Last month, over 1,300 members in the Statistics Survey Operations (SSO) group transitioned to the Program and Administrative Services (PA) Treasury Board bargaining group.

All members that were part of the SSO group are now covered by the recently negotiated PA collective agreement. All issues, including outstanding issues prior to the transition, will be dealt with under the PA collective agreement going forward. This includes a review of the current structure of SSO locals and how best to integrate them into existing PA locals.

The Union of National Employees, PSAC’s component that represents workers at Statistics Canada, is working on this process and will communicate directly with locals as updates are available. UNE has also compiled a list of frequently asked questions regarding interviewer appointments and additional information about severance calculations, and plans to organize virtual townhall meetings to determine what is working well and what needs to be improved in the coming months.

The decision to integrate SSO members into the core public administration is an important one that fully recognizes SSO members as federal public service workers who deserve better terms and conditions of employment including fair wages, improved job security, and better benefits. 

Joining the PA group will result in a stronger collective agreement, more bargaining power as part of PSAC’s largest bargaining group and allow SSO members to apply internally to positions across the federal public service. 

The PA group includes over 100,000 federal government workers responsible for program administration, information services, communications, secretarial services, office equipment, administrative services, welfare programs, clerical functions and data processing.