74th ORC - Toronto East Branch Activity Report
Number of Members: 372 Regular 32 Retired 1 Rand
Current Executive Members:
Tom Yantsis Branch President
Tim Azab Branch Vice President
Sam Sehra Treasurer
Erick Cheong Secretary
Martin Campbell Member at large
Atul Kumar Member at large
Raj Jaswal Member at large
Paul Tsuji Member at large
Terrance Subryan Member at large
Farrah Clark Member at large
Pratap Francis Member at large
AGM
Previous AGM date: December 6, 2017
Next AGM date: November 2018 (To be confirmed)
Executive Meetings
Last Meeting Date: February 5, 2018
Next Meeting Date: March 2018 (To be confirmed)
Number of Executive meetings held since last Regional Council: 6
2017 Activities
We have held numerous picture days on bargaining weeks, actively participated in all local committees and we have an ongoing effort to keep our members engaged, provided relevant information, and sought their feedback with all issues related to our workplace.
When we reached a tentative agreement, we organized town halls to inform members of the proposed agreement.
We have encouraged our stewards to actively participate in local activities, and attend meetings so that they are prepared and able to assist our members in all work related issues matters.
Active participation in UMC and have attended all joint management/union meetings held.
The Toronto East Branch continues to work actively within the Ontario Region to recruit Stewards and to facilitate reducing our RAND population. This project continues from previous years and has helped the branch communicate the benefits of membership and encourage conversion to full time membership. We were successful in recruiting 1 new steward this year.
CRA attempted to implement a reorganization of our members in the GTA and resulted in hundreds of grievances, mailing campaign and petitions to parliament. Town halls were held with Al Ravjani, Doug Mason and Debi Daviau as guest speakers. Ultimately CRA revised the plan that was more favourable to our members
Issues and Concerns:
Phoenix - the budget has allocated $16 million to building a new system. Originally Phoenix implementation came at a cost of $300 million. How is $16 million going to be sufficient?
CRAs unilateral decision on their proposed reorganization without consulting PIPSC. Also identified the exercise as not WFA related. It is our opinion that the exercise would have resulted in WFA.
EWSP - update? sick bank accumulated?
Classification review exercise needs to be done.
In the recent selection processes, the CRA has restricted the feeder pool and/or changed the feeder pool.
New work standards and changing environment may result in more grievances for performance.
GTA is not suppose to result in staff movement unless the individual voluntarily takes a promotion. CRA management was not willing to affirm information provided in meetings in written form.
Member concern that the cabinet has not signed the tentative agreement for AFS even though it has already been 3 months and it could be another 5 months to wait after signing.
Was it specifically mentioned that an MOU had been established for the classification?
Members were concerned whether information gathered for security plus would be retained or destroyed.
Resolutions to the Regional Council
None at this time.
Submitted by: Tom Yantsis
Branch President