BY CRAIG GILBERT
It wasn?t planned, but close to 1,400 employees at Canada Revenue Agency?s offices at Lasalle and Notre Dame walked off the job for the second day in a row Thursday.
The show of solidarity, which saw workers crowd the parking lot and head home at 1:30 pm, was sparked by a breach of strike protocol in St. John?s.
?Managers there cancelled employees? schedules, so our members refused to let them or anyone else in the offices,? said United Taxation Employees (UTE) Local 42 vice-president Linda Morgan. ?So management, instead of talking to union officials, called the police in.
?I understand the line held strong.?
On Wednesday, the Sudbury workers held their ?regular? strike. They are among the 25,000 Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) members staging rotating strikes across the country.
Talks between the CRA and PSAC broke down after less than an hour the day before.
Neither side requested dates for future negotiations.
About 25,000 PSAC members across the country came into a legal strike position at midnight Tuesday.
They join thousands of Parks Canada employees, also PSAC members, who have been holding rotating strikes at the country?s national parks since
mid-August.
The CRA workers? collective agreement expired Oct. 31 2003. Negotiations since then have failed to close the gap between sides.
The main issue is wages.
The CRA is offering hikes of two per cent, 1.5 per cent and 1.5 per cent in each of the three years of the next collective agreement.
The union, in an effort to make up for the lack of a cost of living allowance (COLA) in their contract language for the last 12 years, is ideally seeking eight per cent in each of the next three years. This would include a cost of living allowance plus 4.75 per cent in the first year and COLA plus 4.5 per cent in year two and three.
In a non-binding report released Aug. 31, an independent conciliator recommended wage increases of three, 2.75 and 2.5 per cent each year, respectively.
The union also wants the elimination of regional pay zones for CRA operational workers, improvements in vacation leave and more term workers hired on full-time. Those contract workers are often used as ?cannon fodder for budget whims,? one union official said.
Diane Marleau, Sudbury MP and Parliamentary Secretary to Treasury Board president Reg Alcock, hopes the dispute will be over soon.
?They haven?t had a lot of increases,? she said. ?I know they work very hard, and have been without a contract for a year, so I hope they get back to the table soon.?
She disputes claims by the union that the Treasury Board is pulling the strings in negotiations from the background.
?The Treasury Board and the CRA used to be linked, but they?re totally separate now.?
The union has indicated it will proceed with rotating strikes at CRA offices without warning. Keeping taxpayers in mind, they want to avoid a general strike if at all possible.
CRA officials say child tax benefit and GST cheques are being handled by over 700 essential employees, and will arrive on time. The union, however, warns that may not be the case if the dispute drags on.
The wages of CRA workers have increased 19.4 per cent since the last strike in 1991, according to Morgan. The Consumer Price Index increased by 31 per cent over the same period.
?Contrary to popular belief, neither CRA nor other federal employees have a COLA clause in their collective agreements,? she said. ?This means employees continue to lose real purchasing power.?
That has a negative effect on the local economy as time goes on, she said.
The CRA, meanwhile, claims its wages and benefits packages are already on par with other federal employers.
?In addition, some recent studies have shown that compensation for most federal public service employees is also competitive with that of their
counterparts in the private sector.?
Union members field phone calls from the public, process all incoming government money and carry out field audits of companies.
The last CRA strike, in 1991, ended after 18 days, when the government legislated employees back to work.
