Pros
This is the fabled government job, that will lead to a life of security and the increasingly rare pension and benefits of days gone by.
Cons
I've never had a worse work experience. I have worked in 3 gov departments and private industry, and this was the most dismal, stressful, upsetting experience of my life. The culture is abysmal. The managers and supervisors changed constantly in the 4 years I was there. They are trained to treat you like a number -- you are literally treated as a unit of labour and management's boot heel is kept on your throat 8 hours a day. The website that was supposed to be our resource was out of date, and impossible to navigate. There was nowhere to go for support or to ask questions about the job, and my coworkers were literally told not to answer my questions as I had to use official channels. With constantly changing supervisors and managers, I could never completely finish my training before a new supervisor would show up and tell me to do things differently. Worse, the union is a disorganized joke, so, if you need help, forget it. You're on your own. We had no union local in the office so I personally resurrected it. But it made no difference because while the local can be strong and active, if the next level up is a pathetic loser who won't do her job, you run up against the wall pretty hard. I wrote up a 10-page complaint that I submitted to a lawyer to review but she advised me it would be a tough go to try to sue the Federal Government so I dropped it. Still - I was shocked to see I had accumulated 10 pages of material in less than 4 years. I ended up asking for a substantial demotion, because the job was wreaking havoc with my health. I took a $12K paycut and dropped to a clerical level because I couldn't go. It was an unbelievably bad experience. I ended up quitting the government. Avoid this job. TO BE FAIR -- the call centre is supposed to be nominally better - and the PSOs outside Ontario are also rumoured to be much better treated.