TIR Vehicle Compliance Group: Please attend meeting to discuss Violence in the Workplace Report – Wednesday, March 4th, 2020

Dear Members:

The Union and our members have been anxiously waiting for the results of the independent violence in the workplace assessment that was completed by ARETE. We heard from some members last week that a report was completed and that it was with your Employer.

As a result, the Union made inquiries with the Public Service Commission to see if this report was completed. If so, when or if the Employer would be releasing it to the Union and our members. We heard from your Employer on Tuesday, February 25th, 2020 that the report was concluded and that they were meeting with staff on Friday (today).

The Employer agreed to provide a copy of the report to the Union if it could be held in confidence until the Employer met with staff. In addition, the Employer advised the Union’s copy would have some information redacted due to confidentiality.

We accepted the Employer’s terms in order to secure a copy of the report and to foster good employee relations. We obtained a copy of the redacted report on February 26th.

We are outlining this information to you because it has been reported that in your meeting today, the Employer wrongly stated the Union had a copy of the report for a week and that the Union had agreed to the redaction of certain information in the copies of the report provided to staff.

To be clear, the Union DID NOT agree to any redaction and the Union was only provided a copy of the report two days ago. For your Employer to state we had the report for a week and that we agreed to reacting information is misleading, untrue and certainly does not foster good employee relations.

We continue to review and analyze the report and have scheduled a meeting in order to meet with you to discuss the conclusions and recommendations found in it. At the meeting, we will also be discussing what our next steps will be, if any.

The Union has concerns with the report including, the assessor not providing a methodology, lack of in depth analysis, missing information on risk matrix, no interviews or discussions with stakeholders and law enforcement, and lack of recommendations to specifically mitigate the identified moderate violence and risk to staff, just to name a few.

Paul Cormier, OHS Officer, and Dustin Rioux, Employee Relations Officer, would like to meet with you:

Date: Wednesday, March 4th, 2020

Time: 5:30 p.m.

Location: NSGEU Office, 120 Esplande Street, Truro

Travel expenses (mileage) will be paid in accordance with NSGEU’s travel policy.

Thank you!