A brief peaceful protest was held today in downtown Moncton for federal correctional officers.
A group marched on the steps of their Administrative offices earlier today.
National President Jeff Wilkins says excessive discipline is one of the reasons behind their protests, “We’re here protesting at the regional headquarters in Moncton, for the excessive discipline that we’re seeing because we’re peacefully protesting. It’s a little bit ironic when we’ve been doing a campaign now for the last month. We’re covering our patches on our CSC patches inside of our workplace. And when our members were wearing them outside of the workplace, the Correctional Service decided to put them all under investigation and discipline them citing that it’s a health and safety concern. And this is the same department that pretty near refuses every work refusal that we’ve ever put that seriously jeopardizes the health and safety of our members.”
Over 40 Correctional officers protested while carrying signs, chanting and blowing horns.
“Our campaign is built on respect and the lack of respect that we’re being shown right now. Most specifically, when it comes to over disciplining when it comes to harassment cases that are being founded that are not being resolved. We’re creating the safe work environment for our membership. You know, we’re seeing workplace wellness assessments that are taking place across the country. There has been one at a Springhill in Nova Scotia.. There’s been one out of Nova institution in this region and Atlantic institution. And all these independent workplace assessments are finding that we have a toxic work environment and making certain recommendations on ways to move forward and we’re not seeing any progress forward. And those things are nearly three years old now. We’ve raised approximately 18 concerns with our commissioner of the CSC. There’s a refusal to move forward on any of these concerns. So we’re continuing our protests. And we’re here today because the Atlantic regional membership has been hit the hardest and the discipline that they’re facing.”
Wilkins says he met with the National President and the CSN Coordinator, François Ouellette, along with the Commissioner and Senior Deputy Commissioner in Ottawa on March 10th to discuss the many issues of discontent among the membership, but he believes nothing has been done to date.
(Photo: TDCB)
Jeff Wilkins
National President UCCO-SACC (Photo: TDCB)
(Photo: TDCB)
(Photo: TDCB)
