CRA ‘Confident’ It Can Find Compromise With Workers as Threat of Tax Season Strike Looms

The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) headquarters Connaught Building in Ottawa on Aug. 17, 2020. (The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick)

The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) says it expects a new collective agreement can be reached with its unionized workers through compromise on both sides before a potential strike affects tax season.

In a statement issued April 7, CRA said it is “committed to pursuing meaningful negotiations” with the Public Service Alliance of Canada-Union of Taxation Employees (PSAC-UTE) and is “confident” a deal can be negotiated even though it recognizes employees’ right to strike.

The annual deadline for income tax filing is normally April 30, but as the date falls on a Sunday this year, the deadline to file is extended to May 1. CRA says that it is “committed to being transparent with Canadians about impacts to services, should they happen,” and that it will publish more details and current wait times on its website.

According to the union, CRA’s employees “voted overwhelmingly” in favour of strike action. “Our members have sent a strong message to CRA,” PSAC national president Chris Aylward said in a statement on April 7. “Workers can’t wait, and we’re ready to show this government we won’t let workers fall behind.”

PSAC-UTE said the 35,000 tax workers it represents have been without a contract for more than a year and alleged that the government “still has major concessions on the table, and has yet to respond to the union’s wage proposals.”

Both sides agree that CRA workers will be in a legal strike position beginning April 14 and have agreed to meet and resume negotiations from April 17 to 20.

The return to collective bargaining, according to a CRA statement on March 31, follows a Feb. 14 recommendation of the Public Interest Commission report. The commission is part of the federal public sector labour relations legislation relating to the renewal of collective agreement between the union and CRA.

The commission’s report said that the bargaining history between the two parties “has been contentious, and in this round, unproductive.”

It said the current bargaining round began with a meeting on Jan. 11, 2022, and subsequently, despite 17 more meetings, which included 18 hours of face-to-face negotiations, both parties were only able to reach agreement on “four small matters leaving some 200 unresolved.”

The commission noted that after one year of bargaining, the parties were “no closer to a collective agreement.” The report said what was “especially notable” was the two parties’ “completely divergent views about the state of the Canadian economy.”

The union’s position is that the economy is “resilient and robust, federal debt loads were manageable, recovery was at hand.”

The government said that the COVID pandemic, inflation, and the war in Ukraine made a recession a “real possibility.”

Strike Vote

The union said on April 7 that the upcoming negotiations are a “final round.”

“Our members are falling further behind as inflation soars and wages are stuck in neutral,” said Marc Brière, national president of the UTE division of PSAC.

“We’ve negotiated in good faith, but our members have had enough. Our bills are mounting, and our families are feeling the pinch. And now, we’re going to show the government that workers won’t wait.”

According to the union, CRA employees processed almost 30 million applications for the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) and worked hard during the COVID pandemic.

CRA said that its priority is “reaching a deal at the bargaining table” but that it recognized the “right of employees to engage in strike activities.”

“We are confident that the parties will find many areas of potential compromise and trade-off, through honest discussions and concessions by both sides, during the upcoming negotiations,” said the tax agency.

Brière said going on strike was not its first choice, but with tax season looming, it had the “leverage” it needed “to reach a fair and decent contract.”

“And if we need to take job action to get the collective agreement our members deserve, that’s what we’re prepared to do,” said the UTE national president.