OTTAWA—They believe the prime minister hates their guts and they are fighting for the right to say something about it.

Blue buttons emblazoned with the words “Stephen Harper hates me” have landed some employees at the Canada Revenue Agency in hot water for wearing them to work.

The buttons were created by some grassroots members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) — the largest of the unions representing federal employees — from the Atlantic region earlier this year as a way for workers to express their displeasure with looming cuts to public jobs and services.

Employees across the country started wearing them to parades and rallies and even at the grocery store, but it was those who wore them in the workplace who caught the attention of managers at the tax collection agency last month.

Annette Melanson, executive assistant to Robert Campbell, president of the Union of Taxation Employees, which is part of PSAC, said management sent out a notice to regional staff relations offices saying the agency considered the buttons “to be derogatory and damaging to the employer’s reputation.”

The notice also said “if members wore the buttons in the workplace that they should be advised to remove them,” said Melanson, adding employees had complied with the demand.

The union representing 27,000 federal tax workers nationwide has now filed a grievance on the grounds that members were expressing their right to freedom of expression.

“We don’t see them as offensive. We see them as accurate,” Melanson said of the buttons. “We see that (Harper) does not value the services that our members provide to the Canadian public and he does not value us at all either . . .

“We understand that the public service should be politically neutral, but to what point? We also believe that our members have certain civil rights,” said Melanson, noting the buttons are non-partisan in that they do not express support for any political party.

“It’s more about our jobs, our livelihoods and the services that we provide to Canadians,” said Melanson, who noted the union won a similar grievance in arbitration seven years ago.

The Conservative government released a federal budget in March that showed a $5.2-billion reduction in spending that will reduce total federal employment by about 19,200 positions, or 4.8 per cent, over the next three years.

On Wednesday, 1,289 workers at the Canada Revenue Agency learned their jobs could be on the line, including 285 people working at the cash and inquiry counters being shut down across the country.

A spokesman for the Canada Revenue Agency said there is a strict code of conduct for employees and that managers have the authority to enforce it.

The standard of conduct “requires employees to behave ethically and with good conduct when acting in their professional capacity on behalf of the (agency),” Noël Carisse wrote in an email statement Friday.

Sharon DeSousa, regional executive vice-president for Ontario at PSAC, said she is not aware of any similar warning notices sent to button-wearing workers in other departments.

DeSousa said the larger union supports the grievance because workers have a right to express themselves about the government belt-tightening exercise, especially when they feel like it is being done behind closed doors.

“They feel like they’ve been cut out of the process,” she said.

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“I do not believe that the strong language (on the buttons) is strong enough, because what do we do and what do we say when all these services are gone?” said DeSousa. “I don’t think the button would be big enough for what I have to say.”

With files from Richard J. Brennan

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