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COLLECTIVE BARGAINING UPDATE
February 8, 2002
The Collective Bargaining Committee met in Ottawa on February 1-2, 2002, to finalize preparations for the bargaining session with Treasury Board scheduled for February 4-7, 2002. In this preparatory meeting, the Committee, using the data and information provided by the various working groups to support our monetary and non-monetary proposals, established the economic mandate and strategy/approach for the Negotiating Team.
The Negotiating Team continued its preparations on February 3, 2002 and worked diligently to structure its monetary presentation to reinforce the need for a restructuring of FI salaries to address the issue of relativity with other occupational groups.
After 3 days of meetings with the Employer, good progress was made on a number of non-monetary issues with improvements being achieved in several areas. A presentation was made highlighting a number of issues on the monetary front which must be resolved if our professional status is to be recognized and wage relativity gaps with other groups be narrowed/closed. Additionally, the team submitted several key documents, many of which originated from the employer, outlining the current recruitment and retention issues departments are currently experiencing.
A further series of meetings with the Employer will be scheduled in the near future, with a tentative target date being mid to late March. This will give the Employer an opportunity to review all the data and documentation presented. Ultimately, if an agreement on all monetary and non-monetary items cannot be reached at the negotiating table, there will be an impasse. If this occurs, the Association would consider mediation as a possible option before proceeding to file a request for arbitration, which would result in a binding decision on all outstanding items.
While we are aware that you are all extremely interested in hearing what your Negotiating Team has achieved up to this point, we ask that you understand the importance of not releasing any specific details, at this time, regarding any items agreed to, or, conversely, any items still outstanding.
We would like to highlight the tremendous work all members of the  Collective Bargaining Committee and Negotiating Team have done up to this point, and we ask you to continue to show your support throughout the entire process.
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