The Negotiations Committee and its Joint Compensation Working Group are very pleased to announce that the expert’s decision on whether or not the recently agreed-to contextual information should be considered by the compensation experts in relation to their internal relativity study has been delivered and it is favorable to the AJC on all fronts. You can read the decision here.

As you will recall, when our last collective agreement was settled, the AJC and Treasury Board agreed to jointly carry out two pay studies, an internal relativity study and an external pay comparability study.

The AJC concluded that it had reached an impasse with the employer over the appropriate use of the contextual information document for the internal relativity study.  The AJC decided to seek a decision on the issue from the independent expert agreed upon by the parties in accordance with the MOU for the joint pay studies. And as noted in the correction we issued on October 20^th, the expert promised to have her decision to us by October 27th, and she did so. This win is significant.  It means that both internal and external studies can now move forward and should be completed in the coming months. Treasury Board no longer has any excuses to further delay the work that we anticipate will result in well-deserved market adjustments dating back to 2018 with compounded increases every year thereafter to May 9, 2022. 

Should the results of the studies be favorable to the AJC as we hope, and the parties are unable to jointly agree on the value of a market adjustment, the parties shall appoint an arbitrator by mutual agreement.   The arbitrator’s decision shall be binding.  Any market adjustment increases in LP pay will, as outlined above, be retroactive to May 2018. The AJC is first federal union to undertake joint studies of this kind with the Employer.

We share members’ concerns about inflation and the impact it is having on you, our members.  This and membership input on bargaining priorities will be top of mind for the Negotiations Committee in determining the AJC’s overall bargaining strategy.  For now, however, our focus is to get a baseline rate of pay once the market adjustment has been secured before embarking on a discussion regarding economic increases for 2022 and future years.  We encourage you all to reach out to your regional GC representative if you have further questions.

In other but related news, we have recently updated our Collective Bargaining section of the AJC website and have added a History section that gives a precise timeline of all prior negotiations between the AJC and the Employer. We want to assure our members that the AJC continues to engage with the Employer for increased wages and better working conditions for all our members.  We have never stopped.  We understand that some of you feel that the next round of bargaining should have commenced by now.  While the progress has been slower than we might have liked on account of TB’s various delay tactics and lack of resources to federal collective bargaining, generally, our perseverance and the resulting decision, demonstrates that our work is paying off.  We now find ourselves in the most optimal of positions to advance your interests to securing a market adjustment, which we have reason to believe could be significant relative to the prior economic increases you already received.   These retroactive market adjustments will benefit all LPs who were on strength at any time during the relevant period. 

To be clear, market adjustments are to be distinguished from traditional economic increases granted by this employer that in recent years, have fluctuated somewhere between 1 and 2.5% per year.  You deserve more.  We submit to you that despite not yet having issued a notice to bargain in the context of this latest round, our bargaining efforts have been ongoing albeit in an alternative forum, i.e. via the unprecedented joint compensation studies forum. 

For more information on the Negotiations Committee's mandate, please refer to the Terms of Reference.  Should you have questions on the bargaining process, please contact your regional Governing Council representative.