Dear members,
I hope you all had a fantastic summer and had a chance to unwind and take some well-earned vacation.
The RO RCO Group Executive has been working on a number of priority areas over the last several months: bargaining, communication with members, member engagement, steward support, and promotion criteria.
Bargaining was a huge activity this year and we are extremely pleased that we were able to reach a fair agreement with NRC in an expedited time period. The agreement was signed on August 30, 2019 and is valid until July 2022. The bargaining update that was sent out in September (https://www.pipsc.ca/groups/nrc-ro-rco/nrc-ro-rco-group-you-have-signed-new-collective-agreement) provides many details of the new agreement along with key timelines. We plan to host a number of lunch and learns in 2020 to further explain the changes, new articles, and provide updates on some of the major items, such as the upcoming work by the joint committee to review the RO RCO compensation system. Some significant changes were made in the last 2 contracts that will take some time to trickle down.
I think it’s very exciting that the upcoming 3 years will have minimal bargaining pressures, and so the Group Exec will be able to focus on how to tackle and improve on new and longstanding issues faced by our members.
I am also pleased to announce the formation of a new RO RCO Quebec subgroup this fall. This subgroup is being led by a number of ROs and RCOs from NRC Royalmount (Marie-Anne Gauriat, Vincent Dodelet, Martin Loignon, Feng Ni, Anne Marcil, Daniel Desmarteaux, Stephan Grosse). I want to extend a big thank you to these individuals for taking on this leadership role to improve the visibility of PIPSC in the NRC Quebec worksites and to better support the 339 RO RCO members in the Quebec region. For those working in Quebec, please keep an eye out for upcoming events organized by the Quebec subgroup. There are now 3 RO RCO subgroups: Atlantic, National Capital Region, and Quebec.
The Group Exec has had several opportunities to meet with members over the last few months. We hosted lunches with RO RCO members in London in April, at Ottawa Uplands in June, and have upcoming lunch meetings at Ottawa Sussex in October. Our last meeting of the year with members coincides with our AGM on Friday, Dec 6 at Ottawa Montreal Rd Campus (location TBD). Please mark your calendars to attend.
Best wishes,
Cathy Cheung