The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada
The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada
Log in

75th Ontario Regional Council Hamilton CRA Branch Activity Report

Number of members: 253 Regular 16 Retired 4 Rands

Current Executive Members

Joe Stanziani Branch President
John Liberatore Branch Vice President
Joanne Haslip Secretary
Steve Budz Treasurer
Ward Cluff Member at Large
Cheryl Gasse Member at Large
Christine Bozek Member at Large
Chris L’Estrange Member at Large
James Ramkissoon Member at Large
Leo Piro Member at Large

Previous AGM date: April 5, 2018

Next AGM date: April 2, 2019

Branch Executive Meetings

Last Meeting Date: February 21, 2019

Next Meeting Date: &TBD

Number of meetings held since last Regional Council: 4

2018 Branch Activities

  • We work closely with and hold many of our activities jointly with the Hamilton Sub-Group.
  • The branch Members and Executive supported the Government of Canada Charitable Workplace Campaign in 2018.
  • We supported the Anti-Bullying Campaign (Pink Shirt Day) in the Hamilton TSO in 2018.
  • We participated in the Labour Day parade held in Hamilton in September of 2018.
  • We frequently had loud shirt, orange camo pants and/or black shirt days to support our Bargaining Committee during 2018 negotiations.
  • On numerous dates we wore black or PIPSC gear to support our Bargaining Team when they were back at the bargaining table (October 2018 for example).
  • Attended the Niagara Sub-Group and Branch AGM in November of 2018 as guests to network with our union brothers & sisters in the St. Catharine’s TSO.
  • We have distributed flyers to our members along with the UTE Executive of the Hamilton Niagara TSO on issues that concern both our unions, such as our fight against CRA to stop them from taking away our sick leave that we have earned as well as fix Phoenix.
  • We have filed many grievances to protect our members’ rights over the past year.
  • We represented our members in a number of discipline hearings over the past year.
  • We withdrew from all formal consultations with management in the Hamilton Niagara TSO of CRA (eg. UMC, etc.) except for the Health & Safety Committee (ones we were legally required to be on) for a number of months to demonstrate our displeasure with the termination of one of our members without cause and the unreasonable attitude of some Hamilton management in dealing with some of our members and the Union with respect to accommodations and mental health issues.
  • As a branch we have supported our Sub-group President in his refusal to sign on to UMA (Union Management Approach) due to the poor state of union management relations in Hamilton and the local management’s unreasonable position on many issues.

Issues and Concerns:

Our issues are centered around supporting our Bargaining Team to get a fair Collective Agreement during 2019.

Locally our issues centre around protecting our members rights in the Collective Agreement and ensuring CRA managers behave in a reasonable manner and follow the Collective Agreement and CRA policies.

Local Senior CRA Managers have targeted both myself and the Sub-Group President for our activity in the union and defending our members’ rights under the Collective Agreement over the past year.

We are seeing many mental health issues at the Hamilton TSO. We are also seeing CRA Managers who do not know how to deal with these issues and are not following the CRA policy on accommodation. In addition, the CRA Managers are not applying the mental health training to their everyday situations. We have had a number of CRA Managers in the Hamilton TSO threaten to fire our members who they know have mental health issues.

We are continuing to remind our Employer to fix the Phoenix Pay System and bringing to their attention the many problems and financial hardships this malfunctioning pay system is causing for our members.

Submitted by: Joe Stanziani
Branch President, Hamilton CRA