Our members have been rallying on the 19th of every month in order to raise awareness of the upcoming federal election. Yesterday, in Sherbrooke, Quebec, members held a rally to call attention to the cuts’ severe impact to Statistics Canada and to shed some light on what our members at Statistical Survey Operations have to deal with.
When we last reported on the status of bargaining for our members at SSO, our case had just been presented in federal court. At present, we are still waiting to hear a decision.
The following is a speech that National President Doug Marshall delivered at yesterday’s rally:
I don’t think that I need to describe how this government treats science and statistics; it makes a mockery of them. By 2016, Statistics Canada will have lost a third of its staff.
What can we expect as citizens?
Less data
Less information
More decisions based on ideology instead of facts.
The disdain that this government seems to have for statistics apparently trickles down to the employees who are responsible for collecting the data.
Our members at Statistical Survey Operations have been working without a contract since November 2011. These are the men and women who collect data by going door-to-door or from a call centre.
Their work hours depend entirely on workload.
Those members who go door-to-door – a group made up primarily of women – have no guaranteed work or minimum number of hours. Their salary is totally unpredictable.
In other words, they have no minimum wage.
In one year alone, several of our members have suffered a drop in salary of more than 50%.
Work hours vary from week to week. It’s either feast or famine. Several members at Statistical Survey Operations live below the poverty level.
Work hours are assigned entirely at the discretion of managers. Seniority is not taken into account.
As one member put it, “If they don’t like you, you don’t get any work.”
Since 2011, our union has been fighting to ensure the fair treatment of our members and to eliminate favouritism by applying a system based on seniority as opposed to the whims of managers.
But this government has constantly undermined these efforts and opposed seniority from the start. We are currently awaiting a federal court decision that will enable us to pursue negotiations.
We hope that the employer will return to the negotiating table to improve the working conditions of our members.
We look forward to the end of negotiations with this employer … and the end of the Harper government.