Civil servants navigating job trades, buy-outs amid public service cuts
CBC
Plans to reduce the federal service mean thousands of roles will change or disappear, in a complicated process that thousands of employees across the civil service are navigating as they receive notices this month.
How the downsizing will impact employees depends on their department, and whether they’re covered by a union’s collective bargaining agreement.
Many are being offered buy-outs, early retirement packages and voluntary departures.
Others are engaging in a process allowing civil servants to trade jobs. The program — negotiated by unions in collective bargaining — matches job-seekers with employees exiting the civil service.
The Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) has more than 2,100 members using an online platform it created to help civil servants find these matches, while the Treasury Board launched its own internal platform last year.
Other unions, like the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC), and some government departments, have created similar platforms.
The online sites connnect federal workers and allow them to share experiences about different jobs.
Known in bargaining as “alternation”, PIPSC president Sean O’Reilly says the process helps employees affected by job cuts stay employed by finding positions being vacated through someone leaving the public service.
But some departments “don’t want to participate” in the job-matching process, O’Reilly said.
“It doesn't seem like there's a concerted effort to actually try to make sure that the alternation process works,” he said.
PSAC National President Sharon DeSousa called the process “one of the best ways for workers who received an opting or surplus letter to stay in the public service,” but said a centralized government platform would have been more “transparent” and “fair.”
“Cuts were already happening, and workers were left to figure it out on their own,” she said.
Employees covered under collective-bargaining may know what their options are, but not their specific situation yet.
Departments are moving at different paces, and until the budget passes after Parliament returns next week, certain measures — like early retirements — can't happen.
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