As PSAC strike continues, Mona Fortier pens ‘open letter’ on talks – National | 24CA News
Nearly every week right into a large-scale strike by the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) and amid authorities vows to not negotiate in public, is the federal authorities doing precisely that?
In what was known as “An open letter to public servants and Canadians,” Treasury Board president Mona Fortier on Monday outlined her negotiating workforce’s place about what she mentioned have been the remaining sticking factors with PSAC.
Fortier additionally inspired employees to “get a full understanding of all the issues that remain to be resolved” from their PSAC representatives.
“It’s important for Canadians and public servants to understand what the government is doing to end the stress and strain from the labour disruption,” she wrote.
The direct enchantment to public servants on Monday comes after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and different ministers final week insisted the federal government wouldn’t negotiate its place in public and urged talks to proceed.
“We are not negotiating in public right now,” Trudeau advised reporters in Ottawa on Wednesday when requested in regards to the union’s calls for. “The negotiations happen at the negotiating table.”
Fortier’s letter mentioned the federal government has reached agreements with PSAC on greater than 560 calls for from the union. But she mentioned 4 key points stay unresolved: wage will increase, distant work as a negotiated proper, a ban on contracting out, and deciding who will get laid off within the occasion of cuts primarily based on seniority.
On wages, Fortier mentioned along with the 9 per cent elevate over three years provided by the federal government — which is decrease than the 13.5 per cent over three years demanded by PSAC — her negotiators have additionally provided a signing bonus for each member.
The authorities has additionally promised to assessment the telework directive “for a post-pandemic world,” she mentioned, whereas declining to say if it should think about PSAC’s demand that it grow to be a part of the collective settlement.
The demand for seniority-based retentions will even be thought-about, she added.
Finally, whereas Fortier pointed to the newest federal funds’s dedication to cut back using contractors as a part of a bid to chop prices, she wrote a full ban on contracting “would severely compromise the government’s ability to deliver services and work for Canadians.”
Negotiations have been ongoing since greater than 155,000 public service employees walked off the job Wednesday morning. However, each side have accused one another of obstructing negotiations and being too sluggish to answer key developments.
On Monday, some placing employees moved their picket traces to strategic areas extra more likely to have an effect on the federal authorities, together with Canadian Coast Guard ports and RCMP detachments.
“It’s clear the Liberal government is feeling the pressure as we escalate our strike actions across the country,” PSAC’s nationwide president Chris Aylward mentioned in a press release to Global News on Monday.
“But we’ve been clear — the offer the government has on the table simply doesn’t cut it.”
Fortier has harassed that PSAC must compromise on a few of its key calls for to be able to attain a deal and finish the strike, saying the federal government received’t “write a blank cheque.”
On Saturday, Aylward accused Fortier and her negotiating workforce of “incompetence” and known as on Trudeau to intervene within the negotiations.
The union president mentioned the Treasury Board had introduced a proposal on Saturday afternoon, and the union had countered with its personal proposal the identical day.
Fortier’s workplace mentioned it made a second proposal Saturday that the union had not responded to by late Sunday.
Aylward finally acknowledged the federal government’s further supply however mentioned it did nothing to advance the union’s wage calls for.
Meanwhile, the Union of Taxation Employees, a subdivision of PSAC that’s individually negotiating a contract for greater than 35,000 placing Canada Revenue Agency employees, mentioned it hasn’t been on the bargaining desk since Tuesday.
That union’s president mentioned there was “close to zero progress” over the weekend.
In a press release on Friday, the tax company mentioned it was calling for the union to return to mediated negotiations in particular person, however that proposals have been nonetheless being exchanged on different points particular to the CRA.
— With recordsdata from the Canadian Press
© 2023 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
