The federal government is filing two complaints against the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) over claims the union is not negotiating “in good faith” for a new collective agreement.
Both the Canada Revenue Agency and the Treasury Board Secretariat announced separate but related complaints to the Federal Public Sector Labour Relations and Employment Board on Friday.
The Government of Canada has been at the bargaining table with PSAC for employees within the Program and Administrative Services (PA), Technical Services (TC), Education and Library Science (EB), and Operational Services (SV) groups.
The government alleges that PSAC has “flooded the bargaining tables with costly proposals,” with at least 500 proposals over its five bargaining units, while saying that PSAC has “refused to prioritize their requests, refused to move on their initial proposals, and did not respond to the employer’s comprehensive offers.”
Meanwhile, the CRA specified in a statement Friday that it has filed an Unfair Labour Practice complaint against the bargaining unit for its employees, saying PSAC has “(failed) to observe its duty to bargain in good faith and duty to make every reasonable effort to enter into a collective agreement.”
PSAC left the bargaining table on Sept. 1, 2022, during the sixth negotiation session and declared an impasse. The parties had been negotiating since last summer.
The union, which is one of Canada’s largest and represents federal government departments and agencies and Crown corporations among other entities, announced a strike vote among its 35,000 CRA workers on Tuesday. The vote, which comes ahead of tax filing season, is set to take place Jan. 31-April 7 according to the union. It says workers have been without a contract for more than a year, with talks held previously over wages and remote work.
In an interview with Radio-Canada on Tuesday, a senior official for the union’s Quebec members said the strike vote would apply to the Treasury Board employees as well, not just members working for the Canada Revenue Agency, bringing the total members at play to 165,000.
PSAC has since said that the official “misspoke” in the interview and that it is “moving toward potential job action for federal public service workers at Treasury Board,” but no strike vote has officially been announced for the Treasury Board workers.
When the impasse was declared over talks with CRA, PSAC still had at least 200 outstanding bargaining demands, “many of which involve significant costs to the CRA and taxpayers,” CRA alleges.
PSAC withdrew from the process on the first day of mediation, on Dec. 20, 2022.
A Public Interest Commission (PIC) was established to help mediate the negotiations between the government, CRA and PSAC, though the government said that PSAC decided to hold strike votes before seeing the PIC’s recommendations.
“The PSAC’s actions do not respect their obligation to bargain in good faith,” the government said.
In a statement, PSAC said that the federal government’s move to file a complaint is “just another stalling tactic to deny workers a fair contract.”
The union alleges the government has refused to “negotiate remote work and better work-life balance at the table.”
“It’s becoming clearer every day: the only way we’ll reach an agreement with this government that supports workers is with a strong strike mandate from our members,” Chris Aylward, PSAC national president, said in the statement.
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