19 October 2012
PUBLIC INTEREST COMMISSION
FOREIGN SERVICE GROUP
The Public Interest Commission (PIC) established for the Foreign Service Officers was held October 4 and 5, 2012 at the Minto Suites Hotel in Ottawa. The main contributors to the dispute were wage increases and the employer’s insistence that the voluntary severance provisions in the severance pay article be removed from the FS collective agreement.
The process was conducted in English and the briefs from both parties were presented in English. PAFSO’s brief is below as five separate PDF files for those who want to read it.
What follows is an Executive Summary of the two main issues, rates of pay and severance pay, and the employer’s rebuttal.
RATES OF PAY – PAFSO’S PROPOSAL ON RATES OF PAY
PAFSO RATIONALE
PAFSO’s overall position on rates of pay is intended to show that the FS group trails its internal comparable groups for work assignments at headquarters by a considerable margin, and its external comparators for work assignments abroad by an even greater margin.
Looking at the compulsory criteria identified at Section 175 of the Public Service Labour Relations Act (PSLRA) and the employer’s own policies on compensation, PAFSO believes it made a case for its proposal which incrementally addresses the existing pay anomalies with some FS occupational comparator groups at headquarters without trying to catch up with the LA group (Department of Justice lawyers) or private sector markets all at once.
The comparator groups at headquarters most closely identified with the FS are the CO, EC and LA occupational groups. Our main issue was the rate of pay paid to the FS officers at level 2: we pointed to CO-02 and a combination of EC-05 and EC-06 rates of pay in arguing for a significant restructuring of the FS-02 band. We also flagged our concern that the FS-04 level continues to lose ground compared to its EX-01 counterparts and that the FS-01 maximum rate of pay has not kept pace with other professional development programs, chiefly the Management Trainee Program. Our proposal does not seek to resolve the huge wage gap between the LA group and our FS officers who were hired as lawyers. We see the LA group comparisons with the FS group as an issue that needs to be addressed in the next round of negotiations, and pay anomalies with external comparators (private sector, other foreign ministries) in the round after that. In other words, PAFSO recognizes current constraints on the Government’s fiscal position and is therefore taking an incremental, long-term approach to addressing pay anomalies.
To bolster our case that significant salary adjustments are needed, PAFSO was able to show that over the last decade and a half there was a serious retention issue manifesting at the 14 year mark, with generally more than 50% of each cohort having left the FS group by this anniversary and significant additional attrition in the 5-6 years that followed. TBS confirmed the numbers but attributed the high percentage of departures to promotions, deaths and retirements, which in PAFSO’s view couldn’t possibly account for a departure rate of over 50%.
EMPLOYER’S REBUTTAL
The employer insisted that the work performed by the FS group in general had no comparators either for the work performed at headquarters or for work abroad.
The employer, with the departmental representatives present, went on to make the following assertions:
- The work performed by the FS group in DFAIT headquarters was not comparable with work performed at headquarters by either the CO group or the EC group at any level.
- It was not relevant to try to compare the work performed by an FS officer at level 2 with the work performed by a CO-02 officer because the work was not similar or comparable.
- There is no evidence that the FSDP program used the MTP [now the PL group] as its template. So there is no reason to compare the salaries paid to these two groups.
- FS officers who work in the legal branch are not required to give legal opinions. They are not expressly employed as lawyers and it’s just another assignment within the FS group.
- Immigration officers in the FS group perform work comparable to PM-02 and PM-04 level positions and are already overpaid.
- The FS group received the largest wage increases in the core public service from 2000-2010 and there was no justification for giving them more.
Following the employer’s rebuttal, PAFSO was given an opportunity to respond, which we used to reject every one of these assertions, citing in most cases the departments’ own internal documents, job descriptions, competition posters, and websites.
SEVERANCE PAY
The employer made no attempt to justify its proposal to remove the voluntary severance provisions from the collective agreement. It simply referred to government policy and the handful of bargaining agents who had either accepted it or had it imposed by arbitral award.
PAFSO’s rebuttal focused on the fact that there was no reason to delete these provisions because, contrary to what the TBS had suggested, severance pay for voluntary separations is indeed prevalent in today’s economy. We used their own compensation policy to show that the employer was aware of this long before they advanced their proposal. We demonstrated that it was prevalent in both the private and the various public sectors of the economy, except municipal governments. We also showed that MLAs, MNAs and MPs all receive severance pay when they do not seek re-election or are defeated at the polls.
We also showed that the .75% additional increase was not sufficient to compensate the loss of severance pay and PAFSO produced several other calculations to show the value of the deletion on a go forward basis. These one-time salary increases ranged from 1.5% to 2.67%, far more than the .75% offered by the TBS.
NEXT STEPS
The PIC has met to review the outstanding issues and their recommendations. We anticipate receiving the PIC recommendations from the Chair of the PSLRB by late October and will post them on the PAFSO website for all members to see.
The Bargaining Sub-Committee will then digest the recommendations, assess their impact on our negotiating position, and reconvene with TBS – hopefully by early November – to determine whether a settlement can be reached at the table. We will keep you posted on these deliberations.
PAFSO Brief to the Public Interest Commission – October 4-5, 2012
(PDFs)
- Opening Remarks
- Compulsory Factors to the Considered by the PIC in Making a Report
- Employer Proposals – Outstanding Issues
- PAFSO Proposals
- PAFSO Pay Proposal
Submission of the Treasury Board to the Public Interest Commission in Respect of the FS Group – October 4-5, 2012 (PDF)