Unifor ACL CIF Update – May 30, 2014

The Common Interest Forum (CIF) met from May 13-15, 2014 in St. John’s. Below is a summary of our discussions.

1.  Negotiations: The current collective agreement expires December 31, 2014. The CIF group used the Interest Based Negotiation (IBN) process to determine the elements and timing of negotiating a new contract. We aim to have a signed agreement by the end of November with voting and results completed by mid-December. Shortly after the agreement is distributed, we plan to have a live stream Q & A where members will have an opportunity to ask questions about the agreement to all members of CIF, both union and management. Face to face ratification meetings will be held on company time and the vote will take place at these meetings. There will be no advance voting. Conducting the vote at the meetings, will allow members to get a full, accurate explanation of the agreement before casting their ballot. It is our intention to have all the Unifor ACL Executive present at the meetings in Charlottetown, Halifax, St. John’s & Saint John.  

CIF meetings, going forward, will have a single focus on negotiations until an agreement is signed. A revised CIF schedule is below. In addition to these dates, there will be several sub-committees of CIF working on various Bargaining Issues in between CIF meetings. These sub-committees will do additional work on specific issues and bring back their findings &/or suggestions to the full CIF for further discussion and final decision.

The revised CIF schedule is as follows:

June 25 – 27, 2014

August 18 – 22, 2014

Sept 29 – Oct 3, 2014

October 6 – 9, 2014

Nov 17 – 21, 2014

2. Job Evaluation: A separate communication addressing the Job Evaluation Project was e-mailed to all members on May 16, 2014. You can view the bulletin at www.unifor-acl.ca

3.  Business Update: Fred Crooks reported that the May 1, 2014 Annual General Meeting went quite well. Analysts are encouraged by continued Fibre expansion and cost management. The share price is over $28.00 which is approaching a 12 month high. A goal has been set to pass 1 million homes with Fibre this year.

Purchase of Ontera:In April, 2014, Bell Aliant announced that it was purchasing Ontera, the telecommunications division of the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission (ONTC). The company believes this was a good acquisition for Bell Aliant. It was within the Bell Aliant territory and they have 2200 kms of fibre already in place. There are 126 employees, of which 93 are unionized (84-steelworkers; 9 ONTC-Unifor).

Regulatory Review – CRTC (Canadian Radio-television & Telecommunications Commission):

The CRTC is getting ready to review the regulatory framework for wholesale services in Canada. The commission will determine if the telcos & 4 major cable companies will continue to provide their competitors access to their DSL network in order to sell it to their customers. They will also ascertain if platforms such as FibreOp will be opened up to Bell Aliant’s competitors to enable them to sell FibreOp Services to their customers. The competitive company would have to pay Bell Aliant for the use of their FibreOp equipment. The company filed a written submission to the CRTC in January, 2014 with a position that competitors should not be allowed access to their FibreOp network. There will be a public hearing in the fall of 2014 and a decision is expected early in 2015.  

4.  Fibre Update

There will be an additional 200,000 homes passed, which will be a total of 1 million homes passed by the end of 2014. Most of that build will be in Quebec. In Atlantic, there will be another 8,000-10,000 more homes passed this year. FibreOp is going to some smaller communities based on marketing numbers.

5.  Cable Techs/CST: There was discussion on temporary transfers of Cable Techs (splicing) to CST while contractors are hired to do the Cable work. The union will continue having discussions with the company on this issue.  

6.  Home Security: The company is considering contracting out this work because it has not been able to generate enough sales of this product to, in their view, keep it as a core piece of work for our Technicians. The union would like to see this piece of work grow as it has at Sasktel, where all the home security work is done by their technicians and it has been quite successful. After some discussion, it was agreed that the company will try to grow the Home Security part of the business before resorting to contracting out by starting a trial which will see 4 technicians (in Halifax) do primarily home security work. The company will also look into an employee discount that should generate some new installs.    

7.  Ratios / Rate Numbers: The company reported on the various ratios & rate numbers:

• Contractor FTE’s Update: The target for contractor numbers within the 10 cities is 90 FTE’s by December 31^st, 2014. The contractor number is currently 99 FTE’s which was driven by overtime. It was a temporary spike because of the number of storms earlier this year.

• Rural Ratio Update:The rural ratio between employees doing CST, BST, NT or CT repair work outside of the 10 cities and contractor FTE’s is 38:1 which is well above the target of 18:1. (18 Bell Aliant Employees for every one contractor)

• Pool Ratio: The Pool ratio is set at a maximum of 50% of the combined # of CSTs with reporting centres in the ten cities. The Pool ratio is currently at 25%.

• Retirement Offer Replacement Rate:The replacement rate is over 80% which is better than the target of 78%.

8.  CSR’s Supporting Contractors: The union expressed concern that CSR Mentors are supporting the contractors who are doing their work. The union does not support the continued use of contractors with less reliance on bargaining unit CSR’s.

Helena Cain explained the scenario.

• There are 163 CSR’s in the bargaining unit;
• 19 of those 163 are on some sort of leave;
• There is an overlap in the CSR work that is within the bargaining unit & contracted out;
• Work Order Accuracy checks orders for both bargaining unit and contractor reps.
• Work has been moved from the Customer Solutions Group (CSG) to a contractor while care calls have been brought back into the bargaining unit for the former CSG reps.
• Accounts Receivable Management (ARM) is now contracted out.
• ARM Mentor remains on PEI and they support the contractor who is doing ARM work.
• There are 30 other Mentor CSR’s (21 in Halifax; 9 in Mount Pearl).
• Mount Pearl has 20 CSR’s between Mentors and Work Order Accuracy who support Bell Aliant employees as well as contractors.
• The contracting company, Wipro, will do all the back end provisioning for the door – door reps and in-store orders.
• There is a Mentor team at Wipro and CST’s now call them for questions on order provisioning.

9.  Contact Centre Update: Call volumes dropped during the Olympics but with a March sales promotion calling has now increased and is stabilized.   Skycreek scores are good. Sales programs will continue throughout the year to drive call volumes. There was some discussion on CSRs being moved from one queue to another with little or no notice. Targets and Key Performance Indicators are different in different queues so there is concern that appropriate adjustments to targets aren’t being done. Helena Cain assured that even though it is difficult to adjust for a few hours, they will look at process to adjust for the different KPI’s and ensure CSR performance reflects this.

10. Joint Consultative Update:   The last Joint Consultative Meeting was held on April 28, 2014 in St. John’s, NL. In addition to the regular updates on CIF, Fibre, Contact Centre, Excessive Hours of Work Trending, Systems Performance & Finance, issues discussed were: a) Planned New Attendance Support System; b) Exclusive French Agent in Telesales; c) Mobility Concessions & Backdating; d) Update on Clear Route; e) Problems with Remote Call Monitoring Device; f) Pension Beneficiary Form; g) FibreOp Stock; h) United Way; i) Small Business Fibre-Done by CST; j) Bank Time Committee; k) Ontera; l) Estimated Work Times; m) Interim Review Timing; n) Training Issues; o) Company’s Measurement Strategy for all Classifications; p) Term Tech Reviews; q) Respectful Workplace Policy.

11.  IBN Training Update: There has been 17 sessions covering 260 people and there is still a huge demand for more employees to participate. The surveys collected indicated that 100% of participants would recommend attending IBN training to their peers. The co-facilitators report that they can see a difference when employees come in to when they leave. They have a better understanding of the IBN Process and the labour relations climate in the company today. While there are only 3 more sessions scheduled, there is a commitment to continue them between bargaining sessions and will be further discussed at the next meeting.

In solidarity,

     Penny Fawcett                               Bobby MacDonald                  Lynn Briggs

     Steve Howlett                                Mary Croke                           Joyclin Coates

Click Here for print version of bulletin