The first consultation on vacation leave for the VMPP staff took place on Friday, February 11th. At the meeting CUPW gave our proposals for improvements to schedules and to the bidding process. Management’s proposals and our suggested improvements were in a bulletin distributed last week. On February 18th Neil McClure, PC&R Manager, sent us an email refusing nearly all of our requests for improvements. For one schedule he agreed to part of our proposal.
Comparison to 2010 – 2011 Vacation Leave Schedules
The people on the following schedules will have fewer summer blocks available for bidding this year than they did last year:
|
Days:
|
S/L Mech (F/T) and O/S |
| Afternoons: | S/L Mech (F/T and P/T), O/S (F/T), RT& D, and Finals |
The people on the following schedules will have less choice when bidding this year compared to last year:
| Days: | S/L Mech (F/T), S/L Manual, and O/S |
| Afternoons: | S/L Mech (F/T), O/S (F/T), RT&D, and Registration |
| Graveyards: | O/S |
Re-Bid Improvement Proposal
At our first consultation meeting, CUPW proposed an important improvement to the re-bid process. Currently, staff must wait until April to re-bid their vacation weeks. It can often take months for all of the employees to drop their unwanted weeks and bid for better weeks. This is especially important for the employees with lower seniority in a work area. They often have to wait through months of re-bids to finally get better vacation weeks.
We suggested that the first re-bid take place immediately after the first three rounds of bidding, on the floor. Re-bid rules allow people to cancel any of their weeks (either Basic or Extra). And they are then allowed to bid for any weeks available, whether they were initially Basic or Extra weeks. In sum, all of the available blocks are pooled together and available for bid to everybody (by seniority). A re-bid on the floor would be conducted by the supervisors. They would take around the bid sheets and allow each person to cancel any weeks (either Basic or Extra) and then re-bid these weeks on either the Basic or Extra sheets themselves.
At our February 11th meeting, Mr. McClure said that he could not think of any reason to not go ahead with this. Mr. McClure even saw a possible reduction in work for his department during the monthly re-bids. His only concern was that the supervisors would screw it up. However, Mr. McClure’s initial positive reaction morphed into a NO within the week. He is now saying that it is too late to make this change this year. This is a bit much. Mr. McClure is himself responsible for the late start to the vacation leave consultations and vacation bidding. The floor re-bid would not take more than a couple of days to do since many people will not want to re-bid their weeks. Clear instructions in the order books and to the supervisors would have allowed the floor re-bid to proceed without confusion this year.
Vacation Leave Bidding Basics
Vacation Leave Entitlement
The number of weeks of vacation leave you are entitled to depends on your continuous service date. Your continuous service date is your date of hire at Canada Post without a break in service. For those of you who spent time as a temporary employee, your continuous service date is your first day of work, but you must have been continuously employed by CPC.
Employees who were hired to work as Christmas casuals for a few weeks, and then were re-hired as surge casuals months later, have had a break in service. This is why your continuous service date is the date you were hired as a surge casual. Your seniority date, though, can go back to the date you were last hired as a Christmas casual. For vacation leave, the number of weeks you’re entitled to take depends on your continuous service date. The order you bid in (who bids first, who bids second, etc.) depends on your seniority date.
Number of Weeks of Vacation Leave Entitlement for the 2011/2012 Vacation Year
| 7 Weeks: | Prior to and up to March 31, 1984 |
| 6 Weeks: | April 1, 1984 to March 31, 1991 |
| 5 Weeks: | April 1, 1991 to March 31, 1998 |
| 4 Weeks: | April 1, 1998 to March 31, 2005 |
| 3 Weeks: | April 1, 2005 to March 31, 2012 |
One of management’s contract demands is to eliminate the 7th week of vacation leave for everybody whose continuous service date is after March 31, 1984. This cutback would eliminate this benefit for most CUPW employees.
Posting of Seniority Dates and Continuous Service Dates
The seniority and continuous service dates for all employees have been posted. If an error was made, contact CUPW.
Employees Retiring between April 2011 and March 31, 2012
Employees who are retiring during the vacation year will NOT have to bid their entire entitlement. You need only bid the number of weeks you will earn.
Bidding Process
Regular Employees is entitled to at least 3 weeks of vacation. These first 3 weeks are called “Basic Weeks”. During the initial vacation bid, you can only bid your Basic Weeks on the BASIC WEEKS bidding sheet. Vacation bidding is done in “rounds”. In order to bid all of your 3 weeks during the first round, they must be consecutive weeks, for example, the 1st, 2nd and 3rd weeks of June. If you only want to bid 2 consecutive weeks, you must wait until everybody has bid and then bid for your 3rd week on the 2nd round. If you want to separate out all of your 3 weeks, you will have to wait until the 3rd round to bid your 3rd week. And lastly, you can also bid one week during the 1st round and two consecutive weeks during the 2nd round. The bidding of Extra Weeks is simpler: you can bid your weeks anywhere on the EXTRA WEEKS bidding sheets. The weeks do not have to be consecutive.
In Solidarity,
CUPW
db/CUPE-3338