Report of the VSSA Review Committee

National Board of Directors Meeting

April 2010

 

 

Chair:                                      Steve Pellerin-Fowlie

 

Committee Members:             Brea Lewis

                                               Brett Evans

                                               Dan Sullivan

                                               Dave VanHelvert

 

 

Resource Person:                   Michelle Tranchemontagne

 

 

 

We refer you to report of the 3RD National Vice President for a detailed summary of the work of the Committee since its inception at the last NBoD. We have had a series of conference calls and meetings at the National Office. Pursuant to our mandate, we have begun to work on establishing a data base to serve as a resource tool for activists in the field. We set up a VSSA section on the CIU website to which we are adding data to serve as a resource and an email address (vssa@ciu-sdi.ca) in order to easily access us for enquiries and to provide templates and written VSSA agreements. We will be making a presentation during this report on the “Process Map” (see Tab 10, Appendix C) that has been posted on the website. This is intended to provide a full set of instructions to members seeking to negotiate or renegotiate a VSSA, including templates and written agreements. We are currently working on a “preferred” or “best” practices document for written agreements and templates. We will be making a presentation on schedules as well during this report. On March 30/10, we filed a policy grievance due to management’s refusal to apply seniority on VSSA’s that predated the signing of the Border Services Collective Agreement. This week, we have sent out proposed wording for individual grievances to support the policy grievance, as recommended by Sisters Krista Devine and Nathalie St. Louis of the Grievance and Adjudications Section of the PSAC. We recommend that members request vacation leave, invoke their seniority rights and grieve when they are denied.

As a future project, the Committee intends to design a training program in order to establish more expertise in the field. To that end, we invited Sister Louise Neveu from the Montreal District Branch to make a presentation to the Committee. She has developed an excel spreadsheet that costs a VSSA in any mode or location. This will assist us in challenging questionable numbers presented by management during “VSSA Discussions” (Appendix B, Section 2). We also invited Sister Terri-Lee Rayvals-Mele from the Education Section of the PSAC.  The Committee has decided that this would be a time-consuming project and that we would prefer to focus on creating the database on the website for the moment. 

The National President spoke to the Committee on the events in Lansdowne. It is yet another example of how VSSA’s can lead to mobilization locally, although we appreciate that the VSSA issue is only one of many issues at that port. We are watching the events with great interest. We hope that all of you will have the opportunity to march with the members from the Eastern Ontario District Branch. The Committee has had a number of discussions regarding a coordinated response on a larger scale, but we have not reached a consensus to date. We feel that consultation at the regional or national level with the view to establishing stable operational requirements could facilitate more successful negotiations. In the case of CIA and EIA, it seems to be producing results. The RDG for the Prairies and I signed off on a set of parameters prior to returning to negotiations and we seem to be getting closer to a settlement at both ports. In the initial round of negotiations, the operational requirements seemed to be a constantly “moving target”.  There seems to be a common problem at the “VSSA Discussions” stage (Appendix B, Section 2.1). 

 

This report is respectfully submitted,

 

Steve Pellerin-Fowlie, Chair