As your Union, we have been hearing from you loud and clear regarding your workload and what some of you are experiencing.

Although we met with many levels of WCB leadership, lobbied politicians, strategized with our labour friends, supported workload campaigns, supported you one on one as best we could – it still hasn’t really improved for some of you and in fact some of you are in an even worse place.

We knew the CEU had to achieve Collective Agreement language enshrining a process that would support our members in reporting and seeing resolve to workload issues. This work began in prior rounds of bargaining, notably our 2019-2022 CA which required the employer to

• Understand and document the demands and complexities of the various jobs and duties at the Board, and the objective factors impacting workload.
• Inform affected employees, managers and directors regarding the above with the goal of equipping them to address workload issues as they arise and to provide recommendations, as appropriate.
• Monitor workload trends and factors affecting workload and ensure transparent communication with the Union, and the appropriate affected employees, regarding the work being done to resolve identified workload issues.

This allowed us to rely on statistical information and have informed talks around workload in the workplace rather than just saying there was or wasn’t an issue and spinning our wheels. That data gathered was then compelling enough to support us when we went back to the bargaining table in late fall 2022, where the CEU was successful in negotiating a workload complaint process, LOU B28 of the current Collective Agreement (which is now accessible on both WSN and CEU website) .

It includes the following language:

The [Joint Workload] Committee will develop an electronic form to support a new Systemic Workload Reporting Process (“SWRP”). The SWRP will support proactive documentation and discussion of systemic workload concerns in a structured, problem-solving manner.

The process to raise these systemic concerns will be as follows:

(a) Where employees raise systemic workload issues or concerns, they may do so with or without the assistance of a Union Representative.

(b) Employees will complete the SWRP form within thirty (30) days of their discussion with their excluded manager. The completed form will be forwarded to the manager for review.

(c) The manager will review the form and will have the ability to provide additional comments.

(d) The director or delegate will review the form and will have the ability to provide additional comments.

(e) Within thirty (30) days of submission by the employee, copies of the completed form will be provided to the employee, manager, director, and Co-chairs of the Committee.

The parties have recently reached agreement on the SWRP form content and have concluded testing of the online form. The SWRP form is anticipated to go live today on WSN. Thank you to all I&T Members and others who created, tested, and/or tweaked this new form!

If you are presently struggling with workload issues, please do not hesitate to meet with your Manager, with or without your CEU Steward, to start the Collective Agreement SWRP process. CEU Stewards recently received training by CEU Staff & Executive on both the new Workload Collective Agreement language and the online workload form, so that they may best support you.  The Steward in your jurisdiction can attend with you if you would like to meet with your Manager to raise/discuss your workload concerns and start the SWRP process. Following this meeting, if you find that your conversation with your Manager was fruitless and did not resolve your workload concern(s), you may submit a SWRP form online on WSN within 30 days of the meeting with your Manager. The entire SWRP process is designed to be a collaborative, problem-solving approach to address the overwhelming workload issues that our Members face daily.

In tangent with the ongoing work of the Joint Workload Committee, we hope that this new Workload tool empowers Members, with the support of the Union, to address their workload issues in a formal process, as needed.  All information collected in the SWRP forms and process will be captured by the Joint Committee Members (including CEU President, Laura Snow) for review, discussion, analysis, and formal reporting.  We sincerely hope that this additional Member-driven tool will help raise and resolve workload issues through a timely, collaborative, solutions-based approach.

If you have any questions about the new Workload language and SWRP Process, please contact the Steward in your area or a CEU Member on the Joint Workload Committee (Laura Snow; Kristy Child; Michael Hess; James Morrison; Mary Florence).

In Solidarity,

CEU Workload Committee Members – Laura Snow, CEU President, Kristy Child, Chief, Labour Relations and Operations, Michael Hess, CEU Treasurer, James Morrison, CEU Director, Mary Florence, Steward.