Patrick Tessier and other security officers at the Bank of Canada say they’re fighting for their families on the picket line.
The Bank of Canada locked out around 60 security officers who are members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) , who mostly work in Ottawa, but also includes a handful in Montreal, as a labour dispute officially began on June 23.
Tessier, who is the local vice-president and a member of the bargaining committee, says the Bank of Canada is pushing for concessions including cutting parental leave and “post” language changes that could result in scheduling changes with little notice.
The post language changes would effectively remove overtime for the security officers, a fiscal anchor many officer’s families rely on, and it could disrupt work-life balance, Tessier said.
“That’s what really has our members peeved is that added language to change our shifts on a moment’s notice,” he added.
“We don’t have the flexibility to work from home, so we have to work here every day, which is fine, but the stability of knowing when we work allows us to arrange our home lives in consequence,” Tessier added.
Tessier said he looked at events like his son’s sixth grade graduation on the evening of the first day of the labour dispute to realize what he and his members were fighting for.
Tessier says if his schedule changed with short notice on the day of the graduation “would that mean that now I get a reprimand because I can’t stay or I have to miss that special moment?
“That just comes once in a lifetime, right? So that’s why we’re fighting out here today,” Tessier said.
Alex Silas, national executive vice-president at PSAC, agrees. He says there are concerns that child pickups and dropoffs could be disrupted and other instabilities could arise from changes proposed by the Bank of Canada.
Silas says the post language changes in the collective agreement would have a “huge impact on work-life balance.”
“If I got to drop off my kid at daycare at a specific time, and the employer calls me the night before and says, ‘Oh, you’re actually coming in two hours earlier,’ what are you supposed to do with that?” Silas said.
Silas called the proposed “pretty gross,” noting that the security officer were not demanding anything but for the Bank of Canada to drop concessions.
Ruth Lau MacDonald, PSAC Regional Executive Vice-President, told the Ottawa Citizen that the proposal revealed the “sneaky” and “impersonal” nature of concessions like changing shifts or locations of a worker to avoid overtime. She also called out the Bank of Canada for rolling back parental leave.
“I haven’t heard of any other employer rolling back on parental leave. Have you?” she said.
Silas is also a longtime member of PSAC Local 71250, which is the security officers’ bargaining unit. He worked at the Bank of Canada from 2010 to 2020 before being elected as a full-time PSAC official.
“Everything I learned about being a union rep, I learned here,” Silas said.
Silas added that this round of bargaining marked only the second time the security officers had voted for a strike mandate, the first time being the last bargaining round.
It is now also the first time in Bank of Canada history that workers have been on the picket line, according to Silas.
Silas also slammed Tiff Macklem, the governor at the Bank of Canada, for flying to Paris as the job action began.
“The guy in charge of the Bank of Canada is a scumbag boss, that’s what were dealing with here,” Silas said.
MacDonald also said that the Bank of Canada had been approaching members to ask them to cross the picket line to pick up shifts.
So far, Tessier said there was no more bargaining scheduled at this time. The Bank of Canada and PSAC met last on Monday, ahead of the strike-lockout deadline.
In a statement, the Bank of Canada said it had been “ actively engaged in negotiations. We respect the collective bargaining process and will not comment further.”
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