We’re back at the bargaining table from May 16th to May 18th. This bargaining session coincides with both the next meeting of the PIPSC Central Bargaining Team and will take place during the next PIPSC Week of Action from May 13-18th. We would ask all members to keep an eye out for events in your area during this week, and that you energetically participate in expressing the importance of reaching a fair and timely settlement of our issues.
Your RE bargaining team met with management for three full days of talks on April 16-18, 2019. We continued to discuss all the remaining proposals brought forth by both sides, including counter-proposals and discussions of pay and pay grids.
We spent time on science- and research-specific parts of our collective agreement. We secured an ongoing commitment to develop and maintain scientific integrity policies, including a provision to create an ongoing requirement to develop polices at new or existing departments and agencies whose science and research complements grow to the point where they meet the threshold. We continued to push to enshrine data sets and the means for our members to work with them in the language around publications, modernizing it and recognizing the key role that working with data plays in many RE jobs.
We continued to defend historical researchers’ rights to overtime and hours of work consistent with their professional status and work-life balance. We will continue to stand up for historical researchers’ right to hours of work compatible work-life balance, and their right to overtime any time they are required to work ouside those hours.
We presented a proposal to ensure that the entire agreement is brought up to a gender-inclusive standard of language in both official languages, and kept that way going forward.
We discussed the types of pay changes that the employer was confident Phoenix could handle, an important factor in ensuring that all members reliably see the full benefit of a new agreement within a reasonable time after signing. In our efforts to get our members fair career progression and help the government in its pay simplification efforts, we continued to push for a refactoring of several complex elements of the DS pay rules. We also had a fulsome discussion of the union proposal for a sabbatical leave consistent with academic and museum staff in the Public Service.
We continued to vigorously assert the value of the research work we do, including an emphasis on the fact that we recruit and retain in the same pool as universities - including presenting evidence of RE members moving into professor positions.