Seniority as it applies to the workplace is a concept that’s been around for as long as collective bargaining has existed as the primary means of bridging the gap between employers and employees.
It involves the fundamental recognition of employees who have put significant time and effort into an organization being able to arrive at working conditions best suited for them. A reward for continued service if you will, where an employee may have some influence over their working conditions.
Seniority also brings a measure of job security, another valuable aspect. When layoffs come, it’s more than likely the cuts will come from the bottom of the experience, or seniority, roster. Those would be your most recent hires, your rookies so to speak.
Seniority insulates workers from these kinds of things. It also prevents unscrupulous employers from laying off anyone they please, no matter the time spent with the organization, the kind of thing that can happen when a little bit of power goes to a person’s head in a big way.
Community Living Renfrew County South Executive Director Jennifer Lavallee wants to do away with seniority altogether. She wants to put workers with over 20 years experience back to working weekends after they’ve spent years attaining Monday to Friday shifts.
The question is, why?
What is the benefit? Does it save money somehow? Is it some sort of misguided “fairness” issue where all employees have the same rights and expectations for stable shifts regardless of the time they’ve put in?
There are only so many of those Monday-Friday shifts available. If all employees are suddenly entitled to them, who gets them? Upon what criteria if seniority is no longer in place? Do they go to employees who Jennifer is favouring at the moment for whatever reason?
Or is this a naked attempt to anger senior workers, forcing despair up[on them, perhaps forcing them to quit altogether? Part and parcel of the larger effort to beat down a union local affiliate?
Jennifer Lavallee: Union Buster. The merch possibilities are tempting.
I’m not necessarily saying that this is the case. I am saying that it does, unfortunately, look and sound like it.
When you say nothing at all, it creates a vacuum, and it’s been said that nature abhors a vacuum. In other words, if you’re strategy is to say nothing, then people will fill that space with all manner of commentary, theory, and even idle gossip. It’s far better to communicate your position clearly and then defend it, that is if the position is defendable in the first place. Those who hide behind silence generally don’t have a lot of confidence in their arguments.
If she responds at all, she’s probably going to come up with some pathetically lame reason that scheduling is a nightmare and the removal of seniority considerations makes the whole operation run in a more streamlined way. After all, efficiency is built right into the guiding principles articulated on the agency’s website, right there along with dignity and respect, two other notions that make that website and it’s fancy goal-stating a bit of a sham in the current context.
Which would be consistent in a way, because she’s probably the one that wrote up those so-called principles, or more accurately put, principles of convenience. Aspirations at best, but illusory in the light of day.
Scheduling? Like really?
First of all, workers on stable Monday-Friday shifts don’t need any scheduling, they’re already in place and assigned. Pretty much copy and paste work. In fact those parts of the scheduling document never get touched. They’re predictable, trusted, assured. That should make it easier for you. You could make a template around these workers.
Is it all government agencies that struggle with scheduling as such an CLRCS argument would suggest? Are there no managers at your level capable of handling staffing and scheduling for a workforce of far fewer than 100 workers.
It’s not like she doesn’t have any help.
If you look at that same website, you’ll see what appears to be a a bloated bureaucracy sucking away the critical funds needed for client care. CLRCS looks like a top-heavy organization with managers here, there, and everywhere directing God knows what traffic. The table scraps that trickle down don’t leave much for workers or clients. Surely somewhere in there, someone in there, has the wherewithal to figure out schedules, if this is, indeed, the issue.
Isn’t that their job? Isn’t that why they get paid as managers? Isn’t that why Jennifer herself is on the Sunshine List, and recipient of her own 10% raise?
An attack on seniority is an attack on a union, full-stop. It’s a frontal assault on one of the essential checks and balances on managerial abuse, and she wants to be rid of it because it’s inconvenient for her, or doesn’t suit her taste.
If seniority is to be eliminated, upon what criteria would staffing be based? Nepotism? Favouritism? There’s already word circulating that the composition of the Board of Directors itself has possibly been influenced by those types of things, although admittedly, that’s not something I’d be able to verify first-hand. But if so, is it the goal that we simply accept that practice at the worker level as well?
If this is the advice she’s getting, she should get better advice. And if this is her gambit alone, then that Board of Directors might need to start putting pressure on their executive director. And if the board is in her pocket, then perhaps the community might seek out ways and means to possibly re-construct that board so that it fulfills its mandate with the appearance of a greater degree of fidelity and integrity.
CLRCS has all the appearances of a small little empire, with the ED wearing the crown. Such a state of affairs is totally inconsistent with the sound administration of such an important service.
We, as community members and Ontario taxpayers, may need to apply greater scrutiny to this agency and to the way it’s run.
If only they would just start talking to their employees in good faith.
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