Prince Albert and District Area Council Meeting
April 17, 2012, 5:00 p.m.
Travelodge Laurier Room
In attendance:
Annette Schaan, Sonya Rudniski, Leslie Gunderson, Janice Gerstner, Mary Bevill, Glenn Viklund, Mary Johnson, John Carey, Phil Banwarth, Brad Huculiak, Nikki Valmont, Sandra Lipsit, Debbit Mathiason, Nicholas Pawlak, Connie Lam, Cora Kunz, Teolinda Carlson Laing, Vesna Nikolic, Larry Sundberg, Bonny Sundberg, Melanie Markling, Sheryl Busser, Glenn Ash, Paul Daigneaualt, Tim Hogan, Nancy Johnson, Denni Nelson
Special Guest Speaker: Louise Mardell, Regional Office
Regrets: Marianne Hladun, Anita White, Tracy Burton
Meeting was called to order at 5:05 pm with Denni introducing guests Louise Mardell and Nancy Johnson. Louise briefly explained a bit about what the Area Council does and what the meeting was called for. We will not be discussing Convention business tonight unless specific questions are raised as time likely will not permit.
As of today’s date 1043 jobs in the prairies have been cut. The east cost and Prairies have been the hardest hit. Our collective agreements, particularly the Treasury Board have an appendix with a Work Force Adjustment clause written in. Materials are available on the website for members to view.
It is imperative that members inform the regional office of cuts they are aware of as they are occurring as union offices are not getting the information until members make them aware.
Agriculture was particularly hit hard.
There is going to be a town hall teleconference call April 19th at 6 pm our time for members to have questions answered. Members should make regional office aware of their contact info ahead of time and have their questions put in ahead of time also.
WFA Training sessions will be occurring the month of may with the first begin on May 9th at 5:30 at the library. Some departments have been offered sessions already but they are not being told everything, in fact some are being specifically told they can NOT grieve. This is false. There can be policy or individual grievances filed.
A discussion about the alternation process occurred.
Parks has asked members to step forward and take a payout prior to receiving their letters.
A report card was introduced two years ago and as an example in one instance a member on maternity leave didn’t have a position to return to as coworkers picked up her workload while she was away.
At CSC Pay and Benefits is moving to Miramichi, management says it’s not a WFA situation. Tim has discussed this at their LMC meetings. Pay and Benefits at SaskPen is moving to Saskatoon so positions are being lost here.
AANDC indicates that their Finance and Pay and Benefits are doing similar; moving to hubs. AANDC is expected to receive their letters of effected and job cuts on April 30th.
We asked the room to consider ideas to engage the public such as lobbying the MP or writing letters to the editor, or come up with other ideas of their own.
Denni asked Louise to explain the 3rd Choice Campaign briefly.
The Area Council minutes are always posted on the website for all to view.
We polled the room to see who will be calling in to the town hall on Thursday and it looked like several people would be participating.
We encouraged members to talk to their union reps and locals to get Work Force Adjustment Committees formed.
Reminder about the Talking Union Basics (TUB) course this coming Saturday, April 21st.
The Aboriginal Committee received verbal approval from the third component, NHU president Tony Tilley today, therefore they can now go ahead and form officially and ask Robyn Benson for a budget so as to explore events.
A BIG thank you to everyone for attending and we hope to see you all out again at future Area Council meetings.
ADDENDUM:
Health Canada has no effected employees at this time (local 40027)
RCMP has no effected employees at this time
Service Canada in La Ronge has no effected employees at this time