Government Operations committee  Before closing, I'd like to thank this committee for its interest and concern in the issue of clients not getting paid efficiently, and of equal importance are the issues relating to compensation advisors, who are being held accountable for this situation unjustly. We further wa

Government Operations committee  Yes.

Government Operations committee  That's correct. We aren't given any points for responsibility, complexity and so on. We shouldn't even be classified AS-2s. That classification doesn't at all recognize the work we do. We've filed grievances, we've done everything, and that has resulted in absolutely nothing.

Government Operations committee  Yes, and, at the moment, our job description, which states what we do as classified AS-2 employees, is not—

Government Operations committee  I don't entirely agree. Of course, we might perhaps still have problems. There can always be problems, but our major problem is definitely classification. Until that's solved, we'll always have problems. People don't want to work in compensation, don't want to keep positions of

Government Operations committee  —two people in our section who are working right now, but there are not that many any more, because once they retire, with the present classification problem they don't want to come back. But I wanted to point out something. It takes two years to train somebody in compensation.

Government Operations committee  On-the-job training and courses at the Public Service Commission. So it takes two years before they are reclassified from an AS-1 to an AS-2 level.

Government Operations committee  No, not at all, and even this new process of recruiting is the same thing. It takes two years, and then they will be reclassified. But even with two years of training you can't function on your own. There are too many laws, too many cases, dead cases you've never had to do, visib

Government Operations committee  So if we're going to be stuck with all trainees—

Government Operations committee  I'll give you an example. At Treasury Board an AS-2 is paid $51,989 a year. An AS-5 is paid $72,919 a year. This is the maximum of each level I'm looking at. And right now the biggest problem is—and Treasury Board let this happen—Before, if we were under Treasury Board and you

Government Operations committee  If I look at a PE-3, it's $69,303, and that's of today, but a PE-4 is $77,050. And that was confirmed by a PE who worked on the UCS. He confirmed that if this had gone through, we would have been PE-4s.

Government Operations committee  In fact we have two retirees—

Government Operations committee  I know this is surprising to you, but most of us, the compensation advisors, the people I know, are very hard-working people. We care about giving excellent service. We don't believe in your calling this telephone line and getting a ticket number.

Government Operations committee  Yes. And I know employees.... I know a compensation advisor who works at PWGSC and she is working right now on specific actings, overtime for employees. She had this employee ask, “Could you prepare a pension estimate for me if I wish to retire in three months?” And she was going

Government Operations committee  I think it was 1965 or 1964 when we had our classification.