Health Canada the latest focus after 3,000 workers receive job notices
The federal government’s longsignalled downsizing of the public service is now firmly underway, with unions warning of a “Hunger Games”-style fight for jobs.
Health Canada has become the latest federal department to issue workforce adjustment notices, with more than 3,000 employees notified their jobs may be affected, according to CTV News.
Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada president Sean O’Reilly warned that deep workforce cuts will weaken the systems Canadians rely on.
“These cuts don’t just affect workers — this is health care, they affect every Canadian,” O’Reilly said in a statement. “These are the experts who make sure the medication in your cabinet is safe to take, the food in your fridge won’t make your family sick, and dangerous products are pulled off store shelves before they cause harm.”
Approximately 8,500 federal public servants in total received similar notices this week as part of the federal government’s move to cut 28,000 jobs from the public service over the next four years.
Aside from Health Canada, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada announced plans to eliminate hundreds of positions, while Shared Services Canada, Statistics Canada and other central agencies have already moved ahead with their own rounds of cuts.
Unions have reported that Global Affairs has been significantly hit. A total of 1,171 Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) members at the agency received affected notices, while the PIPSC said 477 of its members received notices. The Canadian Association of Professional Employees (CAPE) said on Friday that 746 of its members received notices.
Unions warn the way the cuts are being rolled out is fuelling anxiety and competition among workers. The current environment has been described as like the “Hunger Games” by O’Reilly, with employees forced to compete with colleagues for a shrinking pool of roles while external consultants continue to work alongside them.
Many workers are being offered buyouts, early retirement packages and voluntary departures, but others are engaging in a process called “alternation,” which allows civil servants to trade jobs. The system matches job seekers with employees exiting the civil service.
PSAC has more than 2,100 members using an online platform it created to help civil servants find these matches, while the Treasury Board launched its own internal platform last year.
Other unions have created tools to facilitate this process, but O’Reilly said some departments “don’t want to participate” in the jobmatching system. “It doesn't seem like there's a concerted effort to actually try to make sure that the alternation process works,” he told CTV.
