Bargaining and Other Important Matters
Dear Members,
I am writing to address two important matters. First, one of our key membership services staff will be off on leave for an indeterminate time period. We are therefore very short-staffed. We are seeking to address that situation as soon as possible, but in the meantime, we appreciate your patience and your understanding that unless your situation is very urgent, that you will likely have to wait somewhat longer to receive our advice and support. We take our responsibilities to our members very seriously and hope to resolve this situation as soon as possible.
Also, our bargaining team wanted to respond to the “Bargaining Bulletin” sent out from the admin’s bargaining team yesterday afternoon. We received emails from concerned members later that day and evening regarding the bulletin, which was released less than 24 hours before mediation was set to begin. We want to address some of the misinformation it contains.
The admin’s team noted that PEA and the UBC FA have come to agreements. We congratulate both unions on this achievement. We will note that the UBC FA agreement included significant improvements to salary structure, a more than doubling of their ProD allotments to $4,000 a year, consultation language regarding technological change, and a number of other improvements for their members, funded out of mandate. It does not include any hiring of staff, or other initiatives that would fund core University services rather than directly benefiting the members. The PEA agreement also includes improved ProD language, as well as improvements in benefits as well as salary.
We were disappointed with the framing used in the admin’s communication, and most particularly the misleading description of the University’s proposals, which ignore the fact that their proposals do very little to address the very real workload concerns of most members, and focus on hiring proposals that take mandate money to fund core University services. For example, hiring a staff member to train members in how the University wants them to address accessibility concerns does nothing to reduce the increased workload involved in student accommodations. As previously noted, the employer proposal prioritizes new hiring over providing salary improvements for existing members. We are not sure what proposals they are referencing when they speak of “targeted adjustments to salary structure to maintain competitiveness and recognize career progression.” The only possible proposals they might be referencing here would be raising current salary floors, which would impact at most one or two current faculty members, and the proposal to extend the current CPI drop off from 28 to 30 years for full professors. The latter is something we have been advocating for consistently for two bargaining rounds. The administration is currently not willing to accept this without concessions that would negatively affect some faculty members. On another note, their benefits proposal did not include a Health Spending Account, as they claim. We will also note that a number of the proposals (particularly those related to increased leave entitlements, equity, compensation and benefits) listed in the admin’s proposal summary are, in fact, based on proposals put on the table by the FA, many of which have faced significant resistance from the admin over the last year of bargaining.
In relation to their proposals, we are also concerned about what appears to be a significant amount of unallocated funds out of the total mandate, that are not tied to any specific admin proposals. This is difficult to reconcile with their attestations of support for our members. These funds could do a great deal to address member workload concerns and offset the rising cost of living
The University also directly communicated with you, our members, regarding their proposals, without giving your bargaining team a chance to respond to these proposals at the bargaining table. We had hoped to respond to the administration’s proposals, submitted to us to Tuesday, May 12th, on Thursday afternoon, May 14th, but the University’s team unexpectedly and rather abruptly cancelled that bargaining session mid-day despite our opposition at the table and repeated FA offers of alternative times, so that we could respond to these proposals before mediation. It is our understanding that if the employer shares their proposals with the membership before the employer hears the response of the bargaining team, that that is an unfair labour practice, and thus can be construed as bargaining in bad faith.
This is an unfortunate beginning to a session in which we seek to come to a fair deal for our members through mediation. If you have concerns about the admin’s email, or about how bargaining has been going more generally, we encourage those able to do so to contact the following:
Carrie Andersen for the Board of Governors [email protected]
Robina Thomas, President [email protected]
Elizabeth Croft, VP Academic and Provost [email protected]
Helga Hallgrimsdottir, Deputy Provost [email protected]
Pamela Richards, Executive Director, Faculty Relations [email protected]
If you feel comfortable doing so, we encourage you to copy the FA on your emails to the admin.
Finally, the admin’s bulletin claims that the legislation governing collective bargaining requires communications during mediation to be more limited. We want to clarify that there is no such mandated practice. The FA negotiating team intends to enter mediation prepared to listen to the advice of the mediator. If the mediator recommends this, and both parties agree, we will limit our communications to help advance bargaining and achieve a tentative settlement as quickly as possible. So you may hear less from us over the next two weeks, but we will let you know what we can.
All the very best,
Lynne
