The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada
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Contracting Out Officer Report

Hello CS Member,

I’m honored to give you this report on Contracting Out for our 2019 CS AGM.

We have sent a very clear message to the departments that our fight against contracting out is not going away. This past year, Debi Daviau and I sat down with Treasury Board, Sandra Hassan to discuss the situation of the number of grievances that are continuing to grow. TBS would rather not hear so many grievances, and so we placed effort around trying to avoid further grievances. This effort involved PIPSC and Treasury Board holding presentations with key stakeholders of many of the departments that have been high contributors to the number of grievances. The presentation was an education on the article with a push towards their awareness of the number of grievances and their obligations of adhering to our collective agreement. Other efforts involved strategies around staffing, discussions around the process of contracting out, funding of such activities, etc. It was agreed that if the CS Group was not seeing a significant decrease in contracting out, the grievances would be taken out of abeyance and heard.

Soon grievance hearings will be booked and we hope to have the support of our members in the workplace in supporting and assisting with our documentation to help present our cases.

To date, the COAT (contracting out action team) has looked at over 750 tenders. I have sent out over 575 emails to departments asking them how the employer met the requirements of Article 30 before placing the tender. As of the end of May 2019, we have filed over 400 policy grievances.

Many departments have reached out and have asked to speak with a member(s) of the COAT, where we have explained our position and stance. As well, we are seeing an increase in competitions for positions which are a direct result of the pressure we are applying and well as the retention and recruitment issue.

The responses that we are receiving from the departments have proven very valuable to our bargaining team.  These responses are being used as “quote of the bargaining session” campaign to support bargaining and TBS has taken notice of what the departments are saying (whether they like it or not)

Total contract values for the 2018 government fiscal year was over $9 billion.

I want to thank Stan Buday, Yvonne Snaddon, Robert Tellier and Dean Corda for their efforts on the COAT this past year. This work is not a one person job and I truly appreciate the work they are doing.

Another part of my portfolio is participation in the talks with DND, ESDC and SSC on the Memorandum of Agreement on Contracting Out Guidelines. The Team that meets with the employer includes myself, Stan Buday, Robert Tellier, and Lucille Shears as well as the Consultation Presidents for DND and SSC and Vice President for ESDC. This has progressed dreadfully slowly and we are not seeing any concrete results. We are currently waiting for our next meeting to be scheduled to discuss.

Overall, the Contracting Out Action Plan is still on a progressive path to make real change that will benefit our members and protect CS work.
I’m available at any time for questions and comments, or if you would like to help in this endeavor.

In solidarity

Eva Henshaw
Contracting Out Officer
CS Group Executive