Classification

• Author: Christopher Rootham
• Pages: 624-642

624

 

Classif‌ication

A. INTRODUCTION

This book is the only legal text that would dedicate an entire chapter

to job classif‌ications. This ref‌lects the importance of job classif‌ication

to employees in the federal public service. The second-largest federal

public service union — the Professional Institute of the Public Service

of Canada — was founded in 1920 in response to concerns about clas-

sif‌ication reform, in particular the hostility of some civil servants to

the American f‌irms that had been hired to survey the organization and

classif‌ication structure of the Canadian civil service. The larger bar-

gaining agents in the federal public service have dedicated classif‌ication

“experts” to assist their members in challenging the classif‌ication of

their jobs. Management also has its own classif‌ication “experts” to

review classif‌ication decisions and, when necessary, reclassify positions.

Employees of the federal public service are very concerned about their

job classif‌ication, hence the need for all of these experts.

Classif‌ication is important because the identity of an employee’s bar-

gaining agent, the level of pay for an employee, and their promotional

prospects depend on their classif‌ication. As discussed in Chapter5, bar-

gaining units in the federal public service typically follow classif‌ication

lines. Furthermore, the various collective agreements in the federal pub-

lic service contain dierent levels of pay for each classif‌ication level.

Finally, some positions in the federal public service require experience

at a particular classif‌ication level for a candidate to be eligible for that

Classif‌ication | 625

position. Therefore, classif‌ication can have a signif‌icant impact on an

employee’s career.

Classif‌ication in the federal public service has also been subject to

legislative control. The 1992 Public Service Reform Act required the

federal government to prepare new occupational groups.1 The impact of

this Act on the bargaining unit structure in the federal public service has

already been addressed;2 however, creating new occupational groups

required new job classif‌ications as well. Thus began what seemed like

an endless stream of classif‌ication reform.

While attempts to reform the public service classif‌ication system

date back to the mid-1980s, the f‌irst attempt at major reform began

in 1997 with the Universal Classif‌ication Standard (UCS) project. The

goal of this project was ostensibly to make the classif‌ication system

simpler and less burdensome and to reduce administrative costs. The

original design was to reform the classif‌ication system on a universal

basis applicable to all occupational groups, except the Executive Group.

There were two reasons for this plan. First, it was hoped that a common

approach to job measurement (one standard versus the seventy-two in

place in 1997) would greatly simplify the system, reduce the admin-

istrative burden on managers, and lower the administrative overhead

costs of maintaining the system. Second, a single classif‌ication standard

would facilitate the creation of a single corresponding pay structure.

Collapsing all of the occupational group pay structures into one struc-

ture also appeared to be the most promising way to ensure compliance

with the requirements of the Canadian Human Rights Act for equal pay

for work of equal value.

Despite these good intentions, the Treasury Board abandoned the

UCS project in 2002.3 It decided that a universal approach to classif‌ica-

tion would impair human resources. While the Public Service Human

Resources Management Agency of Canada maintained that the UCS

project provided a benef‌it to the public service, it is hard to escape the

conclusion that the public service wasted millions of dollars on fruitless

classif‌ication reform.

1 Public Service Reform Act, SC 1992, c 54, s 101.

2 Above in Chapter 6.

3 This was announced in a press release euphemistically called “Government

Moves Ahead with Classif‌ication Reform” (8 May 2002).