Daviau elected president of PIPSC

Former vice-president faces challenge of omnibus-bill changes

Members of The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada have elected a new president to lead the union as it faces the implementation of labour legislation that will diminish the power of unions and their bargaining clout at the negotiation table.

Debi Daviau, a longtime union vice-president, unseated Gary Corbett who headed PIPSC since 2009 and brought it into the broader labour movement with the historic decision to join the Canadian Labour Congress.

Six candidates ran for the job, but it was widely considered a three-way race among Daviau, Corbett and Steve Hindle, a former longtime PIPSC president. More than 10,000 members voted in the election, which ran five rounds before Daviau was declared the winner Thursday.

With Daviau at the helm, the two largest federal unions, PIPSC and the Public Service Alliance of Canada, are run by women. PSAC president Robyn Benson was elected last year.

Daviau takes on the job as the omnibus budget bill, which will transform collective bargaining in the public service, makes its way through Parliament.

It is expected to be passed soon. Relations between the Conservative government and federal unions have long been rocky, but they hit new lows when the government introduced sweeping changes to the Public Service Labour Relations Act without consulting labour, employers and other stakeholders.

The first big challenge will be how PIPSC and other unions deal with the new legislation when it is passed. That legislation rewrites the rules for collective bargaining and all but eliminates the right to strike and imposes significant restrictions on arbitration as a way to settle labour disputes.

The new legislation will be put to the test in 2014 when the next round of collective bargaining begins.

The government’s top priority will be getting rid of existing sick leave and disability benefits, and replacing them with a new short-term disability plan and a new long-term disability insurance plan.

That will mark the biggest concession federal unions will have been asked to make and is expected to provoke a bitter showdown.

Daviau began her working career in an Ottawa high-tech company before joining the government as a computer specialist. She is a longtime union activist who joined the union’s board of directors in 2005 and has been fulltime executive vice-president since 2010.

She ran on a campaign of “making better use of union dues” and refocusing the union’s strategy to meet the “changing needs of members” in the face of job cuts and steps to reduce pensions and take away sick leave.

PIPSC is the second-largest public service union and represents 60,000 professionals, from scientists to engineers. For years, the union shied away from traditional militant tactics and from teaming up with other unions.

The union has undergone a significant cultural shift over the years, becoming involved in campaigns protesting the government’s alleged attacks on labour and public services, and recently launching a campaign to better connect with grassroots members.

PIPSC was a key player in the campaign to stop the muzzling of federal scientists and recently released a major survey, The Big Chill, on the political interference in communication of federal science to the public.

It found scientists complained they had been asked to exclude or alter technical information in government documents, and others were prohibited from responding to media queries about their work.