bout de papier, Vol. 7, No. 2 (1989), p. 3
Like most foreign service officers, I had perceived PAFSO as a rather ineffectual bargaining agent and professional association that occasionally came up with interesting speakers, coffee and donuts for breakfast.
When I returned to Ottawa in the summer of 1988, I visited the office to find out what the Association could do for me. Lo and behold the auto, life and home insurance plans were extremely competitive and I cheerfully signed on. In passing, I enquired about the collective agreement that was due to expire in 1989 and was informed that a negotiating committee was to be constituted in the fall.
I had been quite disappointed in the two previous collective agreements and secretly thought that given the chance I could do better. I decided to put my mouth where my money was. I ran in the elections for the Executive and squeaked in. Somehow, I found myself Chief Negotiator and soon, face to face with the dreaded TREASURY BOARD. The reality of the negotiating environment PAFSO finds itself in is stark. We have no negotiating leverage. Our only tools are thorough preparations, and moral suasion
It makes all the difference to the process and the outcome to have a receptive, dedicated and hard working negotiator on the other side. It was our good fortune to have such a person in Marc Gagnon, a Treasury Board negotiator who had worked in the personnel bureau of External and understood the unique circumstances of the foreign service. His willingness to go that extra mile with his stubborn colleagues at the Board made all the difference.
Not everyone was thrilled with the final result. I believe, however, that the current collective agreement is in the overall best interests of the foreign service. In the unlikely event that in the future promotions become more plentiful or the FS salary bands are adequately restructured to overcome the bunching and stagnation at the top of the two bands, future negotiations can recapture the lost portion of the salary increment in exchange for the then presumably unnecessary performance bonus. In the meantime, PAFSO can take pride in having negotiated a benefit hitherto available only to the EX ranks.
No sooner were the collective agreement negotiations concluded, than I was called upon once again to give to my Association. After what seemed a very short stint, our President was on his way to China and a new leader was needed. My colleagues on the Executive seemed to think that the contract negotiations were the ideal boot camp for the office of President – the unrewarded front person for the Association. Thinking that this could be an ideal opportunity for righting the wrongs of the foreign service, I reluctantly accepted, all the while dreading the potential demands on that scarcest of commodities, time.
So what wrongs need righting?
One of the most fundamental threats to the foreign service as a career and a principle cause of morale problems is the Department’s resort to lateral entries. At the time of writing, a controversy is raging around the Department’s efforts to staff thirty-five positions lent to it by DIST. PAESO reluctantly agreed to negotiate the structure for the recruitment of the needed bodies and concluded what the Executive Committee thought was the best deal obtainable. The Department insists that it faces personnel shortages at all levels, irremediable through the normal recruiting and promotion processes. That is perhaps an undeniable fact. It seems to me, however, that the Department is constrained by outdated concepts of personnel management and fails to make the best use of its own dedicated officer corps and a more imaginative approach to recruiting. I hope the Department will use the consultation process called for in the new collective agreement to discuss with PASO workable solutions to this and other deep rooted problems facing us.
Another such structural problem is the perceived arbitrariness and unfairness of the promotion system. PAFSO has provided the Department with a copy of a discussion paper on an innovative approach to promotions that would rid the process of most if not all of the perceived iniquity. I hope the Department is ready to give the ideas it contains serious consideration
Closely related to these, is a third structural problem — that of the current unwieldy structure of the FS bands. PAFSO is prepared to make a concrete proposal to management on an approach that will stimulate morale rather than depress it and open up career prospects for specialists that are currently underutilised in the foreign service.
Space does not permit me to enumerate the other important issues that face us over the coming months. Many of these have in any case been referred to by Rodney Briggs in his parting message. If in the time remaining to me as President real progress is made on the three I discussed here, my term will have been well spent and the prospects of the foreign service as a career considerably enhanced
I think PAFSO can make a difference, but only to the extent of the time and devotion that its members are prepared to invest. PAFSO is a valuable tool and it is the responsibility of all of us to make it work for us. I welcome the newly elected members of the Executive Committee and wish you a productive term. To those who ran but were not elected, thank you for making the effort and please try again next year — we need you. To those of our members that don’t have the time to donate or the inclination to serve – please let us have your ideas and suggestions for improving our collective lot. I call on every foreign service officer that cares, to ask not only what PAFSO can do for you, but what you can do for all of us through
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 7, No. 2 (1989), p. 3. Read the rest of this issue →
