Status report on first collective agreement and the Faculty Association’s request for a mediator to be appointed
Jan. 8, 2015
Happy New Year and best wishes for a productive new term.
As well as conveying good wishes, we are posting this update on what is happening at the bargaining table as we work toward a new collective agreement. Both sides closed 2014 with a sense of disappointment that more progress had not been made.
By Aug. 25, both parties had tabled complete sets of proposals. The Administration had put forward 23 proposals that together constituted a complete collective agreement, incorporating many of the processes of the old Framework Agreement, but in substantially clearer and more readable language. On December 9, the Administration team, recognizing the scope of the undertaking at hand, presented a road map to move the process along efficiently. This road map which we called an “Outline in Principle” recognized that a major concern was faculty salary levels compared with other universities. We proposed to work for a salary package that would significantly narrow the gap between our salaries and those of Simon Fraser University. You may recall that in the 2012 mediation/arbitration process, the mediator, Colin Taylor, Q.C., had identified SFU as our "closest comparator."
This Outline additionally incorporated some important enhancements to the agreement that the Union had proposed or had indicated interest in negotiating. We also listed our core issues that we need to resolve as a condition of this package and indicated a willingness to work creatively with the Union to find solutions to these identified priorities. It also stressed the need to clarify the role of the Union and of the Administration in governance to avoid expensive and acrimonious disputes later on.
The Union, quite reasonably, asked for time to consider whether they were interested in adopting this method of proceeding. They expressed the likelihood that they also had some core issues and we invited them to put those forward in the interests of an efficient process that would result in a negotiated agreement as soon as possible.
After we presented the Outline, the Parties met five times, but the Union deferred substantive discussion of this document. Pending the Union's response, the Parties agreed to continue to discuss several minor issues and several issues on which we both believed we had common interests. Negotiations, however, seem to have become fraught when the Union began to object to the format in which the Administration made its proposals and asserted that once the Union had tabled a counter-proposal, the Administration was limited to modifications of the Union’s document in any further responses. The Administration responded that we were not aware of any requirements limiting the format of counter-proposals. We also assured the Union that our format was "without prejudice" to the final structure of the Agreement and that we were anticipating negotiations adopting and blending language from both Parties, working toward a first collective agreement. We remain ready to continue this negotiation process.
At the bargaining table on Jan. 5, the Administration invited the Union bargaining team several times to bring forward its major issues and respond to the Outline. At the same time, we stated that, at our next session, we would provide counter-proposals to six of the Unions, adding to the three we had already tabled. We asked that this be part of our next agenda. But the Union terminated the session to consider their next steps.
On Jan. 6, we were informed that the Union wanted to cancel the meeting scheduled for Jan. 7 and later in the evening of Jan. 6 that the Union would apply to the Labour Relations Board for a mediator because the current approach was unlikely to be productive.
We respect the right of either party, under the Labour Relations Code, to seek the assistance of a mediator although we are disappointed that the Union has chosen to do so at such an early stage when we have not yet begun to discuss the major issues of the collective agreement. However, we will await the decision of the Board. If a mediator is appointed, we look forward to meeting with the mediator at our next bargaining session and hope that this intervention will move the process forward to result in a negotiated collective agreement as soon as possible.