Does the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) treat term employees as second-class citizens, simply a cash cow to be milked for millions of dollars in annual dues but deprived of fair representation by Canada's largest federal public-service union?
 
Martin McGreal, a middle-aged Ottawa man from a family with deep union roots (PSAC even built and named a Housing Coop in Toronto after his mother in 1988), and who has worked in term and contract positions with the federal government for some time, believes so.
 
McGreal alleges that PSAC collects dues from term employees but, in return, does not properly defend them.
 
And he's going to court Monday morning in a quest to prove it.
 
McGreal is a reference librarian by training, with a master's degree from McGill University. He was jettisoned from a term proofreading position in the Publications Section at Elections Canada in late 2009, following a sham evaluation and a well-documented pattern of harassment.
 
PSAC then dropped his case for reinstatement. It washed its hands of him after three levels of internal grievance hearings.
 
Key players in the case include Larry Rousseau, the high-profile Regional Executive Vice President, National Capital Region, for PSAC, and Marc Mayrand, Chief Electoral Officer of Canada.
 
Documentation to be presented in evidence at a hearing before the Public Service Labour Relations Board (PSLRB) this week appears to show that McGreal's Labour Relations Officer at PSAC, Leslie Sanderson, simply stopped answering McGreal's emails after he sought proper explanations why crucial evidence he had provided his union was never used in his defence by PSAC.
 
Instead, Sanderson had presented management memos to more senior Elections Canada management, including Mayrand, during her grievance presentations.
 
Sanderson followed up by refusing to take McGreal's case before the PSLRB.
 
Now, however, McGreal has gotten there anyway.
 
He'll be appearing before the board early next week, in the West Tower at 240 Sparks St., for three days of hearings in the case of McGreal vs. Sanderson (PSAC).
 
He filed a meticulously-documented paper trail with his Board complaint. He's asking that PSAC be found guilty of unfair representation, and that it be ordered to stop treating terms as second-class members of PSAC.
 
In his complaint, McGreal asks that PSAC be obliged to respect Section 56 of the Canada Labour Code. (It reads: "A collective agreement entered into between a bargaining agent and an employer in respect of a bargaining unit is, subject to and for the purposes of this Part, binding on the bargaining agent, every employee in the bargaining unit and the employer.")
 
McGreal seeks a definitive ruling that the duty of a union to its members is binding - regardless of whether their status is term or indeterminate.
 
He also seeks enforcement of official Treasury Board policy that term employees have a right to be treated "fairly and responsibly".
 
Given the rarity of such individual cases making it to such a point and the issues raised, affecting a large and increasing proportion of federal public service workers (and PSAC bargaining unit members), McGreal believes that his matter will be an important test case.
 
As was reportedly said in this case to McGreal, are policies related to harassment really "...not worth the paper they are written on, although they may have some value if you are an indeterminate employee," or must they be adhered to?
 
These questions carry weight for many. The potential impact would reverberate well beyond PSAC's senior brass.
 
According to the Public Service Commission 2010-2011 Annual Report, there are 12,453 specified term positions – positions that generate substantial union dues – across the federal public service. Moreover,  the  2011-2012 Annual Report notes that their share of new hires relative to indeterminate employees continues to grow, with indeterminate hiring down by a whopping 26.3% in 2011-2012.
 
Are they already watching this test case?
 
If not, they certainly ought to.