Tons of Treasury Board and Parks Canada bargaining demands were received last Friday (which, incidentally, was the deadline for these things…)! Not only does this mean that our membership is clearly looking to play an active part in the collective bargaining process, but it also means that quite a few meetings were held to discuss bargaining demands.
For an inside look at what took place during those meetings, we reached out to a few local presidents to find out more.
In beautiful British Columbia, Local President Lise Tataryn said the discussions went very well.
“We talked about disability coverage, sick leave, extended health benefits,” said Tataryn. “It’s important to have those discussions.”
During the meeting, members of Local 20106 used the PSAC’s program of demands for Parks Canada to guide their discussions.
“We supported a few of the proposals in the program and put those forward,” added Tataryn.
Before letting us go, Tataryn mentioned that pizza and refreshments were used to lure members to the meeting. Yum! That said, she’s interested in getting other ideas on how to get members to union meetings.
Got an idea to share with Lise and the rest of us? Leave a comment below.
Over in Manitoba, Richard Landry of Local 50316 said his meeting required a bit more coordination because his members are spread out across 5 buildings – it’s also a composite Local that represents, among others, members at Statistics Canada, in passport offices and at Library and Archives Canada.
“We tried to make it as convenient as possible for everyone to attend the meeting,” said Landry.
On top of the classic pizza tactic used to draw members to the meeting, Landry said he also pinned posters to all the sites’ union boards and dropped off pamphlets on all the desks.
And what do discussions on collective bargaining look like in a composite local?
“Different sites have different priorities,” explained the local president. “For our site, one of the points that we were quite interested in was compensatory time.” Landry’s workplace often requires bursts of overtime – in fact, we caught up with him during a double-shift. Ouch!
Over and above the bargaining demands, this particular meeting led to some great discussions about engaging members.
“We had a great discussion about promoting the image of our Local in these sites,” explained Landry. “In the past, there had been a certain degree of negativity about the union.”
“We want to promote the union in a positive way. We want to build positive relationships with the members – instead of coming out of the blue with requests for their time whenever we have a meeting.”