u/PlantainAgitated6795

As some of you may have seen, we received an update from the bargaining group. The documents are quite long so I’ve summarized them for those who are interested.

Here are the main changes in the September 16, 2026 union and employer packages.

*NOTE* —> These are opening proposals—not agreed changes. Neither package includes a general wage increase percentage yet.

Union proposals
Shift premium: $2.25 → $5/hour for eligible hours between 16:00 and 08:00.

Additional MT overnight premium: $2.25 → $3/hour between 23:00 and 07:00.

Weekend premium: $2.25 → $5/hour. Combined MT weekend overnight premiums would rise from $6.25 to $13/hour.

Overtime: Double time for all OT, replacing the current mix of 1.5× and 2×.

MT holiday work: Double time for all hours worked.

OT meals: $12 → $30 per qualifying meal.

Vacation: Starting entitlement 15 → 20 days/year; at 17 years, 23 → 25 days; at 27 years, 27 → 30 days. Other milestones unchanged.

Personal leave: 2 → 5 days/year, removing the fixed five-working-day notice requirement.

Family leave: 5 → 10 days/year, with up to two days carried over and a maximum bank of 12 days. Add moving and pressing household needs as eligible uses.

Shift-worker sick credits: Keep the extra 1.25 hours/month, but remove annual expiry and the requirement to first use 112.5 sick hours.

Paid holidays: One additional holiday annually.
Banked compensation: Remove employer discretion over converting OT, callback, travel and MT holiday compensation into leave.

Other additions: Explicit remote callback coverage, removal of travel-pay caps, professional-development leave extended beyond PC employees, and qualifying caregiving EI benefits topped up to 93% of pay.

Employer proposals
Remove shift/weekend premiums from OT hours.
Make double time on second/subsequent days off conditional on also working the first day off.

Reduce short-notice shift-change protection from under five days to under two days, keeping the rate at 1.5×.
Exclude training/conference OT unless attendance is required by the employer.

Make family-care unpaid leave discretionary.
Require eight weeks’ notice for personal-needs and spousal-relocation unpaid leave, except urgent/unforeseeable circumstances.

Allow new premium/OT rates to take effect up to 180 days after signing. Salary changes and retro pay would generally have 180-day timelines, or 460 days for cases requiring manual intervention.

The employer also proposes replacing the negotiated workforce-adjustment appendix with the NJC directive and deleting the scientific-integrity memorandum.
All leave-day figures above use 7.5-hour days. This covers the main changes in these two packages; the union’s separate common-issues package isn’t included.

Some of these apply mostly to the MT group, but the leave is for the entire group.

THIS IS NOT AN EXHAUSTIVE LIST, just some highlights. Links to the full documents are below, read in depth if interested.

English: https://pipsc.ca/sp-group-bargaining-update-3/

French: https://pipsc.ca/fr/negociations-du-groupe-sp-compte-rendu-no-3/

For those of you PS workers that have the National Bank of Canada (NBOC) Public Service Special line of credit, what limits are you guys getting for that specific offer? The rates seem great but I want to see if it’s worth applying instead of using my higher rate RBC one.

I’ve been really wanting 4th Gen TRD sport, but I’m kinda waiting to be in a better financial position when I get my promotion next February. I also bought a new car in 2024 that I’d resell. I know it isn’t the right time to buy for me, but I really want to whenever I see one on the road 😩

If you were on the fence, why so and what made you pull the trigger? Are you happy with your decision in hindsight or would you have rather waited?

As part of the SP (Applied Science Patent), our contract expires September 30, 2026.

I’ve heard that unions can take quite a while to negotiate new contracts, even after the current one has expired. When can we realistically expect this process to be completed? Also, do different subgroups (BI vs. PC vs. MT) generally receive the same updates to pay increases, or are they negotiated separately?

I’m new to the PS, but I haven’t seen any relevant updates on the status of negotiations, and we’re now a little over a month away from the contract expiry date. That seems a bit bizarre to me. Why wouldn’t negotiations happen well ahead of the expiry date so that the new contract could be in effect immediately when the current one expires?

Please enlighten a newbie on how things work in the PS.

Hello,

Wonder if many people take advantage of National Bank of Canada’s Personal Flex Line of credit. For public service workers, a prime plus 0.75% rate seems pretty good opposed to most big banks and lenders.

I have a 30k unused RBC LoC from when I applied years ago but the rate is quite high (prime + 6.5%) so I’m thinking of trying to get one with NBOC.

Anyone who’s applied, is it similar to a run of the mill personal line of credit? How is the application process? Do they offer limits as high as RBC/TD?