bout de papier, Vol. 9, No. 2 (1992) — Spring 1992 // Printemps 1992, p. 38
Members should now have received a copy of the new FS Collective Agreement. If not, you may obtain one from ABE (Employee Relations) which is responsible for its distribution. Please review the changes in the new contract to become familiar with the benefits you are entitled to claim. Further elaboration of the new provisions was provided in a recent PAFSO Update; however. if additional advice is required on the application or interpretation of any provision in the collective agreement, please contact the PAFSO office.
Members will note that many new provisions were negotiated. Unfortunately, as a result of the Government’s legislative measures to restrict “free collective bargaining”’ PAFSO was unable to achieve all the improvements originally sought. In our view, many of these benefits would have been awarded through arbitration.
PAFSO will, nonetheless, cease to be covered by the provisions of the imposed restraint legislation on April 30, 1993, which is also the expiry date of our present collective agreement. Therefore, preparations for the next round of negotiations are expected to begin as early as this fall to be followed by initial meetings with Treasury Board in the new year. It will be our objective at that time to obtain the full benefits denied the Association as a result of the legislative interference in the collective bargaining process. Obviously, pay will be a major element of future negotiations as FS salaries continue to fall behind the cost of living. Further improvements will be required to ensure that overtime is properly compensated in accordance with the norms already established for other professional groups in the Public Service. Additional compensation will be required for members who are assigned to perform duty officer or standby duties, as well as improvements to acting pay, travel time compensation and various leave provisions. These and other issues of importance will be pursued subject to consultation with the general membership.
Although PAFSO negotiates your Terms and Conditions of Employment, it is your choice, as individual members to exercise your rights and to claim the benefits to which you are entitled. Failure to collectively utilize negotiated benefits may weaken your Association’s ability to improve or even to maintain existing provisions which are subject to renegotiation at each round of collective bargaining. Such actions are particularly relevant in the case of overtime.
A decision not to claim overtime may be based on a variety of personal considerations. In some cases, there is a perception that claiming overtime may be viewed by superiors as “unprofessional” behaviour or as an “abuse of the system”. From a global perspective, it is not in the Department’s short term interest to discourage such views and in some individual cases, managers may wish to perpetuate them. Ultimately, such perceptions reduce the Employer’s overall costs while increasing expectations that individual officers should do more with less. In the long term, however, such views may negatively impact on the quality and delivery of departmental programs.
If an organizational culture exists which discourages officers from claiming overtime, it is clear that this philosophy is not universally accepted among all managers within the Department. Many officers have noted that managerial views on this issue vary substantially from one work location to another. Why the disparity? There are a number of possible reasons. One major influence on managerial perceptions respecting overtime is based on the budget allocations which are received for that purpose. Inadequate planning or budgeting for overtime will significantly increase the pressures on individual managers to decrease overtime claims while maintaining or increasing the level of output. In fact, a manager’s failure to work within budget may be viewed as an inability to manage resources properly.
Lack of adequate planning or budgeting for overtime is not and should not be the responsibility of each officer. On the contrary, it is the responsibility of each manager who is assessed and compensated on the ability to manage resources within budget. Further, managers are responsible for determining what work needs to be performed, when it is required and how it is to be distributed. As managers have full authority to make such decisions, they must also maintain full responsibility for any financial consequences which result. Members who agree to work required overtime without claiming compensation for it are indirectly assuming this management responsibility, not to mention the direct financial cost of unanticipated program requirements, or in some cases, a manager’s inability to manage. It should be noted that the legal requirement to compensate authorized overtime work exists regardless of a lack of funds allocated to particular budgets. If payment cannot be made from within existing Bureau or Departmental budgets, the Treasury Board is legally responsible to ensure that such payment is made in compliance with the PAFSO Collective Agreement.
Many managers recognize the need to compensate overtime when additional effort is required to meet operational requirements. In fact, the level of approved overtime is viewed by many as a useful management indicator of the need to assign additional resources or to re-evaluate existing budgets. In the absence of such indicators, a request for increased resources is difficult, if not impossible, to substantiate. Ultimately, managers who consistently discourage claims for required overtime create operational difficulties by assigning unrealistic workloads within existing resources. The result being that some priorities may not get the attention they realistically require.
An effective method of discouraging overtime claims is to perpetuate the myth of what some managers refer to as the “unwritten contract”. Although it is not exactly clear what is meant by the “unwritten contract” the implication is that individuals who do not claim overtime will derive other informal rewards. These implied benefits are understood by many to include: performance pay, appraisals; promotions, or preferred postings. It is clear, however, that if such an “’unwritten contract” ever existed, it has long since been breached by the Department. Many members have indicated that the informal rewards system is either increasingly irrelevant, applied inconsistently or not at all. Although individual experiences may differ, there is sufficient evidence to indicate that officers who consistently claim overtime still receive the benefits they expect, while others who did not claim, failed to receive the rewards of the ’unwritten contract”. In essence, there is no evidence of a correlation between an informal rewards system and overtime compensation.
The benefits negotiated by PAFSO on your behalf are not a “privilege” to be accorded by individual managers as they see fit. Rather, they are contractual obligations which must be respected in accordance with existing law. Your Association exists to assist you in resolving any problems you may experience in claiming the benefits to which you are entitled. Usually, this can be accomplished without recourse to formal mechanisms. If necessary, however, PAFSO is prepared to provide assistance in pursuing legal avenues of redress to resolve disputes which arise from a misapplication or misinterpretation of any contractual provision. In short, your time has value which should be appropriately compensated. Therefore, exercise your rights and claim the benefits which you are entitled to receive.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 9, No. 2 (1992) — Spring 1992 // Printemps 1992, p. 38. Read the rest of this issue →
