The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada
The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada
Log in

Employee Worklife Balance Committee

Report for the 2019 AFS AGM

This will be the first report for the Employee Worklife Balance Committee. This committee was formed last year after the formation of a Special Union-Management Consultation between PIPSC/AFS and the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) to discuss issues regarding access to compressed work week schedules and flexible hours of work (paragraphs 8.02 (e) and (f) and paragraphs 8.03 (f) and (g) of the collective agreement).

PIPSC-AFS representatives

• Doug Mason, President

• Chris Roach, Vice-President/Atlantic Representative

• Philip Choo, BC/Yukon Region AFS Representative

• Shawn Gillis, Ontario Region AFS Representative

• Allaudin Alibhai, NCR-IT Region AFS Representative

CRA was represented by Labour Relations and management from across the country.

This working group met for five meetings from Dec. 2017 to Dec. 2018. We discussed a variety of issues including:

• Flexible work hours,

• Flexible Hours Guidelines for the Quebec Region,

• Compressed Hours,

• Inconsistent application across the country, regions, offices, and teams for maximum number of hours worked in a day, scheduling of additional days off,

• Inconsistent interpretation of the Collective Agreement paragraph 8.02 (f) Compressed work week.
Over the course of our meetings with the working group, we heard a variety reasons for why unwritten policies exist, unfortunately these reasons were more conjecture than fact.

The employer has to consider each employee's request on a case by case basis and if there has to be a denial it should not be arbitrary. The reasoning behind the decision should be clearly communicated to the employee based in fact, not some long held belief.

Since we did not meet our goal, we brought these issues to the bargaining table, as this is a priority for our members. Our members should continue to file grievances, whenever their compressed schedules are denied because of “local policies” or guidelines.

Better Together,

Phil Choo, Chair
Phone: 250-415-7246
Email: philchoo@pipsc.ca