Wednesday, February 05, 2020
Late last year, the Treasury Board Secretariat introduced a new Travel, Meal, and Hospitality Expenses Directive that took effect on January 1, 2020. The directive lays out the rules for these kinds of expenses for OPS Employees and other stakeholders.
Since then, AMAPCEO has been working to address three major concerns with the new policy:
- No increase in meal rates: The revised directive does not raise meal rates. Meal rates were last adjusted on January 1, 2017. We’ve long advocated for annual adjustments to keep pace with inflation and we will continue to do so.
- Use of ride-hailing services: The revised directive introduces Uber, Lyft, etc., as acceptable transportation expenses. Like many, we have serious concerns about these services. They rely on a large workforce of part-time, untrained drivers whom they exploit by misclassifying as contractors, rather than employees, to avoid paying fair compensation. AMAPCEO supports the unionization of the ride-hailing industry and until issues of training, regulation and fair compensation are addressed – we encourage members to take safer transportation methods.
- Excessive centralization of approvals: The revised meal directive continues the trend of centralizing approvals for certain expenses (business class train travel, for example) up to the Deputy Minister level. This is neither logical or efficient, and we believe the approvals process should be overhauled to provide oversight to the lowest level of management, who have more direct knowledge of these expenses.
AMAPCEO has successfully pressured the OPS Employer to make progressive changes to these policies before, and the union will continue to engage the Employer on this matter.