Your CFIA-VM Bargaining Team met with the Employer January 10 - 12, 2017. The parties made some progress towards narrowing the issues still in dispute.
The Employer is still maintaining their drastic changes to hours of work, overtime and to the Employment Transition Appendix. Your Bargaining Team is very concerned about these proposed changes and is strongly resisting them.
As you may have heard, several other bargaining units in the core public administration have reached tentative deals with Treasury Board. The general economic increase seems to be set at 1.25% per year for 4 years as 5 major tables have reached tentative deals at this rate. Members should know that while this economic increase appears to be the trend being set, many groups have been able to negotiate further economic restructuring and adjustments that increase pay well beyond 1.25% per year. Your Bargaining Team will assess these settlements and develop strategy to ensure that we get a good deal for our members.
A new negotiator, Nicholas Pernal has been assigned to our group and we are in the process of establishing further bargaining dates in February 2017.