Some of you may have noticed recently that the DGC is assisting productions on follow up with residency documents. What the what? Why is this happening?

Simply put, we need to. Residency documents were hugely important to the Employers during the last round of bargaining. The significance of providing residency information cannot be overstated.

The obligation to provide residency documents was already in Article 27.11 of the Collective Agreement. By the end of bargaining, we agreed to the following addition:

"Should the Employer inform an Employee and the Union that the Employee has failed to furnish appropriate residency information consistent with the requirements of this Article 27.11, the Employee shall have two (2) business days within which to provide the required information to the Employer. Should the Employee fail to do so within that time period, the Employer may terminate the Employee and the Employee shall not be entitled to severance or replacement pay. Should the Employer instead elect to retain the Employee, then the Employee shall only be entitled to severance or replacement pay, if eligible for the same, if the Employee has provided the required residency information to the Employer by the date of replacement or layoff."

Also added was the following:

"Effective October 1, 2018, the Employer shall notify the Union of the name of any Employee who was hired on a daily basis and failed to furnish appropriate residency information consistent with the requirements of this Article 27.11 within the period prescribed above. Upon such notice, that Employee shall be ineligible to be placed on any availability list until that Employee has provided the required information to the Employer." 

Some productions have already begun providing us with names of both Members and Non-Members working under our contract who haven't submitted residency information. To preserve your replacement/layoff pay and ability to list on avails lists, we've begun following up to get residency information to the Employers, and will continue to do so as this section of Article 27.11 comes into effect next week.

There is some good news on the horizon! The Guild has been working with other industry stakeholders and the CRA to streamline and standardize the kinds of documents productions will need to provide to CRA to claim labour tax credits, and at long last the CRA has produced a guideline document, which can be found here. 

This document is being shared with all current productions and studios, as well as sharing it with you, our Members. Hopefully these guidelines will create some clarity and simplify this whole process!

Any questions? 
Any Collective Agreement myths you'd like to see addressed in future notes from me? 
Email me! ahinde@dgcbc.com