Bargaining
FortisBC-CSC – Job Steward Talking Points for Contract Ratification
February 22, 2017
To: All Job Stewards and Executive Councillors at FBC-CSC - Willingdon Park
The bargaining process: your bargaining committee negotiated this tentative agreement on your behalf. The bargaining committee is made up of three (3) workers who are union members from FortisBC-CSC, and one MoveUP staff representative.
The bargaining committee reviewed the results of the bargaining survey, which was emailed by the union to the members on October 7, 2016.
Members submitted their ideas for changing the collective agreement and making gains in wages and benefits to the committee via the survey. It was the bargaining committee’s job to negotiate a fair settlement and to reach as many of the goals set by members as possible.
Here is a quick snapshot of the member’s goals in bargaining:
- Proposal: The number one issue was dissatisfaction regarding compensation. Members want higher wages.
What we achieved: In an industry which has seen low wage increases and demands from the employer to give up money and benefits that employees now have, this tentative agreement bucks the trend and gives monetary increases equivalent to 9 per cent over 5 years.
- Proposal: The second most important issue was to see some improvements in the health and dental benefits.
What we achieved: your bargaining committee won increases to Extended Health Care benefits which increase Standard Vision from $150.00 to $200.00 every two (2) years. We also won coverage of eye exams at $100.00 every two years.
We didn’t achieve everything we wanted in dental benefits. However, we did manage to achieve an increase in the maximum cap for the Plan A & Plan B, from $2500.00 to $3000.00. We determined these gains over what currently exists currently were fair and reasonable.
- Proposal: The third issue many of you raised in the survey dealt with the issue of contracting out. The bargaining committee did draft a proposal that mirrored the language adopted by Fortis Electric. We had a lot of debate on this amongst ourselves and with the employer.
Where we landed: MoveUP has two policy grievances that will be decided soon and we’re still waiting for the results of the recent certification application. We decided most of our concerns will be addressed when those issues are resolved. We believe this issue will have the best chance of being resolved in our favour by arbitrators and the BC Labour Board. Therefore, the language remains as it is today.
- Proposal: The fourth issue of concern raised by the membership is the timelines associated to the grievance procedure.
What we achieved: Your bargaining committee had extensive discussions with Fortis about how workplace problems can be solved more effectively in the workplace when dealing with your collective agreement. During these discussions, we managed to settle a couple of outstanding grievances that were heading to arbitration.
We agreed to new language that will help us with this goal and we also created more protection for our members during meetings with management. We believes that these improvements fall under the umbrella of negotiating grievance procedure provisions that are fair and reasonable.
Other Wins in this Tentative Agreement you should know about:
Upgrouping 90 CSR’s: The committee worked with two employer proposals. One implements a title change to one of the classifications that sees 90 CSR’s being upgrouped one group: a group 2 to a group 3.
The second proposal provided the conversion of 39 temporary employees into unscheduled part-time regular employees, which provides these individuals with benefits and pension. These changes provide jobs and wage increases for our members.
When discussing this conversion of Senior CSR’s to CSR’s, we identified that this will create one pool that will provide for larger shift bid pool, as in more shift options. Fortis thinks this will allow more shift trade opportunities and more call type variation for all employees, not just limited to taking construction and collections calls. This conversion will allow for a broader group to address the workload and the distribution of work.
The Job Evaluation proposal was one that was argued about and took up most the time during the last days. The result is not perfect, but we managed to achieve the upgrouping of Collections Reps and Senior Billing Analyst from group 4 to group 5. With this, we placed Fortis on notice that the job evaluation, as we presented in our proposal, may not have been achieved, but we would continue to fight to ensure that the work our members were doing was being properly captured. Therefore, Article 2 will stay as it is currently in the collective agreement.
Some of the residual issues that came to light from the survey identified dissatisfaction around the health leave bank. A proposal was introduced by the bargaining committee which attempted to delete the current health leave bank and revert to the language in Article 10.02. However, despite intense arguments, the article remains and what resulted was an increase in the maximum cap. We determined this was fair and reasonable.
Your bargaining committee also brought to the table a proposal to address the annual leave entitlement and the time it would take a member to reach their 4th week. The current collective agreement has a member having to work 10 years before they can earn their 4 weeks of annual leave entitlement. The bargaining committee tabled a proposal that closer by reducing the years of employment to 6 years. Fortis countered and provided an amount equal to the other two bargaining units, Gas and Electric. We determined that this was fair and reasonable.
Some other improvements that we see, are increases to:
- the inclusion of gender identity and expression in the employment discrimination clause.
- the first aid premiums, which now also includes level 1 employees.
- An increase of ½ day to funeral leave to allow for one full day.
- Vehicle expense is in line with the Canadian Revenue Agency ($.54)
- Personal leave that will allow a member to apply for leave without pay before having to utilize their annual leave entitlement.
- An LOU to address the annual vacation scheduling to ensure the Parties work towards a process that benefits all Parties, including the members. A committee will be struck to deal with annual leave bidding.
- An LOU to deal with eminent social labour issues, such as abusive calls, domestic violence and gender transition leave.
How do I get to vote on the new deal?
The vote on whether to accept this tentative agreement is going on now in Prince George and in Burnaby. We hope that you will come out to the unit meetings to cast your ballot. MoveUP and your bargaining committee is recommending acceptance of this tentative agreement.
In solidarity,
Cindy A. Lee, Union Representative
Gwenne Farrell, VP MoveUP