At the Union of National Employees, and at the Public Service Alliance of Canada, much of what we do wouldn’t be possible without the tireless work of our many volunteers.

The Public Service Alliance of Canada has a tradition of honouring long-term officers of the PSAC with service pins and certificates. These pins and certificates can be awarded to those with 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35 and 40 years of service and to honourary members and lifetime members.

If your Local wishes to nominate a member, please complete the application form and enclose a complete service history of the individual. Please pay careful attention when completing the period of service section of the form. The eligibility criteria and application forms can be found on the PSAC website.

If recipients wish to receive their award during our convention in Victoria, their nominations must arrive at the UNE office no later than Friday, April 25, 2014.

[Editor’s note: A previous edition of this article featured a different deadline.]

Imagine your workplace becomes quarantined. A team of hazardous materials specialists is brought in. That’s what happened at the Passport Canada mail-in centre in Gatineau just before the holidays.

At 9:30 a.m., on December 19, one of our members opened an envelope that contained white powder. Emergency procedures were put into place. After being quarantined for part of the afternoon, the hazmat team deemed the powder harmless and allowed our members to go home.

“We’ve had this happen before,” explained Local President Rose Touhey.

This time, additional precautions were taken (luckily!) including a lock-down of the employees.

But every emergency situation has its hiccups. In this case, some members got locked outside during a break. A city bus was brought on-site to shelter them from the cold.

The risk of exposure to anthrax has to be taken very seriously. Just one week after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, letters laced with anthrax started circulating. The 2001 letters killed 5 individuals; two of whom were postal workers. Many more were affected, including public servants working in the US Senate.

On our side of the border, the first “anthrax letter” was delivered in January 2001 at a Citizenship and Immigration Canada office in Ottawa. While the letter was found to be a hoax, it nonetheless was responsible for shutting down an entire government building.

That same year, Canada Post reported 277 anthrax-scare incidents. In the first half of October 2001 alone, the FBI had responded to over 2,300 such incidents, according to then-FBI Director Robert Mueller.

And while most of these turned out to be hoaxes, every instance where a person could be coming into contact with a bio-threat has to be treated with the utmost caution. A letter laced with just a tenth of a gram of anthrax can deliver 15 to 320 times the lethal dose of spores to whomever is opening the envelope. One gram can deliver up to 2,680 times the lethal dose.

Given the heightened state of stress, the increased breathing rate can double or triple these figures.

Last month’s hoax is an important reminder that we can never be too prepared.

“The good news is that we’re going to be developing an enhanced procedure,” explained Touhey.

The incident will be the topic of the next health and safety meeting.

“Whether you’re blue-collar or white-collar, we all face threats in the workplace,” said National President Doug Marshall. “It’s a reminder to be prepared and to be vigilant.”

“I also understand that Rose Touhey and Karl Lafrenière handled this unusual situation with a great deal of professionalism,” added Marshall. “Kudos to both of them!”

Dear brothers and sisters,

I’d like to take this opportunity to wish you all a joyous holiday season and a Happy New Year.

Over the past year, I’ve seen a tremendous amount of dedication to our cause and a greater interest in activism emerging. I can’t stress enough how much I appreciate everyone’s hard work.

Let’s face it; being a union activist is too often a very thankless job. But your work should be recognized – we simply wouldn’t be able to accomplish the things we do without your contributions.

So, thank you. Thank you for everything you do for our union.

If 2012 was the year of cuts, 2013 was most certainly the year when the government decided to kick us while we were down. As we approach the threshold of a new year, let’s commit to making 2014 the year we really fight back.

We’re going to need a whole lot of passion and momentum to do it, so don’t forget to recharge your batteries during the holidays.

Above all, please take advantage of this precious time with friends and family to relax and re-energize. After all, these are the moments that make all our hard work worth it!

Be safe, stay warm and have a Happy New Year.

In solidarity,

Doug Marshall
National President
Union of National Employees

Thanks to the Harper government slicing and dicing Passport Canada, we have a few updates for the members who now work for the passport program at Employment and Social Development Canada and Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

Transitions, transitions…

The transition is now progressing through the first phase, which saw Passport Canada’s responsibilities transferred to Citizenship and Immigration Canada and service-delivery become the domain of Employment and Social Development Canada and the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development.

Starting in April 2014, phase one will progress to the stage where members working in internal services who directly support passport operations will be divvied up proportionally between the two departments; in other words, this transition will see some members who are now with Citizenship and Immigration Canada get transferred to Service Canada.

“Right now, I might be dealing with a single person in labour relations who can address issues affecting all former passport members, whether they now belong to Service Canada or Citizenship and Immigration Canada,” explained Rose Touhey, an assistant regional vice-president for the Outside Canada region and President of Local 70130. “After April 1, nobody will be intermingling anymore.”

The final step is really separating the operations of what’s left of Passport Canada. The Union of National Employees is concerned that this step might lead to some job cuts.

“The employer recently told us that some of the internal services positions allocated to the passport program at Citizenship and Immigration Canada are likely to be abolished,” explained National President Doug Marshall.

The employer plans to achieve these reductions by eliminating vacant positions and through attrition – but we haven’t been provided with specific numbers.

“They originally told us everything would stay the same – but that was in phase one.”

Then there’s that huge grievance…

This all started when some employers decided to hit the pause button on the Treasury Board directive that sees term employees become indeterminate after three years of service.

“Term employees filed grievances at all major passport offices across Canada,” said Marshall.

After a brief discussion with the employer on November 6, the parties agreed to combine these grievances into one group grievance.

“The employer and the union also agreed that these grievances would go directly to the third level,” added Marshall.

This ensures that any response we get comes from the person at the right decision-making level.

The outcome of these grievances will apply to all term employees who were formerly employed by Passport Canada, and who continue to be term employees of the passport program as of August 2, 2013 – even those who didn’t sign the initial group grievances.

“The really mind-boggling issue here is that Passport Canada was never affected by the freeze that affected so many terms across Treasury Board,” said Marshall. “It didn’t affect them because Passport Canada is self-funded; the program continues to be self-funded. So, there’s simply no reason why the freeze should suddenly apply to these term employees.”

We don’t want to be the cause of any existential crises, but it’s an interesting question – and one that the United Nations is interested in as a measure of social progress.

So how happy are Canadians? As of this year, we’re number 6 on a list of 156 countries in the U.N.’s World Happiness Report. Let’s face it: we have it good (despite who’s running the country!).

But what does the data tell us about world happiness and public policy decisions?

According to Benjamin Radcliff, a professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, it shows that a strong social safety net is conducive to human happiness.

“The relationship could not be stronger or clearer,” wrote Radcliff in a recent opinion piece for CNN “However much it may pain conservatives to hear it, the ‘nanny state,’ as they disparagingly call it, works. Across the Western world, the quality of human life increases as the size of the state increases. It turns out that having a ‘nanny’ makes life better for people.

In his piece, Radcliff points to the five countries topping the report: Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, the Nertherlands and Sweden – countries with a strong social safety net and a high unionization rate.

That’s right: turns out living in a country with strong unions makes you happy.

“Not only are workers who belong to unions happier, but the overall rate of happiness for everyone — members and non-members — increases dramatically as the percentage of workers who belong to unions grows, reflecting the louder political voice that organization gives to ordinary citizens.

All this remains true when controlling for the many other things that might also affect quality of life, such as income, age, gender, marital status, or their country’s culture, history, or level of economic development. Critically, ‘big government’ and labor unions also promote happiness not merely for those toward the bottom or middle of the income distribution, but for everyone, rich and poor, men and women, conservatives and liberals.”

And it’s not like any of these countries topping the charts were spared in the recent global economic crisis.

Even Denmark, who holds the coveted first place, is still reeling from a severe economic crisis. The Agence France-Presse recently reported on how Danes remain happy despite these challenges:

“One of the most important things making the Danes happy is the security in Danish society,” said Meik Wiking, director of the Happiness Research Institute, a Danish think-tank aiming to improve the quality of life in Denmark and abroad.

“There is a high degree of financial security. If we lose our jobs we get support, when we fall ill we can go to the hospital, and so on,” he added.

And it also looks like higher taxes are having no effect on the Danes’ happiness: Denmark has the highest taxes as a percentage of GDP. Sweden comes in at a close second.

So remember all of this information when you get into a debate with that one conservative family member this holiday season! Turns out strong public services are pretty darn important to your happiness! (but we already knew that, right?).