Strike over for hundreds of federal workers in northern Ontario, but taxation employees still out on the line

Thousands of federal government workers in northern Ontario will be heading back to the office on Monday.

The Public Service Alliance of Canada reached a tentative agreement early in the morning, ending the 12-day strike by 120,000 federal employees, including some 3,000 with Service Canada, Natural Resources Canada and other departments spread across the north.

It's based around a 12.6 per cent pay increase over four years, plus new provisions for working from home. 

Melanie Wreggitt, one of the some 100 employees with Veterans Affairs Canada in Kirkland Lake, says they are excited to be leaving the picket line behind.

"Wages are huge, like, we wanted to be able to keep up with the rate of inflation, we're a little below that so it's technically a pay cut, but it's still better than what was originally offered so we're excited about that," she said.

Wreggitt, who is also the local union secretary, says many of the members were starting to feel the financial strain of living off of strike pay. 

"It's really hard to be out there knowing that you're going to lose two weeks of pay potentially, you know, you don't really make that back," she said. 

"Especially some of the single parents and even people with two incomes, it was causing a lot of stress."

But the new deal does not include the 35,000 workers at the Canada Revenue Agency.

They remain on the picket lines today, including some 3,000 unionized employees at the Sudbury taxation centre. 

"The mood's not great, but what I've been trying to tell people is to get them to understand that we probably could have returned to the office today but that would have weakened our position at the negotiation table," said Chris Foucault, the Sudbury president of the Union of Taxation Employees.

"We're still waiting for a decent wage proposal."

He says his union came in with a higher pay increase request than their colleagues in the other federal departments and are still hoping to get that "boosted," plus he says the issue of members continuing to work from home "hasn't been settled."

"We usually always push harder and harder than Treasury Board groups, so we're pretty confident something a little bit better will come through," said Foucault, adding that another round of contract talks is scheduled for Monday in Ottawa.