NHU urges former SDA-II’s to take action as Service Canada outrageously reneges on reclassification agreement

If you owed the government money, signed a binding agreement to pay up and then unilaterally changed your mind and refused to honour your signature, you could reasonably count on getting a not-so-friendly knock on the door from the authorities. Right?

But when Service Canada senior management does the same thing, they walk away laughing. True!

That just happened to some of Service Canada’s 800 Service Delivery Agent II’s who had been waiting since 1996 for a grievance settlement that would see them properly classified and paid.

When the NHU launched a work description grievance campaign, 13 long years ago, employees worked in Processing, Walk-in and Phone units of Social Development Canada’s Income Security Programs. After years of delays – most caused by deliberate stalling and incompetence on the part of management – a final third-level grievance settlement was signed-off on August 30, 2005.

The employer’s signature on the binding document was that of Phil Jensen, until recently Service Canada’s Assistant Deputy Minister of the People and Culture Branch. Jensen, by the way, is now conveniently retired and flourishing, we trust, on his well-earned executive pension.

Under the terms of the grievance settlement, all CR-05 positions within the three modes of service of ISP now housed in Service Canada were to be reclassified based on the mutually “AGREED TO JOB DESCRIPTION”.

The department did eventually agree to honour the supposedly non-classified and non implemented agreement for those employees in the processing units. However, we said at the time that the union and its members considered this only a down payment on the total monies owed.

The NHU has been trying for over a year now to reach an agreement on payment for the other two groups. Indeed, we were led to believe we had support within Service Canada Human Resources for our endeavours. However, senior management has once again made a unilateral decision as it relates to the ISP operation, and has taken the cheap and expedient way out of their dilemma.

Walk-in and Phone unit employees this month accordingly received a memo, dated April 30, that in part stated:

“This letter will serve to confirm that the work description developed in consultation with the National Health and Welfare Union on August 30, 2005, has not and will not be implemented or classified by the Department.”

So much for the integrity of senior management, who arbitrarily ripped-up a legal document signed by one of their own!

Thanks to documents obtained through an Access to Information request, we know that the work description in question was in fact classified, and that an impact statement was prepared and forwarded to Jensen by the chair of the classification committee.

We have repeatedly asked for copies of those documents and have been blatantly been stonewalled in our efforts to unmask the truth and obtain justice for our members.

Senior management has attempted to explain away their outrageous repudiation of their agreed-to grievance settlement in saying that “the report was flawed, as this document does not speak to the future of this position within Service Canada”. Well, guess what folks? The agreement was to cover work done by those ISP employees from 1996- 2005, not speak to the future!

What now can be done in the face of management’s misrepresentation and duplicity? The answer rests with the SDA-II’s themselves.

While these former Income Security Program workers are no longer NHU members, we agreed to continue to pursue the grievance when the SDA-II’s and other ISP workers were transferred in 2007 to their new PSAC Component, the Canada Employment and Immigration Union.

The NHU and CEIU are of one mind in urging these SDA-II’s to complain long and loud to the Minister’s Office, to their local Members of Parliament, to management, and to anyone who will listen, about this managerial treachery.

Meanwhile, over the next few days, our bargaining agent – the Public Service Alliance of Canada – will be taking formal action to correct this long-standing injustice to ISP workers.