PSAC supporting cleaners

[FSTO]

PSAC has started a campaign to wrest cleaning contracts away from non unionized contractors.

https://uncoverthecost.ca/?fbclid=IwAR3wTk7SJrGJjRZbtgaPbmqQ-bcbck7ERuYtUr-q0-BWGtNvgSqrxXGWGXc

Headline

Uncover the Costs

When governments contract out public sector work to private companies, profits take priority over services, and everyone, except the corporate shareholders, ends up paying the price.

Instead of providing the budget to hire an adequate number of employees, the Department of National Defence skimps on staffing budgets, forcing Base Commanders to contract out while knowing that it will cost more money to provide less service. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent in this shell game, with substantial profits going to private corporations in Canada, and across the globe.

In the meantime, communities across the country, that rely on Canadian Forces bases for employment, are left with minimum wage, precarious jobs instead of decent work that pays a decent wage and allows workers to contribute to their local economies.

The Government of Canada has said that it is committed to ending precarious work, supporting our troops and investing in local communities. Bringing this work back in house will do that. Tell DND and the Government to stop paying more to get less.

 

[Navy_Pete]

This was a weird one to me; seems to me you want cleaners that are wandering around secure institutions are happy and well paid for security reasons. Easiest way to do that is by employing them yourself.

A lot of times this is the 'line item BS shuffle' accountants play. As if you are somehow saving money by transferring costs to a different line item so it's a different budget, but all out of the same pot. Really makes no sense to me. :dunno:

 

[mariomike]

I wonder if PSAC has a provision in their collective agreement that protects employees from losing their job as a result of contracting out?

I've read of the so-called "iron rice bowl" on here.

Mayor Lastman called it, "Jobs for life" with our union ( there were no cleaners ). “I knew it was time to stop that. We tried to take it away from them because they had us by the balls. We fought like hell but couldn’t get rid of it. You don’t know what we had to go through." “Try and fire them, you can’t.”
Star Feb 16 2011

 

[lenaitch]

Contracting out allows the government to show a smaller public service, along with all of the differences between being a 'contractee' vs an employer.  But it doesn't necessarily make things better.  When I was with the OPP, most of the detachments were relatively small in smaller communities and had one possibly two 'custodians' who did everything from keep the place clean to cut grass, blow snow, garden, wash cruisers, etc.  While posted at a large city detachment, they started contracting out.  I learned I had to put in a work order ticket with the government to get a fluorescent tube changed because the cleaners weren't contracted for that (couldn't do it myself because the supply room they used was now locked).  All of the other jobs had to be let out to separate contractors.  The whole thing kinda fell apart except for large facilities in large centre because the smaller places had no companies to bid the job, and 'Bob' the local guy couldn't bid because of onerous government requirements for insurance, WSIB registrations, etc.

 

[MilEME09]

There seems to be a big push by the unions to fight back against more privatization, especially the civilian side of DND, namely the lack of transparency that DND is getting value for it's money.

 

[mariomike]

I guess it's what they call "progress". When they privatized garbage collection in my area, we were suddenly faced with the indignity of hauling our garbage to the curb, instead of having it picked up at the back door. 
:sarcasm:

 

[Navy_Pete]

There seems to be a big push by the unions to fight back against more privatization, especially the civilian side of DND, namely the lack of transparency that DND is getting value for it's money.

Surprised they aren't going after ISSCs; we are offloading a lot of the work, and a large reason for that is simply because our procurement and logistic rules and policies make the system unwieldy, not that we don't know how to do it. If there are savings, it's only because the way we buy anything other then pencils is just stupid, and 'fairness and transparency' outweigh common sense.

For example, we weren't allowed to tell both shipyards to use specific common equipment for large systems for AOPS and JSS (like the IPMS for example), but the ISSC actually directs them to look for opportunities to get common equipment and incentivizes them to find cost savings in maintenance/training etc. So we knew that common equipment saves money, but if there are two different systems on the two platforms we'll likely operate both concurrently and look at whether it makes sense to replace both with a common replacement when they run into end of life.

Anyway, glad they are weighing in here, as it's really crappy when they do things like this. Remember when they did this in Halifax, some of the same people got hired back by the private company (as they already had the security clearance and experience) but took a pay cut. Don't believe there was a significant saving, but it was a pretty crappy thing to do to people, and especially stupid as it was around the same time as Deslisle got picked up, so embittering a number of people with a pay/benefit cut seemed especially ill conceived. The GoC will waste millions on stupid third party studies to tell us things we already know, but try and save thousands by screwing people around like this (while simultaneously building in policies to procurement that drive costs up to meet the various IRB/VP/Canadian content requirements through artificial and inefficient changes).

 

[Bruce Monkhouse]

Once you factor in the profit for the company now running the show there are no real savings....just paper pusher savings.
The Ontario Govt found that out the hard way with the private prison experiment years ago.

 

[Eaglelord17]

There seems to be a big push by the unions to fight back against more privatization, especially the civilian side of DND, namely the lack of transparency that DND is getting value for it's money.

Unions are always going to push back against privatization. Less people in the union, less union dues to support the jobs of their upper echelon. The more people they get in the union, the more money the union makes.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

I would not want to work for the Feds without a union to back me, even when they are not trying they can squash you like a bug. We had a shop steward have coffee with the Regional Director General every week, those chats over coffee resolved most issues before they became big steaming piles.