TO Bargaining Update:
After four days of meetings, the RCEA has broken off “negotiations” for the TO
Group. While we have shown considerable movement and flexibility with respect both to our proposals as well as to those of the NRC, Council has consistently refused to address issues of concern to the Group. Instead, it has demanded that the TO Group agree to significant concessions before it will even consider some of our proposals.
In particular, NRC wants the TO Group to agree to cap vacation leave carry-over at 35 days with unreasonable grandfathering provisions. This, they said, was needed due to the financial obligation on NRC that unused vacation leave generates. However, by their own statistics, the total value of unused vacation leave over 35 days for the whole of the TO Group accounts for only 6% of this total financial obligation. In fact, over 82% of the Group has less than 35 days in their carry-over banks and close to 79% has less than 25 days in the bank. What they are talking about is an unfunded liability that may look bad on paper, but in reality, only has an impact if every NRC employee seeks to use all their unused leave at the same time.
They are also seeking the right to schedule the annual leave of group members. Even though we explained to them that the problem in the TO Group was not one of employees not taking or scheduling their leave, rather it is one of employees not being allowed to take leave in the amount and at the time they want due to “operational requirements.” As well, they expect the TO Group to give up all carry-over of compensatory leave earned as a result of doing overtime work.
To this they added a wage offer of 1.5%, 1.5%, 1.2% and 1.2% over four years.
The TO Bargaining Team believes that it has gone as far as it can go at this time. We have agreed with a great many of NRC’s proposals and we have shown a real interest in arriving at a new agreement. The same cannot be said of NRC. The Team will now wait for a short time to see if NRC is interested in resuming negotiations, provided they are prepared to deal with some of our concerns. The RCEA and the TO Bargaining Team are determined to continue working in the best interest of our members and we appreciate the continued support of all TO Group members.