Strike vote - UTE-SEI Local 00014

Strike vote announcement from PSAC-UTE, January 10, 2023

There are a few very important steps to complete to make sure you are able to participate in the upcoming strike vote:

1. Make sure you are a member in good standing of PSAC-UTE.

If you have not registered with the union (people often do it during new hire orientation), or if you are not sure if you’ve registered, you need to complete a RAND card for PSAC. You can do that electronically, here.

When completing the application for membership the first four fields should be completed as follows:

PSAC ID: Please leave this field blank, a union card will follow in the mail.
Employer: Canada Revenue Agency in Dropdown.
Department: Auto-populates to Canada Revenue Agency
Local: 00014

All other information on the form is your own personal information plus your personal phone numbers. Please put your personal e-mail address, not your work e-mail address. Make sure to also click the box at the end of the page acknowledging that you’ll get an e-mail to your personal e-mail address that you’ll need to respond to via follow up email. You can then click “Submit”.

Once you’ve submitted your form, you will get an email from PSAC requesting your signature. Please make sure you respond to this email and provide the required signature. Your membership is not valid until this is done.

2. Create a login and password on the PSAC website.

Visit psacunion.ca/user/ to create your PSAC account access if you don’t already have one.

3. Make sure your contact information is up to date with PSAC and the local

a) Log in to your PSAC user account at psacunion.ca/user/ and ensure that your email and/or mailing address are up to date. Voting information can be sent to you by email, or in regular mail, whichever you prefer.

b) If you are not on the UTE Local 00014 email list and/or you are not sure if we have your current contact information, please submit this form so that we can ensure we have an accurate member database. We don’t sent a lot of email; but, this is a critical time for all of us to stay connected and work together to ensure we get a fair contract.

4. Register with PSAC-UTE to participate in the strike vote.

If, on the morning of January 10, 2023, you had a user account with PSAC with an up-to-date email address you should have received an email from communications@psac-afpc.vote with your voting credentials (a ballot number and a PIN). If you have this email, follow the link in it or click here to register for a strike vote session.

There has been some confusion among members who received an email announcing the strike vote this morning, that does not include any credentials. If you’ve signed up for bargaining updates, but don’t have a PSAC user id you’ll have to return to step 3 to create a PSAC user ID in order to get the credentials.

According to the PSAC site, once you’ve created an account with an email address, you should receive your ballot number and PIN within 48-72 hours.

Once you receive the ballot number and PIN, click here to register for a strike vote session. As of January 10, Toronto and Hamilton have only a virtual voting session, but we’ve heard that there will be in-person session(s) made available as well.

5. Get active!

The idea of going on strike can be scary, and intimidating. The last thing that anyone wants is to have to exercise our right to strike in order to get a fair contract out of CRA. The key is a resounding YES vote for a strike mandate — we need CRA to understand that if they don’t start treating us with the respect we deserve, we will walk out.

PSAC has online, self-paced “strike training” courses tailored for PSAC employees specifically, and for all Treasury Board employees (at CRA, we fall into both categories). It is worth your time to take at least one of these courses, so that you can learn why a strong strike mandate is the most effective way to prevent a strike.

Strike training:

Learn more about UTE:

Check out UTE’s Resources for Members page for information about why unions are important, our collective agreement, and the benefits of membership.

Show your support in other ways:

Download your UTE backgrounds for workplace Teams meetings and use them during your team meetings, townhalls, etc. Pro-tip: if you turn on your Teams video with your chosen background, and cover the actual laptop camera (a piece of masking tape works well, your UTE background will display during your meeting even if you choose to remain off-camera yourself.

6. Vote “YES” for a strike mandate!

A strong strike mandate is the only way we are going to get a fair deal from the employer. CRA has not tabled a wage proposal, despite having ours since July 2022. More recently, they’ve aligned themselves with the Treasury Board’s misguided and poorly planned “return to work” demands.

Throughout the pandemic, we heard about how “appreciated” we were. It’s time for them to offer us more than empty platitudes. It’s time for a fair contract, negotiated in good faith. We have been without a contract for over a year already. We can’t wait any longer.