Mediation
CAPE’s EC bargaining team met with the Employer’s team for two days of bargaining, March 6 and March 7. CAPE’s team felt that little progress was being made. On the second day which was the tenth day of bargaining, the team informed the Employer that it would request the assistance of a mediator from the Federal Public Sector Labour Relations and Employment Board (FPSLREB). CAPE’s team invited the Employer to join the Association to make it a joint request. The Employer agreed. The request was communicated to the FPSLREB on March 13. The FPSLREB informed the parties on Monday March 18 that it will be contacting CAPE and Treasury Board to set a date for the next meeting at the table. The parties will reconvene at the table with the mediator as soon as possible at a date to be determined.
RCMP Civilian Members
Earlier in the bargaining process, the Employer suggested and CAPE agreed to create a table to discuss specifically the provisions brought to the table for the integration of Civilian Members of the RCMP into the EC and TR bargaining units. The purpose of stepping away from the EC and TR tables is to establish a process whereby discussions could occur on identical conditions for the integration of ESS employees into the EC group and TRL employees into the TR group. This third “table” is not a separate table as the resulting MoU will be added to the EC agreement and to the TR agreement as terms applying to a group of EC and a group of TR employees, i.e. former ESS and former TRL employees. In terms of process, under the Federal Public Sector Labour Relations Act negotiating the terms and conditions of integration is respectively part of EC negotiations and part of TR negotiations.
In order to ensure that CAPE would bring to the table the concerns and priorities of its ESS cum EC and TRL cum TR members, the Association surveyed the combined ESS-TRL communities in late 2017. The community identified rights and entitlements that it valued and that it wanted to maintain. It also identified priorities. The NCR RCMP Local was asked to provide information and guidance and to participate in the bargaining process with representatives at the bargaining table. On February 28, representatives of CAPE and of the Employer (Treasury Board accompanied by RCMP representatives) met to begin talks. The parties will be meeting again on March 28.
* Members may have noticed a delay between the last day at the table and the posting of our update. Normally updates can be posted within a week. A draft is first prepared by the National Office; then the members of the bargaining team are provided with time to review the text and propose changes. The message is translated then posted. However, most recently when the parties left the bargaining table on March 7 the session was not completed as the parties needed to agree to language for the joint request; the request needed to be delivered to the FPSLREB and a response returned to the parties before a complete update could be posted. Similarly, in January the parties left the table on January 18 but continued to have talks away from the table for another ten days in an attempt to address an issue that the parties wanted to resolve without waiting for the next session at the table scheduled for early March. We thank members for their understanding and patience.
