The workers who prepare reports on debates and other documents related to business inside the House of Commons have received a retroactive higher wage adjustment for 2023 through arbitration, among other decisions.
The text and processing bargaining unit, represented by the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), went to binding arbitration over outstanding issues that could not be resolved through bargaining for its last contract.
Members of the bargaining unit, alongside other groups under the Parliamentary Employment and Staff Relations Act, the legislation that establishes the framework around collective bargaining and other labour-relations rules, are not allowed to strike legally.
That has led to a reliance on arbitration at the Federal Public Sector Labour Relations and Employment Board for resolving outstanding issues.
There are around 83 members in total for the text and processing bargaining unit, including around 49 full-time employees and 34 seasonal staff who work between 700 and 1,820 hours per year.
Around 34 of those members are either editors or senior editors who edit documents, while 39 are trans-editors who transcribe debates and then do a first pass of editing those transcriptions.
In the March 3 decision, members part of the bargaining unit won a 1.25-per-cent wage adjustment for inflation in 2023, instead of the 0.5-per-cent increase that the House of Commons argued for.
Other gains included small penalties for not paying out retroactive pay, language around technological change and one paid leave day for seasonal employees throughout their employment for training and skill development.
However, the decision also denied PSAC’s bid to add Family Day as an additionanl designated holiday and a second personal day, noting that the case law did not support expanding statutory holidays and personal leave.
The decision also did not award the employer’s proposal to toss out the overtime meal allowance if an employee was working from home.
Questions also linger around the bargaining of the nuances and changes resulting from telework, such as overtime meal allowance.
“The board encourages the parties to seriously examine all terms and conditions of employment impacted by this change in the working arrangement of employees in this bargaining unit and negotiate a comprehensive set of changes instead of asking this board to look them piecemeal,” board member Christopher Rootham wrote in his decision.
Lawyers who spoke to the Ottawa Citizen and who did not work on the case said that the decision in this case was expected and standard with other similar arbitration decisions.
In a statement, Olivier Duhaime, spokesperson for the House of Commons, said the parties had “reached an agreement on many issues,” while “outstanding matters were referred to arbitration.”
“The resulting decision of the Federal Public Sector Labour Relations and Employment Board addresses those issues and is binding on both parties,” the statement added.
PSAC said it was reviewing the decision.
Pause on telework
Both the House of Commons and PSAC agreed to put the issue of telework in abeyance in arbitration, which is a pause allowing the union and the employer to discuss the matter further.
The issue of telework is likely to roll over to the next round of collective bargaining. In the decision, Rootham said discussions on telework would be paused until the expiry date of the arbitral award, which is June 26.
Patrick Groom, a labour lawyer who was not involved in the arbitration, the pause was likely because of ongoing litigation around telework.
Groom pointed to a prior decision at the Federal Public Sector Labour Relations and Employment Board that expanded telework rights at the Library of Parliament.
That decision has been challenged under judicial review by the federal government.
“I think that’s exactly why this is an abeyance because they know there’s ongoing disputes or ongoing litigation elsewhere,” Groom said.
‘Addiction to arbitration’
In his decision, Rootham wrote that a dispute over one-hour leave for a ratification meeting “may never happen unless the parties can wean themselves off of their addiction to arbitration.”
“The parties have shown that rationality is not the only factor used when negotiating terms and conditions of employment,” he added.
Groom welcomed the commentary from Rootham, noting that interest arbitration needed to be updated. Too often, the process can take the length of an entire contract, leaving decisions to pay out retroactive pay only when the contract has expired or is about to expire, he added.
“The system wasn’t designed to be resolving, you know, these minor issues. It was meant to resolve the big issues to avoid strikes,” Groom said.
It’s why Groom thinks changes or updates to the system will only happen when “somebody is calling out the elephant in the room, but unfortunately we just don’t have that yet.”
Groom also says that unions, and to a lesser extent employers, use arbitration to “absolve their responsibility” around some issues during bargaining.
Groom pointed to PSAC submitting its request to include Family Day as a recognized paid holiday, which is “rejected out of hand, almost like a rubber stamp, every single time.
“It becomes an issue that gets sent to arbitration that I think is actually a classic example of what I think the board is commenting on,” Groom added.
