Benson tells Treasury Board to get moving on updating classification standards

Progress on the development of new classification standards for the Programme Administration (PA) group has been stalled since last July. 

“There has been a lot of talk recently about the need to modernize the federal public service,” says PSAC national president Robyn Benson.  “Developing modern, pay equity compliant classification standards throughout the federal public service must be a priority.”

Most of the existing classification standards were written in 1967, well before personal computers, smart phones, wireless technology and many other innovations.

Benson has asked the Chief Human Resources Officer to provide the union with a concrete plan and firm timelines for the completion of the work for the PA group.  PSAC estimates it will take at least another two years to do a decent job of developing, writing, testing and rating jobs under new standards.

Treasury Board's proposed new model for the PA group

In 2008, PSAC was the first union to negotiate a Memorandum of Understanding committing Treasury Board and the union to meaningful consultation on occupational group structure and classification reform.

Significant progress was made between 2010 and early 2012.  Treasury Board Secretariat proposed a new model that would replace the existing PA group and all its individual classifications with three new occupational groups:

• the Program and Services Development and Delivery Group (RL)
• the Program and Services Support Group (RS) and
• the Rehabilitation and Reintegration Group (RP).

While opposed to a number of aspects of the model, the PSAC has consistently called upon TBS to move ahead with the process.

The review of the TC group is underway

The latest round of consultation involves looking at TC groups at the Department of National Defense and will continue in the near future with several other departments containing large numbers of TC members including DFO, HRSDC, CGC, Agriculture and DOE.

Consultation started in 2012 with PSAC and departmental representatives looking at the technical inspection role at Transport Canada and the Transportation Safety Board. 

Other groups are part of the plan

There is agreement that there will be a review of the classifications in all of the PSAC Treasury Board groups.  The union had pushed for the TC group to be next in line after the PA group because of chronic problems related to the classification levels of that group.

In 2007, new standards were adopted for the Border Services (FB) group.  The new SP standard for PSAC members at the Canada Revenue Agency was introduced in 2008.