Agenda Index City of Vancouver

DATE: July 16, 2001
Author: M.Zora/7666
RTS No. 02211
CC File No. 1360
CS&B: July 26, 2001

TO: Standing Committee on City Services and Budgets

FROM: General Manager, Human Resources Services
SUBJECT: Conversion of Temporary Full-Time CUPE 15 Positions

RECOMMENDATIONS:

The City Manager recommends approval of the foregoing.

Council approves the establishment of all regular full-time positions except where such authority has been delegated to the Park Board as part of their Global Budget Arrangement.

This report seeks Council approval to convert a number of existing temporary full-time positions falling within CUPE 15's jurisdiction to regular full-time status.

The City's "inside" CUPE Local 15 workforce consists of approximately 1381 regular full-time positions, 255 temporary full-time positions and depending on the

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season, anywhere from 1000-1300 auxiliary (casual) and part-time positions.

The necessity for the report arises out of a series of long outstanding grievances between the City and CUPE Local 15 with respect to the posting/non-posting of temporary full-time positions and/or their conversion to regular full-time status. These finally culminated in CUPE Local 15 filing a general policy grievance effective January 6, 1997. Although a number of initiatives were undertaken to try and resolve individual situations, the inability of the parties to agree on a number of core policy and collective agreement interpretation issues resulted in a continuing problem. As a result, CUPE Local 15 advanced the policy grievance to arbitration on October 7, 1999 and initial hearings on the matter were commenced on July 19, 2000. The arbitration was delayed due to the Year 2000 bargaining and the subsequent strike last year.

Following the strike, the parties met to try and case manage what was going to be a very complicated and difficult arbitration with a number of policy and evidentiary issues. The intent was to see if the parties could take a practical approach to narrow the issues, resolve individual situations and only refer core policy and collective agreement interpretation issues, that went unresolved, back to the arbitrator. It was hoped that this approach to problem-solving the matter would assist in rebuilding some of the relationship issues aggravated by the repetitious nature of the grievance issues.

A series of joint reviews between each of the Business Units, Human Resources and CUPE Local 15 representatives were scheduled. These were used to review the status and issues surrounding all temporary full-time positions and their current incumbents. These meetings have been very successful and it appears that all issues with respect to the status of temporary positions will have been resolved by the parties. Similar progress is being made with respect to the status of incumbents and it appears that there may only be a handful of core policy issues that will have to be referred back for arbitration. Once the policy issues are resolved and communicated clearly to the departmental managers this should also help minimize disputes of this nature in the future.

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DISCUSSION OF ISSUES

With respect to the conversion of temporary full-time positions to regular full-time status, the City is obligated under the CUPE Local 15 collective agreement to "examine temporary full-time positions at the end of six(6) months to ascertain
whether permanency is indicated, in which case the position will be posted in the usual way". While this does not obligate the City to make the conversion, it is clear from the joint review that this process has not been consistently followed. The review identified that there are a large number of temporary positions for which funding has been approved by Council as part of the base departmental budgets for years and for which there is on-going continuous work. The status of these positions has, however, not been amended over the years.

While failure to undertake the review and convert positions as appropriate does not normally affect the temporary incumbent's wages or benefits, it can adversely affect layoff, recall and bumping rights which are only accorded to regular incumbents.

The departments have now reviewed all temporary CUPE 15 positions as part of the previously mentioned joint process and identified those temporary positions which have been on the books for years and for which there is recognized funding available in the departmental budgets. Under normal circumstances, these positions should have been reviewed in accordance with the CUPE 15 collective agreement and brought to Council's attention, either through separate reports, or as part of previous budget processes. These fifty-three(53) positions are referenced in Appendix `A' and are recommended for conversion.

The departments and the budget office are undertaking to review whether or not some additional situations may exist amongst exempt staff or other bargaining unit positions and will report back to Council at a later date in order to clean up any other outstanding situations.

BUDGET ISSUES

There are no budget issues or costs associated with this report since costs are to be funded through a reduction in temporary help budgets.

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PERSONNEL IMPLICATIONS

There will be implications for staff that currently occupy these positions. Some will be immediately converted to regular full-time staff, some may have to go through an abbreviated competition process and some positions may have to be posted or reposted following the normal procedures outlined in the collective agreement. These matters are under active discussions with CUPE Local 15 and are close to being resolved.

SUMMARY

The City is currently involved in an arbitration with respect to temporary full-time positions in CUPE Local 15 jurisdiction. The parties have undertaken a joint review of all CUPE Local 15 temporary positions to determine which of those should be brought forward to Council for conversion to regular full-time status. The joint review process has been a positive exercise and has identified fifty-three(53) long-term temporary full-time positions for which there is existing budget funding and continuing full-time work requirements. The positions attached in Appendix `A' are recommended for conversion to regular full-time status.

This report has been provided to CUPE Local 15 and they report they are supportive of the recommendation.

Link to Appendix A

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