Commissionaires picket CFB Kingston for sick
leave
Posted on September 2, 2015 in PSAC, sick leave
By Doug Nesbitt
It was an unfamiliar site at a Canadian Forces Base, but a dozen Commissionaires staged an info
picket at the entrance to CFB Kingston and the Royal Military College on early
Monday morning, August 31.
info picket leaflet
The Commissionaires, with support of a couple PSAC Local 901 members and the local Kingston
and Islands NDP candidate Daniel Beals, handed out flyers outlining their struggle with the Corps of
Commissionaires for a fair sick leave program. And to drive the point home, they handed motorists
their current sick leave plan: a two ounce bottle of hand sanitizer!
“We’re trying to get them to listen to us and hopefully they’ll step up to the table,” explains Richard
Deacon, a Commissionaire and president of PSAC Local 818.
“We’re in the middle of conciliation and we’re trying to get the employer to talk our key issues,
which is of course sick leave, and they don’t want to talk those issues right now.”
The 82 members of PSAC Local 818 started bargaining with the Kingston Division of
Commissionaires in February 2015, but the employer broke off negotiations and filed for conciliation
in March. Without a contract since June 2014, the Corps of Commissionaires refuses to engage them
on the issue of sick leave, even as most of the workers make around $13/hour. The Corps is a nonprofit and has told the Kingston Whig-Standard they can’t afford more benefits. Thousands of
Commissionaires work as security guards at federal government buildings and facilities.
The Corps of Commissionaires employs about 20,000 people in Canada and is the largest employer
of veterans and claims to be the largest security company in the country. The Corps was first
established in Britain to provide employment for veterans when the world was rocked by economic
and political turmoil in the post-war 1920s.
Getting a good response: Leafleting at CFB
Kingston
“We’re not young guys anymore,” explains Robert Mitchell, one of the older Commissionaires
handing out flyers at the RMC entrance. “If they can pay for the office [workers’] sick leave, they
can pay us.”
Like most of the local’s 82 members, Robert Mitchell is a veteran. He’s been a Commissionaire for
17 years but in recent years he’s been part of the wave of organizing drives. Before moving to
Kingston, he was stationed in Sudbury where he and his colleagues formed a union only a few years
ago. Before they were unionized, Mitchell only had two weeks vacation despite more than a decade
on the job. Now he has three weeks: a modest but important gain for a young union local. And with
the union, he is no longer paying the $300-$400 for a uniform and having the costs clawed back on
his paycheque. Sick leave is the next step for Commissionaires in Kingston.
“Our members are mostly an older group,” says
Deacon. “We’re retired members from the military and currently we don’t have sick days in our
contract, and if you take a day off you gotta take it off without pay.”
Deacon says the Commissionaires of PSAC Local 818 are looking for solidarity and support:
“If other Commissionaires have sick leave, please put the word in to our Corps here in Kingston. Let
them know that we deserve the sick days and fight for us. That’s all we ask.”
To contact the Corps of Commissionaires to tell them to bargain a fair contract, please contact Joanne
Steacy, Director of Human Resources, Kingston Corps of Commissionaires:
jsteacy@thecommissionaires.com 613-634-4432
Visit the PSAC Local 818 website.