Author: Communications

On behalf of everyone at the Union of National Employees, I’d like to wish you all a bright and joyous holiday season. Whether you’re taking some vacation or just enjoying a few days off, I hope you take the time to relax and spend quality time with friends and family.

I also want to thank you for the important work you do on behalf of Canadians. If there’s one thing I know, it’s just how hard our members work. The Harper government would like to portray us in a different light, but I know all too well that everyone is being asked to do more with less – and I know how difficult that makes it for you to perform work that lives up to what Canadians deserve.

It’s a message that we’ve been putting out there for some time; we want the public to know how our national treasures are hurting – how the institutions responsible for our heritage just can’t preserve and maintain important pieces of our history – how decisions are being base on ideology over science and facts.

And the list goes on.

And unfortunately, the attacks aren’t stopping. There’s now a very public attack on our paid sick leave. And as we speak, we’re getting ready for some tough negotiations at the bargaining table. If you haven’t already, please take a moment to go to the PSAC’s website and sign the pledge in support of paid sick leave for all Canadians.

Every voice counts right now.

That said, it’s not all doom and gloom. As you may know, 2015 is soon upon us. And with the New Year comes the promise of federal elections. Trust me: all I want for 2015 is a government that respects public services and the people who provide them on behalf of Canadians.

But that won’t happen without some hard work. It’s important for everyone to talk about the work they do with their friends and family. It’s up to all of us to tell them how we’ve seen our national treasures and public services deteriorate over the horrible Harper years. We’re certainly going to blast that message from the rooftops; but we need everyone to organize and mobilize.

So please stay in touch. We want to keep the lines of communication open. We want to hear your concerns and we want to make sure you have a way of knowing what we’re doing on your behalf. You can stay in touch by liking us on Facebook, following us on Twitter or signing up for our e-newsletter.

And finally, I’d just like to take a moment to extend a sincere thank you to everyone who plays an instrumental role in our union. The work we do simply wouldn’t be possible without the hard work and dedication of countless volunteers. I’m proud to call these champions of fairness and justice my union brothers and sisters.

Once again, I wish you the most joyous holiday season and a happy New Year.

Doug Marshall
National President
Union of National Employees

Reminder: To allow our staff to spend some quality time with their families this holiday season, our office will be closed from December 25 to January 4.

When we last reported on the Canada Science and Technology Museum, it was slated to re-open in January 2015. That date was recently pushed to 2017 as evidence surfaced that the roof is in a much more dire condition.

A recent article by Ottawa Citizen’s Tom Spears revealed that engineers feared the roof could collapse this winter under a little less than a foot of snow.

“Cracks in the buckled ceiling revealed lumps of what appeared to be asbestos ready to fall into the lobby and exhibit areas. White powder settling inside the building looked like asbestos too.

Plastic sheets draped over displays kept the water off, but dampness was everywhere.”

We knew it was bad, but not this bad.

“Retrofitting this kind of building to suit the environmental standards of museum conservation has provided salutary lessons in trying to make silk purses out of sow’s ears,” opined Robert Barclay, columnist at the Ottawa Citizen. “It is enormously expensive and rarely successful.”

But retrofitting is what the Conservative government intends to do. An $80 million band-aid solution was unveiled late last month; a plan to fix a crumbling museum that has been housed in an old warehouse since 1967. It’s a cheaper solution than building a new museum – plus, it has the added benefit of adding one more ribbon cutting in 2017 during Confederation’s 150^th anniversary.

But that’s precisely the kind of short-sightedness that got this museum its substandard home in the first place. Eager for just-one-more-ribbon-cutting, the federal government got its hands on a struggling bakery’s warehouse in the middle of an industrial park – and boom: a national science museum just in time for the centennial celebration. From the Ottawa Sun’s Ron Corbett:

It was cheap politics and the federal government kept on being cheap. In its first full year of operation, the budget of Canada’s newest museum was $333,000. In comparison, the National Gallery had a budget of $2.1 million that year.

The numbers never improved. The museum had to wait 10 years before it had money to start a school education program. It is still waiting for money to house 90 per cent of its permanent collection.

Fast-forward to May 2001, the Chrétien government was already looking into other options for the museum due to its aging infrastructure. A year later, a Canadian firm was selected to look into the cost of creating a new facility in a more central location. By 2006, Conservative cabinet minister Lawrence Cannon was getting himself in hot water over the “new” museum’s location – he wanted it in his riding, of course.

At the time, consultants were proposing a 1.2 million-square-foot museum that would do justice to our collective science and technology achievements. The increased space would have given a home to a great deal of the collection now housed in warehouses – the current building only allows for 2% of the museum’s collection to be displayed.

But by summer 2012, the government was clear that it wasn’t interested in building a new museum.

So instead of building a museum with an eye to the future – a museum that would instill pride in the hearts of all Canadians – the Conservatives are more interested in long-term pain for short-term gain.

In the end, our members at the Science and Technology Museum will continue to deliver an enriching and stimulating experience to all the bright minds, young and old, that step foot in the building – no matter the building. But we hold hope that one day, the little museum that made a bakery its quarters, will have a home that truly lives up to its importance.

Wanna dream a little? Check out these breathtaking pics from architects Provencher_Roy of what a NEW Canada Science and Technology museum could look like. 

There’s been great improvement in the work climate at the Office of the Auditor General, thanks to the hard work of the Local and the UNE. For the diligent Local executive there, a special meeting held last week provided an opportunity to showcase the progress that they have cultivated over the last two years.

“We recognized early on that there were a number of concerns at this particular workplace,” explained National President Doug Marshall. “I personally met with the Auditor General in January 2012 to talk about the workplace.”

“That’s what started the ball rolling.”

The UNE and the Local kept management’s feet to the fire; eventually management agreed to implement a number of changes to our members’ benefit.

These days, the Local is finding it easier to approach management and is often reaching solutions without having to resort to the formal grievance process.

“Management is now listening,” explained Local president Viviane Dugas Patry. “We also have noticed that members and employees feel safe to approach the Local and feel confident that the Local represents them.”

That’s a trend that also extended to health and safety, according to Franco Picciano, coordinator of member representation at the UNE, who also spoke during the meeting.

“There’s been a massive transformation,” declared Picciano. “We now get calls from people in the workplace who want to move health and safety issues forward because they feel comfortable going to the UNE. So, they are coming to us because (a) it gets dealt with and (b) they recognize that it gets dealt with in a professional manner.”

Viviane Patry Dugas, the Local president, has been assigned to a health and safety project aimed at bringing the OAG up to code. The Policy Health and Safety Committee has already conducted a comprehensive hazard assessment. There’s also a greater appreciation on the part of management of off-site risks, regional office issues and risks facing employees who work outside regular business hours.

There have also been some significant successes with regard to labour relations issues. Labour Relations Officer Leslie Sanderson informed the members that there is a greater deal of transparency when it comes to human resources processes. The resurgence of Union Management Consultation Committee meetings with senior management at the OAG has provided a valuable forum in which to engage the employer in discussions that concern our members. Also, the employer will be conducting its first classification review in 15 years and has started to apply the staffing policy more consistently.

“This just goes to show that when the union and the employer work together, everyone benefits,” concluded UNE National President Doug Marshall. “When labour-management consultation committees work well, both parties can come to solutions informally – can come to solutions faster – and can come to solutions that work for everyone.”

“We are here to fight for you and make positive changes in the workplace.”

The meeting was also the occasion for the Local to approve its standard local bylaws (reminder: a template for standard local bylaws can be found here). Regional Vice-President Patrice Rémillard was on hand to hold the vote, which yielded a unanimous approval.

The meeting concluded with an update on collective bargaining by PSAC Research Officer Shawn Vincent. The bargaining team is currently reviewing input it has received since February from the membership; it will be assembling a package of proposals shortly.

Vincent took the opportunity to talk about the tough battle ahead over sick leave. The government has been very vocal in its desire to drastically change our sick leave program as we know.

“That item has been the subject of discussion already – not just with PSAC, but with several other unions in the federal sphere,” explained Vincent.

“One of the very interesting things about this particular round of bargaining for federal public service workers – for the first time that I can remember, the federal unions that are party to the National Joint Council have signed a solidarity pact on this issue; none of them is interested in taking what the federal government is trying to sell us in terms of this radical change in sick leave.”

If you haven’t already, please visit the PSAC website and sign the pledge in support of paid sick leave for all Canadians.

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Looking for more information? Download the brochure that was distributed during this meeting.

E-friendly English brochure
Print-friendly English brochure

We don’t have a resident astrologer at the UNE, but if we did, he’d probably tell us that the planets aligned for maximum irony last week, when the Public Health Agency of Canada tweeted the following:

Don’t get us wrong: we totally agree with the Public Health Agency. We just wish Tony Clement would listen to public health experts instead of being hell-bent on making us come to work sick.

Take a stand for paid sick leave – for all Canadians – by signing the PSAC’s pledge.

In case you missed it, last week, the Royal Society of Canada released its expert panel report on Canada’s libraries, archives and public memory. Its analysis of the current state of Library and Archives Canada is scathing to say the least.

The expert panel used words like “embarrassment” and “appalling” to describe what’s happened to the institution responsible for our collective documentary heritage. The main sources of frustration among Canada’s academic community stem, in part, from the 2004 merger of the National Archives and the National Library and the 2012 budget cuts.

“In Australia, New Zealand and the EU, the merger of LAC is presented as an appalling model to be avoided by libraries and archives,” declared the authors.

The merger promised easy and integrated access to our national documentary heritage. Instead of reaping the benefits of convergence, the authors contend that the merger resulted in discord between librarians, archivists and record managers.

“We are told that morale is at an absolute low, with some of the morale deficit attributed to human resource issues associated with the merger of the organizations.”

Enter the April 30, 2012 budget cuts; a day that is colloquially called “Black Monday” in the archivist community. A reduction of 23% of LAC’s full-time employees is expected by 2016. The Royal Society has called these service reductions “draconian”.

In the report, Dr. Ronald Rudin, a Concordia University professor of history, details his recent frustrating experience dealing with LAC. With the loss of specialised staff and no access to digitized finding aids, Rudin ultimately had to make a second trip to Ottawa to accomplish his research.

“I am sure that there are stories that are more dramatic,” he wrote, “but you might keep in mind that I have 40 years of experience with using the LAC, and so I can only imagine how the various barriers would have discouraged someone doing this for the first time.”

Rudin remarked that he had no complaints about the LAC staff, “all of whom were courteous and clearly overworked.” He did note, however, that the absence of sufficient staff made his experience unnecessarily complicated.

The report also points to some of the programs that have either been eliminated or curtailed as a result of the 2012 budget cuts. Gone is the National Archival Development program, which helped support over 800 archives across Canada over the last 26 years. Scrapped are public exhibitions and the Portrait Gallery initiative. Digitization keeps dragging on (the Canadian Association of University Teachers estimates that at the current rate of spending on digitization, it would take LAC 300 to 700 years to digitize its published holdings). And since LAC’s budget for acquisitions has been slashed, more and more of our national treasures are ending up in the hands of foreign private collectors.

The Royal Society has offered a number of practical recommendations that could dramatically improve things at LAC.

“We sympathize with the challenges presented to LAC by budget reduction, as do the majority of LAC’s institutional stakeholders who know that changes are required to cope with declining resources, since they have been similarly tested,” the authors wrote.

“But, dialogue – lacking in LAC decision-making for a decade or more – can often achieve compromise solutions. In this regard, stakeholders also know that with some consultation they can help coordinate new processes to address service gaps.”