scos said:
Speaking of "Pure nonsense"... The "identical jobs" ARE identical jobs. The only difference is one person is doing it in the Ottawa VO and another might be doing it in Singapore. Same duties, same responsibilities, same title, so it should be the same scale. But the scales are not the same.
And while the work loads may not have changed in your mind they have in the real world. For instance the Buffalo VO was closed and had the excess work moved to Ottawa. And Seoul was closed and had its cases moved to Manila. There has been downsizing and closures across the whole organization with no new hiring to pick up the slack. And no new contract with the employees who are getting swamped by all this.
But hey, the people who do the work are wrong, the newspapers are wrong, in fact even the CIC bulletins that announce the closures are wrong. YOU know best.
They aren't identical jobs. Actually go and read the PAFSO release entitled "Why is Canada's Foreign Service on Strike?"
You'll see lines such as this:
"compared to other federal professionals performing similar or identical work." - Yes it does say identical. It also says other "Federal Professionals" performing "similar" work i.e not the same.
"These include economists, commerce officers, policy analysts, and lawyers." - This is where they provide context to the above. Totally different workers with different titles and expertise who negotiate their wages separately as they aren't in the FS or covered by PAFSO.
"Often these employees work right next to us in neighbouring cubicles" - translated: "They just happen to be nearby so if they get paid more, we want what they get paid"
"The FS group is simply looking to catch up to what these workers have been granted in their own contract negotiations with Treasury Board." - More confirmation that those getting paid differently are so paid because they negotiated different contracts, at different times, likely through completely different unions.
"At the same time, these other workers don't face the same personal or career challenges that we do" - More differentiation. Sounds like they're doing a different job to me. What do you think?
You mention 2 visa offices. Ottawa and Manila. Ottawa being relatively new and experimental makes it difficult to get accurate comparisons. For Manila, however, we can. Let's take a look at the actual figures. As this is the FC forum I'd imagine most of us are interested in FC applications but I've included the raw totals too.
Manila 2012
26,160 persons processed - 92% approval - median time
14 months
3,205 Spouses, Partners, Children - median time
7 months
2,816 Parents/Grandparents - median time
30 months
Manila 2011
29,048 persons processed - 89% approval - median time
11 months
3,077 Spouses, Partners, Children - median time
4 months
988 Parents/Grandparents - median time
34 months
As you can see the number of Spouse, Partner, Children applications is similar in the most recent years. The difference is it took far longer to process them in 2012. They did manage to process a big spike in Parents/Grandparents applications however showing what can be done.
You can also see that, counting all streams, Manila actually processed LESS applications in 2012 than it did in 2011. Again the only difference is it took longer to process these fewer cases overall.
London is rather messy due to a massive spike in Skilled Worker applications but the number of FC cases is, again, very similar in each of the two years. As this is where I'm being processed I'll include its figures.
London 2012
38,799 persons processed - 48% approval - median time
25 months
1,389 Spouses, Partners, Children - median time
6 months
137 Parents/Grandparents - median time
44 months
London 2011
24,457 persons processed - 82% approval - median time 26 months
1,582 Spouses, Partners, Children approved - median time 4 months
155 Parents/Grandparents - median time 11 months
You can see that, again, despite a big rise in the number of overall applications (and a huge drop in approval rate) the number of FC applications is less in 2012 than 2011. The only difference? You know the story. Median processing times up and through the roof for the Parents/Grandparents. 4 months in 2011 to 6 months in 2012. I'd suspect that 6 months will seem exceptionally fast when the full 2013 figures are tabulated.
I just look at the facts and the figures. That's what forms my opinion. What has been forming yours?
