National Strike Ends for Treasury Board Employees, but CRA Workers’ Standoff Continues

The recent national strike involving Treasury Board employees has come to an end, but the standoff continues for approximately 35,000 workers employed by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). While the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) was able to negotiate a tentative contract agreement with the Treasury Board, which effectively ended the strike for over 120,000 federal government workers, negotiations with CRA workers remain ongoing.

Although some issues regarding information management and hours of work have been resolved, key concerns, such as telework, wages, job security, and outsourcing protection, are still being discussed. Specifically, the union is pushing for telework agreements to be included in the collective agreement, while the Treasury Board’s recent deal does not contain such language. Instead, the two sides agreed to review the telework directive and establish departmental panels to address employee concerns.

The CRA workers are asking for a 22.5% wage increase over three years, while the agency’s latest offer includes a nine-per-cent increase over the same period, as recommended by the third-party Public Interest Commission.

During the strike, government services, including passport and immigration processing, were affected, and concerns were raised about filing taxes. However, with the end of the Treasury Board strike, things have somewhat normalized. Nonetheless, with negotiations for CRA workers still in progress, there remains a degree of uncertainty regarding the length and severity of the ongoing standoff. The national president of the Union of Taxation Employees has opted not to provide any interviews and has indicated that negotiations are ongoing, and he does not wish to interfere with the ongoing discussions.