimination of pay zones; the latter of which had been sought for over thirty (30) years by the GL/GS (blue collar) workers represented by CIU.

What was pleasantly surprising to all of us is the fact that these gains were attained without any form of strike or labour dispute. The reality is that the high-end majority of CBSA’s current workforce wouldn’t remember this ever happening to them.

While it didn’t represent all of what we had hoped for, those of us belonging to the FB Bargaining Unit nonetheless saw what can only be described as an appreciable wage adjustment. When the union was successful at obtaining a separate FB Certificate from the Labour Relations Board, most had no appreciation for what this really meant. The announcement of this victory came at the same time the Union was also announcing it had successfully lobbied the government into arming and doubling-up the country’s front-lines; understandably, arming and doubling-up overshadowed the FB Certificate announcement at the time.

To the average member, the fact that the Union had been successful at establishing a separate bargaining unit for those CBSA workers who perform law-enforcement duties didn’t mean much; that is, until the FB tentative agreement was reached. The first FB collective agreement makes it crystal clear what can be achieved when negotiating at a separate table. And the advancements weren’t only noticeable in the area of wages, but also in contractual language improvements which include seniority rights, arming implementation job security rights, and alternate work arrangement provisions. What is now also clear in everyone’s mind is that negotiating at a distinct table is certain to continue generating dividends in future rounds of collective bargaining, and for generations of workers to come.

While I have the privilege of orchestrating the processes which lead to such results, there is no way such accomplishments could even come close to being attained without the hard work of many Union Officers and Union Activists. Many thanks are owed to CIU and PSAC elected Officers and staff as well as to the members of every bargaining team including of course the members of our own FB Team. A special tip of the hat goes out to the FB Negotiator, Brother Morgan Gay, who took on his role with unprecedented dedication and passion and who took the time to familiarize himself with CBSA operations and met with many of you during the process.

What is most important to remember is that it’s to those of you who had begun mobilizing that these gains are owed. Let there be no doubt in anyone’s mind that with the precarious state of Canadian politics and with the Olympics literally around the corner, the last thing the government needed was the likes of us acting up; the engine of our steam-roller was clearly running and that had everything to do with the achieved results.

National Joint Council

As already reported, the implementation of a Pay Direct Card for members of the Public Service Health Care Plan has been further delayed. The Card was the major priority flowing from the 2005 renegotiation of the Public Service Health Care Plan; however, there are still a number of steps to be completed before the Card will be introduced.

Treasury Board (TB) originally committed to an implementation date of 2008; however, during the period when the card was to be introduced, TB was still in the preliminary process of tendering the renewal of the contract with Sun Life for the ongoing administration of the Plan. That process got bogged down in the RFI (Request for Information) and RFP (Request for Proposal) processes administered by Public Works & Government Services Canada.

As a result, the card will not be introduced until the provider who obtained this contract has finalized the Positive Enrolment (registration) process. Essentially, the administrator will have to identify all the plan members (more than 500,000 of them) and their dependents for a total of more than 1.1 million participants. The government’s indication at this time last year was that the card will probably not be introduced until sometime this year.

Given the federal public service health care plan may well be the last major plan not to be automated, during the February 2008 meeting of the PSAC NBOD, we voted to approach the other affected partner organizations and launch a campaign aimed at letting the employer know that this further delay is totally unacceptable, and insist that they immediately do whatever needs to be done to accelerate this process. As part of that campaign, a PSAC petition was circulated calling on the House of Commons to take action. Sadly, at the time of writing this report, the PSAC National President’s Office had only received 76 such petitions totalling about 1,360 signatures. CIU circulated this petition during our October 2008 Triennial Convention, and I can tell you that the high-end majority of these signatures have emerged from our component given these came in through my office which we forwarded to Brother Gordon’s office.

Pension Issues

Bill C-78 (Federal Superannuation Surplus) Litigation

· On November 20, 2007, Ontario Superior Court of Justice Antoine de Lotbinière Panet released his decision in the case of the Federal Superannuation Surplus litigation. Unfortunately, Justice Panet dismissed all of the claims made by the plaintiffs against the federal government for breaches of trust, fiduciary duty and contractual obligations to plan members. The ruling of Justice Panet was that the federal Public Service Superannuation Act (PSSA) is a legislated plan and therefore a trust relationship cannot be established between the federal government as employer and a third party.

· On December 19, 2007, the PSAC served notice to the Attorney General of Canada of its intention to appeal Justice Panet’s decision. Formal appeal documents were filed by PSAC counsel with the Ontario Court of Appeal on December 28, 2007. We invite you to continue visiting the PSAC website for any and all related updates as this case continues to evolve.

Asset Backed Commercial Paper (ABCP)

· In July 2008, the annual report of the Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSPIB) for the fiscal period ending March 31, 2008 was tabled in Parliament and subsequently posted on the PSPIB website. The annual report revealed that PSPIB held investments of approximately $3.37 billion in Asset Backed Commercial Paper (ABCP) with direct exposure to the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the United States. As a consequence, the PSPIB recorded an astounding 920 million dollar write-down against the ABCP holdings. This development received significant media attention inclusive of the expressed public concerns of the PSAC in regards to the lack of transparency and effective oversight on this issue.

· Unfortunately, as a consequence of the further deterioration in financial markets and credit conditions in final quarter of 2008, the ABCP restructuring agreement again became at risk of failure due to renewed concerns raised by foreign banking facilities. Eventually, in late December of 2008, the federal government along with the governments of the provinces of Ontario, Quebec and Alberta were required to provide 3.5 billion dollars in credit guarantees in order to allow the restructuring agreement to proceed.

· The entire ABCP issue has now been established as a priority agenda item of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance with hearings to be scheduled during upcoming sessions of Parliament.

Border Patrol:

Our lobbying efforts continue to be predominately focused on the government’s Border Patrol project; Brother Jean-Pierre Fortin and I had our first meeting with Minister Van Loan (Public Safety Canada) on March 11th of this year and our meeting was almost exclusively dedicated to this initiative though we also raised our arming initiative related concerns with him. We explained to the Minister that our predominating concern the Border Patrol project is the fact that the Agency is going out of its way to exclude us from the internal talks that are currently going on between the CBSA and RCMP.

Though just recently appointed to the Department of Public Safety & Emergency Preparedness with a pair of very big shoes to fill, Minister Van Loan was impressively on top of all of the issues we discussed with him and confirmed he wished for us to play a central role in the roll-out of the Border Patrol project, recognizing that we were, after all, the organization that prompted this initiative.

Also noteworthy is the very good Border Patrol related media run we got during the week of February 9th, as well as the publication of the Border Patrol article I was asked to write for the Frontline Security magazine which they published in their border protection focused winter 08/09 edition. Copies of this issue have been obtained and will be distributed to each member of the Board during our meeting. Frontline Security magazine is regarded as an authority in the field national security, public safety & emergency preparedness; the magazine circulates literally everywhere within the law enforcement community.

Arming Initiative

From the report of the 1st. National VP

As some of you may know, the local community in Cornwall, Ontario, has voiced concerns about our members becoming armed. I was therefore pleased when our National President invited me to join him for a meeting with the Regional Director General in Cornwall, so that we could hear those concerns and so that we might talk with local management about how to address them. The meeting began and ended on a positive note, and I was enthused to see Union and Management walk away with united and sound strategy on how to proceed.

I was also pleased to join our National President during a meeting with CBSA President, Stephen Rigby, during which we consulted on a number of contentious issues, one of which is the training schedule for our members at the shooting ranges and CBSA’s night-time testing of some of our members who are day workers. My hope is that CBSA will find a shooting range in all provinces that could be used during the day by all our members. I also personally think using a range in each province should be more cost-effective for the CBSA.

For those of you who may not be aware, the CBSA has announced that Rick Comerford will assume the position of DG responsible for arming. I do look forward to working with him on the many challenges facing us as arming continues to be implemented across the Agency.

On a more positive and closing note regarding this topic, I shared the new re-certification policies with the Board, and was pleased to note how there appears to be a movement away from rigid pass-fail language to a language that is more help-oriented for our members, and which reflects a more compassionate reality. I’m glad to see that our representation paid off.

Border Security Committee

Now that Branch elections are complete and Board members have been assigned to Committees of the Board, I’m eager to start working with members of the new Board Security Committee, even if most members are the same as before. There is much work to do even with implementation of arming underway. Even thought I believe that we see some positive changes, there is still a lot of work to do about the training conditions aspect in some areas.

Also, and on another note, given the government’s announcement during the last federal election campaign about two pilot projects related to a border patrol, and given that we have yet to see or hear any concrete measures arising from CBSA on this front, the Committee will need to discuss approaching the Agency to find out what is going on.

On this note, I am once again pleased that our National President invited me to join him at a meeting with our new Minister, the Honourable Peter Van Loan, which is scheduled to take place in March, prior to our Board meeting. I trust, all Board members agree and appreciate how important it is that we maintain solid lines of open communication with our Minister and his office. I look forward to discussing the border patrol and the arming initiative, among other topics.

Border Security Committee

I have met with the Employer in January regarding the doubling-up initiative. This initiative is moving along as planned and most of the current hold ups are to do with necessary infrastructure changes. Many remote ports have neither the facility to engage the employment of the extra bodies nor the facilities to house them. I am convinced the employer is committed to change this in a timely fashion. Roll-out of these infrastructure changes is known, and I would be happy to share with anyone who is interested.