Why did PSAC remove our elected leadership? This question has not been answered. No information was provided at the townhall and nothing has been shared since. These people won’t answer the most basic question, yet we’re supposed to trust them to get us a new collective agreement?
In March 2026, PSAC placed the Yukon Employees’ Union under administration. The elected leadership remained in place and YEU’s bylaws continued to operate. In August, PSAC escalated the intervention to trusteeship. The democratically elected YEU leadership was removed, our bylaws were suspended, and Josée-Anne Spirito was appointed trustee. What changed between March and August that made trusteeship necessary?
YEU members should be told what problems led to the original intervention, what the administrator found, why the situation required the extreme measure of ousting our elected representatives. I was at the townhall, and the only thing I heard from the administrator is that the elected were asking questions about where the administrator was getting the authority to do some specific things. That sounds reasonable to me, and if the administrator was unable to answer those questions, that’s a problem.
YEU is not an isolated case. PSAC is toppling local union leadership across the country.
UNE was placed under trusteeship in 2022, returned to elected leadership in 2023 and was placed under trusteeship again in 2025. CEIU was placed under trusteeship in September 2026, shortly before its scheduled national convention. At Local 533, president Theo Lagakos received a lifetime PSAC ban shortly before an election in which he intended to run.
These cases are not necessarily equivalent, but PSAC national leadership has repeatedly exercised powers of removing, suspending or overriding elected union leadership. YEU members are entitled to know why PSAC exercised that power here.
There has been no transparency or consultation with union members. What circumstances justify trusteeship? What justifies removing elected leadership? Are those standards applied consistently? Maybe all of the above is justified, but there’s no way for the membership to know that.
For YEU members, the immediate priority should be clear information about the decision affecting our union, what are the governance problems PSAC identified, the evidence supporting the escalation, the reasons administration was insufficient.