Tax season is looming in Canada, and you likely shouldn't wait until the last minute to file your taxes this year.
The union representing workers at the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has called for strike votes which will take place throughout February.
According to Marc Briere, National President for the Union of Taxations Employees, workers have been without a contract for more than three and a half years.
"We want to have wage increases that will at least cover the cost of living," said Briere. "We also have problems at the CRA that we want to address. For example, people working in call centres. There are issues. People are tired, they don't have breaks. There's a lot of monitoring going on. We've got people with precarious work, too many terms, people working contract-to-contract with the CRA. We want to improve their working conditions, we want them to be rolled over to permanent status. We want to improve the work-life balance of our members, and we also want to address the way that shift work and weekend work is assigned by management, among other things."
It remains to be seen whether workers will strike, and even if they vote in favour, it could take more than a month to see the effects.
Briere explained that it sometimes takes weeks to hold the votes across the country.
"We just went in front of a tribunal in Ottawa, called a 'Public Interest Commission,'" said Briere. "We're still waiting to get the report from that commision, which will present a recommendation that's non-binding. We're expecting that sometime in March or late March. We cannot take any strike action before receiving this report, and then we need to wait seven days before considering strike action."
If you've counted correctly, you might notice that lands a potential strike day right in the middle of tax season.
"Well I guess that would create some issues for people maybe trying to deal with the CRA for tax season," noted Briere. "In the meantime, if the employer is serious in making advancements at the bargaining table, they can contact us and we can consider to go back, which we've always been willing to do."
