Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Friday the government is making “serious offers” in a bid to bring a strike of its largest public sector union to an end.
More than 100,000 members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada walked off the job 10 days ago and while talks have continued on and off since then, there is still no imminent sign of a deal.
Earlier this week PSAC national president Chris Aylward said he wanted Trudeau to get directly involved in the negotiations, which he said have hit an impasse because the government hadn’t budged from its latest wage increase offer of nine per cent over three years.
Trudeau, who was in New York City this week for a trade trip, said he is involved.
“I have been directly and intimately involved in the negotiations, in hearing about what discussions are going on,” he said, responding to a question from a reporter at a news conference.
He said he is confident the strike can be concluded with a negotiated deal. The government could end the strike with back-to-work legislation, but Liberal ministers have refused to even entertain a question about using such a tool.
“I have deep faith in collective bargaining as a process,” Trudeau said. “We know that our negotiators are putting forward serious offers.”
In a tweet Friday morning, Treasury Board President Mona Fortier said both sides were talking at the table.
“The government is committed to negotiating a fair, competitive and reasonable agreement,” she said.
PSAC’s main bargaining unit has been without a contract for two years. The government’s current wage offer would be backdated to 2021, with a 1.5 per cent increase that year, followed by 4.5 per cent raise in 2022 and another of three per cent in 2023.
The union initially asked for 13.5 per cent over the same time frame and while it says it has adjusted that ask, it has not said what the new request is.
In a tweet Friday morning, PSAC said it wants a raise that keeps up with inflation and insists the public sector hasn’t received a raise in line with inflation in more than 15 years.
“Thanks to inflation rising by 11% since 2021, federal public service workers’ wages are worth the same as they were in 2007,” the Twitter statement said.
In downtown Ottawa, the picket lines were a little more sparse on Friday than in recent days, when union members flooded the Parliamentary Precinct in a bid to ramp up the direct impact of the strike.
But a handful of workers in PSAC strike pinneys remained outside the doors of many federal office buildings, limiting entry to one person every five minutes.
The contracts being negotiated at the bargaining table would affect some 155,000 federal workers in total.
Aside from pay, other issues described by the government as sticking points earlier this week include the flexibility to work remotely, the reduction of the government’s use of outside contractors and the implementation of seniority rules in the event of layoffs.
As the strike continues, Canadians are facing a wide range of federal service disruptions, including an inability to process immigration and passport applications.
Those on strike include 35,000 Canada Revenue Agency workers, and some tax services are unavailable as the federal filing deadline looms on Monday.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 28, 2023
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
