Mr. Chairman, I thank the Minister for that. I think it’d be a useful tool. Some of my colleagues have called some…. Not all workplace environments in the government are toxic, but some of them out there are toxic. People are having to access sick leave and disability leave and whatnot in greater numbers than I can ever remember. I think it’s a systemic problem. If it’s management or if it’s…. The finger has to be pointed somewhere, and ultimately someone has to be accountable for the increased occurrences in stress leave, disability leave and extended medical leave. So I’ll look forward to that report.
The other question I had was in terms of grievances. I know some employees out there who have been waiting in excess of two years to get a grievance heard and a decision rendered. To me, that’s really not acceptable. I want to ask the Minister how many grievances there are and what is an acceptable time frame to have those dealt with accordingly.
Mr. Chair, there are presently 242 outstanding grievances. I think a large part of the problem is that the employees have been filing grievances at the highest level. There’s no opportunity to resolve grievances when they’re filed at the third level, so it all has to be handled through arbitration. As such, it takes time and is something we’ll have to work with the union on to try to bring this down to a manageable level. The union has indicated they’re prepared to spend time to bring the numbers down.
Mr. Chairman, I’d like to thank the Minister for that and would encourage him to keep the dialogue going with the UNW and the other unions to ensure that grievances are dealt with in a timely fashion.
I’d like to ask the Minister: are there guidelines in place for dealing with grievances? Is there a policy where you would deem two years an excessive length of time for folks to wait to get a grievance dealt with? Should we set up at least some guidelines or some standards that we judge ourselves by? Are there any in place already?
There are guidelines, but they’re generally more along the lines of first-, second-, third-level grievances. The first level should be handled right at the local workplace: sort it out there, and if it can’t be resolved there, it gets picked up. I think if we’re going to have timelines, it should be based on the realistic opportunity to reduce the number of grievances. If we have 250 outstanding grievances and they can only resolve them through arbitration, we only have so many arbitration officers. The union has agreed to set aside one week of every month up until the end of 2009 to deal with arbitrations. I don’t know how long it takes to resolve an arbitration. Assuming one week for arbitration, depending on the number of arbitrations…. Unless we could have some control over the work, it would be difficult to set a timeline on it.
