For immediate release
MEDIA RELEASE
Ottawa, February 15 - The Canadian Association of Professional Employees (CAPE) filed a policy grievance earlier today challenging the automated weighting system (AWS) currently used by the Translation Bureau. CAPE condemns the fact that the system biases the evaluation of translators' workloads and has led to abusive working conditions in violation of their collective agreement.
CAPE represents over 895 language professionals at the Translation Bureau, including 640 translators. This group of professionals plays a key role in the promotion and protection of official languages within the federal government.
CAPE denounces the multiple flaws in the AWS, which cause the weighting of the number of words to be credited, and the time allocated for translation, to be systematically underestimated. The automatic weighting is not representative of the time and effort required to complete translation projects and has led to a severe deterioration in the working conditions of CAPE members.
The grievance is intended to hold the Translation Bureau accountable for the failure of the system, despite CAPE's numerous interventions to remedy it over the past several years.
The defects and unreasonable demands generated by the AWS have led to repeated abuses, including:
- Continuous overloading of work in excess of normal hours set out in the collective agreement, without additional pay or equivalent compensation.
- The inability to use breaks provided for in the collective agreement in order to manage an overload of work within unreasonable timeframes, due to risk of being penalized.
- Continuous excessive accumulation of overtime making it impossible to balance work and family with a significant impact on mental health.
- The devaluation of performance under the pretext that the demands generated by the AWS have not been met, even though they are unreasonable and unrealistic.
- An accumulation of work-related fatigue throughout the translation community that has led to both short and long periods of sick leave.
"CAPE strongly condemns the Translation Bureau's irresponsible management of the weighting system issue," said Greg Phillips, President of CAPE. "The managers have known about this for a long time and even though slip-ups are regularly brought to their attention, they continue to dither around, violating the rights of our members.”
As a remedy, CAPE is calling for a declaration that the imposition of the AWS violates the members' collective agreement and all applicable legislation. CAPE also requests that all necessary steps be taken immediately to correct the AWS and its translation memory. A corrected weighting formula will produce calculations that are representative of the translation work to be done and will restore balance.
About the Canadian Association of Professional Employees (CAPE)
CAPE represents over 21,000 federal public service employees across Canada and is the third-largest federal public service union in the country. CAPE represents economists, policy analysts, researchers in the Library of Parliament, analysts in the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, statisticians, translators, interpreters, and terminologists. http://www.acep-cape.ca
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For more information, please contact:
Katia Thériault
Director of Communications and Public Affairs
ktheriault@acep-cape.ca
Cell: 819-431-1015
