Gains for Both Units

The tentative collective agreements contain gains that apply to both the RSMC and Urban bargaining units. These were listed in Bulletin #75 in point form. Below is a more detailed summary of some of these improvements.

Health and Dental Plans

The annual maximum payable for major dental services has been increased from $1500.00 to $2,000.00. These services are covered at up to 70%. This gain will impact all members who are covered by the dental plan.

The Dental Fee guide will be a one year lag and updated each year on January 1. For RSMCs, this is the same language with new dates. For Urban, it changes the implementation of the new fee guide from April 1 to January 1 of each year.

The Extended Health Care Plan (EHCP) has been improved. The coverage for hearing aids has been doubled to $1,000.00 every five years and out of country medical coverage has increased from $100,000 to $250,000.

Short Term Disability Program

We negotiated several improvements to the Short Term Disability Program (STDP) that will benefit all regular employees in both bargaining units. We maintained our position that we wanted the Urban sick leave benefits reinstated and applied to the RSMCs as well, refusing to discuss the STDP. It became clear that we would not achieve this demand without it becoming a strike issue.  Our mandate was changed by our National Executive Board and we then began discussions on improvements to the STDP.

We now have the full STDP language in the RSMC agreement. Both collective agreements contain improvements in the final appeal process and the definitions of “accident” and “hospitalization” are now protected. This will increase the number of claims that are initially accepted, therefore reducing the number of appeals. Any recovery of an overpayment related to the STDP is now limited to 10% of each pay. Canada Post is also prevented from making any unilateral changes to the STDP policy document.

Technology and Human Rights

We negotiated language that protects us from discipline or individual measurement based on technology such as GPS. There are improvements to our Human Rights protections with the addition of gender identity and expression in both collective agreements.