Here in Ottawa, the quibbling over remote work versus in-office attendance has been strong ever since the Trudeau government mentioned its return.
Now it’s become a reason to strike. And the demand for more pay, which is almost a given, has been tacked on for good measure.
The Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) and the Union of Taxation Employees (UTE) are launching nationwide strike votes today for more than 35,000 workers at Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) after talks broke down over wages and remote work.
Strike votes will be conducted from January 31 to April 7, 2023. Workers at CRA have been without a contract for more than a year, and the union declared an impasse in September.
“Workers’ wages have stalled while the cost of living has continued to rise, and everyone is feeling the strain,” said Chris Aylward, PSAC national president. “We’ve been clear negotiating wages that keep up with inflation and a sensible remote work policy are critical to reach a deal, but the Agency has refused to respond to our wage offer and still has major concessions on the table. Workers can’t wait any longer.”
The question for PSAC’s boss, who hasn’t been feeling the strain of the rising cost of living, is who wouldn’t want to work from home and save the time and cost of the commute?
Let’s answer that question for Aylward: Everyone, that’s who.
Except that when they were hired to work for the CRA, they were largely hired to sit in a cubicle in a federal building instead of complain about a return to the status quo so that the taxpayer isn’t paying for the heat, the lights and the security of a near empty federal office tower.
But they’ve now had a taste of working from home, and it’s become like drugs to an addict. And therefore it’s somehow unfair that working from home should come to an end now that the pandemic has somewhat subsided.
Now no one in the UTE has cried poverty and it would be hard to convince anyone that they are as hard-up as Ontario’s educational support workers who averaged shy of $35,000 annually. So the money demand is opportunistic.
The real demand is to continue working from home.
Back in December, during the first day of mediation, the PSAC-UTE bargaining team claimed it had no choice but to break off talks with the CRA over their refusal to budge on the remote work proposal, a key issue for members at the table.
On the eve of mediation and a week before the holidays, CRA and Treasury Board announced – without warning or negotiations with PSAC or UTE – that members will be required to return to the office in the new year, forcing workers to scramble to make child care arrangements and potentially relocate if they’ve been working remotely.
The government, said the union, is trying to impose a flawed hybrid work plan on our members while they’ve adamantly refused to provide a wage offer for workers. Meanwhile, CRA has doled out more than $29 million in bonuses to managers during the pandemic.
The bargaining team called on CRA to rescind its hybrid work plan and instead bargain in good faith on the issue. When the employer refused, the union declined to continue mediation — claiming it was another sign of disrespect towards its members from CRA and the government.
”It’s becoming clear holding strike votes to secure a strike mandate from PSAC-UTE members is the only way we’ll make real gains at the bargaining table,” the union said in a press release.
That strike vote begins at months end—the outcome of which will likely decide if all those federal offices in Ottawa and across the country will remain all but shuttered.
