A meeting was held between labour and representatives of Canadian Blood Services (CBS) last week in Toronto.
CBS claims the organization of the future will require fewer people, and that they are caught in a financial squeeze by their provincial funders.
The meeting was attended by some 30 local union activists from NUPGE Components, including the MGEU.
But funding wasn't the only issue addressed at the national meeting. Management acknowledged that surveys they’ve done have indicated that they were not “leading in the way they should.”
Management also admitted that they had work to do in better communicating with staff, including involving frontline workers in the decision-making process.
Union representatives told the senior CBS executives that their organization was inconsistent in the way it handled labour relations, creating frustrations among staff and inefficiencies for the employer. Over the two day meeting union members talked about having to go through the grievance process again for issues that had been already resolved at arbitration, or simply dealing with a revolving door of managers who interpreted the collective agreement differently than their predecessors.
Steve Saysell, an experienced negotiator with OPSEU/NUPGE, said the union had offered labour relations training to both sides so that there would be an understanding of what the rules were, but the offer had been rebuffed.
Management also indicated that they are “behind the curve” in their labour relations, and that their practices “are not sophisticated enough.” They did also acknowledge that they wanted to see a renewed focus on the quality process, changing the corporate culture to allow people to speak up when they see something they feel isn’t right.