Your bargaining team was officially formed in the fall of 2021. Since then, we have had:
- over 2 weeks of training
- months of collecting and analyzing survey data
- 3 face-to-face meetings with SP members
And it all led to this – our set of proposals and the start of bargaining.
On August 30 and 31, your entire SP bargaining team gathered in Ottawa for our first official meeting with the Treasury Board. As I mentioned way back in my first communication to you, this is not a sprint, and not even a marathon. This is an ultramarathon, and we have only just crossed the starting line.
The initial steps are always the same, and they are no different this round. The Treasury Board presented their non-monetary proposals, and your bargaining team presented our non-monetary demands.
When you look at the demands, you will see a number of spots where phrases like “proposes to discuss,” “reserves the right to introduce language at a later date,” or “reserves the right to discuss.”
Don’t panic (and carry a towel).
Some important things I want to bring forward as you are looking at the proposals:
- These are known as placeholders and are common in bargaining. They allow the sides to discuss things with each other before presenting a formal proposal. In other cases, it will potentially be discussed at a central table of PIPSC groups negotiating with the Treasury Board, if the parties agree to a central table process.
- From this point forward, any changes to the proposals will not be shared to ensure the confidence of the bargaining process.
- All of what you see are the non-monetary proposals. The process is to present the monetary proposals later, once significant progress has been made on the non-monetary proposals.
As I mentioned, this is only the first step in the process. We’ll be meeting with the Treasury Board again on the following dates:
- October 4 to 6, 2022
- December 6 to 8, 2022
- February 7 to 9, 2023
- April 3 to 5, 2023
How to support your bargaining team
It is vitally important that you show management that you support your bargaining team. As such, the weeks that we are bargaining, we would like you to replace your Zoom or Teams background. Here’s the SP background to use, and instructions on how to make the switch.