Faculty and Librarian bargaining

Approximately 976 full-time faculty members and librarians, including assistant professors, associate professors, professors, librarians, archivists, assistant teaching professors, associate teaching professors, teaching professors, limited term faculty (for greater than one year), artists in residence and lecturers are represented by the Faculty Association in collective bargaining with the University of Victoria.

The Faculty Association was certified as a union in 2014. In May 2015, the university and Faculty Association ratified their first collective agreement, which expired Jun. 30, 2019. The renewal of the first collective agreement was successfully concluded in 2019 and ended Jun. 30, 2022.

Latest updates

Last updated: Feb. 9, 2023

On Jan. 20, 2023, the University of Victoria and the Faculty Association reached a tentative agreement under the BC government’s Shared Recovery Mandate. This agreement has now been successfully ratified and will be in effect July 1, 2022 through June 30, 2025. It covers more than 960 full-time faculty members and librarians at UVic. 

The agreement recognizes the importance of the work that faculty and librarians do towards the university’s mandate of teaching and research excellence, and embeds important principles of reconciliation, equity and recognition.

Along with enhanced leave and benefit entitlements, general wage increases of 3.2%, 5.48% and 1.59% over the contract term were negotiated. A further 1.25% in 2023 and 1% in 2024 are possible under the cost-of-living adjustment provisions.

Over the next six months, the agreement will be edited, published and implemented. Some changes will be phased in through agreed-upon transition provisions.

Jan. 20, 2023

Sept. 23, 2022

Further to our update on the status of collective bargaining on June 1, milestone tentative agreements have now been reached with three key unions in the BC broader public sector.

Tentative agreements have been reached between the Facilities Bargaining Association and the Health Employers' Association of BC, and between the BCGEU and the Public Service Agency. The third tentative agreement, announced on Sept. 15, is between the CUPE K-12 Presidents Council, representing support staff working in school districts, and the BC Public School Employers' Association. Ratification votes for these tentative agreements will occur over the next few weeks.

These three tentative agreements cover approximately one-third, or 130,000, of the 393,000 unionized employees across the BC public sector and are the first to be negotiated under the province's 2022 Shared Recovery Mandate. As we noted in June, bargaining in the broader BC public sector—including at UVic—is governed by negotiation mandates established by the provincial government.

These agreements set benchmarks for a three-year contract, with provisions addressing general wage increases and the impacts of inflation. All three agreements provide a $0.25-per-hour wage increase plus a 3.24% wage increase on top of that, retroactive to April 1, 2022 (for those agreements renewed as of that date). In year two, depending on the rate of inflation, workers in these unions will receive a wage increase of 5.5 to 6.75%. In year three, the inflation-dependent wage increase will be 2-3%.

Now that that these three agreements are in the ratification process towards establishing the BC government's Shared Recovery Mandate for public-sector negotiations, collective bargaining with the university's CUPE and PEA locals is expected to occur throughout the fall. Similarly, bargaining with the Faculty Association recently reconvened.

Given the challenging labour market and the expected positive impact that the basic general wage increases and cost-of-living adjustments associated with the Shared Recovery Mandate will have on our employees' salaries in these unusual inflationary times, our goal is to conclude agreements with our unions at the earliest opportunity.

Salary adjustments negotiated through collective bargaining will be processed as soon as possible after an agreement is reached and ratified. Until that occurs, please be assured that the current collective agreements remain in full effect.

We also believe it is important to keep everyone informed with accurate information as bargaining unfolds. To facilitate that, we created this bargaining information website. It contains a section for each employee group., where updates will continue to be posted.

June 1, 2022

Due to the pace of BC public-sector bargaining, which sets the financial mandate for post-secondary employers, it is unlikely that UVic will complete negotiating collective agreements with its employee groups before the fall.

It's important to note that the current faculty and librarian collective agreement only provides for “across-the-board” wage increases and performance recognition adjustments up to July 1, 2021.

Further, the negotiating parties are proposing changes to the process for, and values of, career progress increments, performance pay increments and outstanding performance recognition adjustments. Other monetary elements may have to be adjusted. These factors mean that until there is a ratified renewal of the collective agreement in place, pay adjustments cannot be determined or implemented.

The parties will continue to engage in negotiations on non-monetary items until June 30, and then will resume bargaining in September, making best efforts to conclude negotiations in a timely manner.