Have a look at the general document about the provisions included in the tentative agreement: Download the PDF
Ottawa - The Canadian Association of Professional Employees (CAPE) announced today that a tentative agreement has been reached with the Treasury Board Secretariat for the Economics and Social Science Services group, also known in the federal public service as the EC professional group.
Close to 16,000 CAPE members belong to the EC category and stand to gain from this new agreement.
The agreement brings significant improvements to the EC collective agreement, refining benefits in areas such as pay, maternity and parental leave, caregiving leave, wellness and harassment in the workplace, domestic violence, and language training among others.
The bargaining team had been negotiating with the employer since October 2018
“The negotiations have had their challenges” said Greg Phillips CAPE President. “Very detailed and complex language has been tabled, reviewed, changed, and changed again over several weeks, across several bargaining tables with the involvement of different bargaining agents and the employer. The employer and EC members of the bargaining team worked tirelessly to come to a timely agreement and we are glad to see this coming to fruition today.”
As required by CAPE’s by-laws, EC members will be voting to ratify or reject the tentative agreement in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, the bargaining committee members unanimously recommend its ratification.
General highlights of the agreement:
The new agreement includes the following pay adjustments:
2% effective June 22, 2018;
2% effective June 22, 2019;
1.5% effective June 22, 2020;
1.5% effective June 22, 2021.
The parties have also agreed to a market adjustment of 0.8% effective June 22, 2018 and of 0.2% effective June 22, 2019.
Other improvements include the addition of 5 extra weeks of parental leave and allowance at 93%, where parental leave is shared; new language for parental leave that will allow EC members to benefit fully from the extended Employment Insurance (EI) parental benefits with a top to 55.8% of weekly wages; provisions regarding language training; improvements to travelling time provisions and language defining a consultation process on the prevention and resolution of harassment in the workplace.
The parties also agreed to provisions for this round⎯ and this round only, with regards to the implementation of the collective agreement. HR systems will be used not Phoenix to calculate the retro pay. The implementation period has been extended by 30 days, and in exchange each EC member will receive $400.
If exceptionally an employee does not receive his or her retro pay during the 180-day implementation period, the employee will receive $50 on day 181, and will receive a second $50 three months later, and at the end of each 3-month period thereafter if necessary to a maximum of $450.
