Increases in wages in each year of deal: CAPE
The Canadian Association of Professional Employees (CAPE) announced that the Library of Parliament (LoP) group in Ottawa, voted in favour of a new collective agreement on July 29.
About 94 per cent voted in favour of the agreement, says the union, which will benefit 115 employees.
The tentative agreement was reached with the Library of Parliament on July 12, 2019 and was put to the vote shortly thereafter. The agreement brings significant improvements to the LoP collective agreement, refining benefits in areas such as pay, parental leave, compassionate-care leave, overtime, grievance procedure, authorship and telework, says CAPE.
“This deal was hard fought and the product of months of intense work on the part of our bargaining team, which deserve to be fully thanked and acknowledge for this positive outcome,” says Greg Phillips, CAPE president.
General highlights of the agreement include pay adjustments of two per cent in 2019, 2020 and 2021, says the union.
In addition, the parties have agreed to develop a pre-retirement leave transition policy for employees who are interested, said CAPE.
Other improvements include a broader definition of family for different types of leave, new language for overtime that will allow any amount of earned (but unused compensatory-leave credits) to be paid to the employees at their request, provisions regarding telework, travel and authorship, improvements to compassionate care leave where an employee will now be able to take leave without pay while in receipt of Employment Insurance Compassionate Care Benefits, Family Caregiver Benefits and Family Caregiver Benefits for Children and a new informal dispute resolution mechanism where the parties now recognize the benefit of using informal mechanisms to solve disputes where possible and may seek access to a new dispute resolution procedure as outlined, says the union.
