Bulletin ~ Collective Agreement: Updates on changes to pay and benefits

Dear members: we are writing to update you on the implementation of the new Collective Agreement, focusing here on salaries (including retro pay) and benefits. The short version is that the administration expects that our February pay will be at the new rates and will include our retro pay; and that our Canada Life benefits have not been updated yet.

Our other Collective Agreement updates, including the effect of the change in the academic year, are in the document we sent last month (linked here).

 Salary 

The HR department has told us that the administration will be sending an announcement about salaries and retro pay. We have not seen the draft announcement yet and don’t know the timing, but wanted to update you with what we do know:

The Finance department has advised that they are implementing our new salary rates on our February pay. That pay deposit should also include our retro pay for April 2022 through January 2024 (they are doing final coding for this now). The retro will be included with our February wages as one payment. This will, unfortunately, make it difficult for members to check that the retro payment is accurate.

The good news is that in response to the CFA’s grievance about the lack of information on pay stubs, the employer has hired a computer programmer to create monthly pay descriptions that set out how our pay is calculated each month. This pay description will be provided separately from the pay stub itself, but we are expecting it to accompany our monthly payments—once it is ready. 

Finance tells us that they are hopeful that the pay description will be ready for our February pay, and that it will break down our normal pay and the retro pay. We have not yet received confirmation of whether the pay description will be ready for February. When the pay description is working, the administration says it will show faculty pay details going back approximately two years.

Regarding tax and other deductions: we asked HR and Finance again about options for minimizing a disproportionate tax deduction on our February pay due to the addition of retro. They have now advised that there are no options. Their only suggestion is for members to maximize their RRSP contributions. However, this won’t affect the amount of tax deducted on our February pay.

We have asked the Finance department to prepare an explanation of the calculation of deductions for taxes, CPP, EI, etc. and to post that along with a Q&A for faculty to read.

 Benefits

Although we are now entitled to the new benefits coverages (see again our summary of the changes), Canada Life won’t reimburse us based on the new benefits until the administration has updated the contract. 

Expenses you incur now that rely on the new benefits will be reimbursed, but not until the contract is updated.

The HR department has not notified us of the timeline for updating the contract. 

 In solidarity,

CFA stewards Michael Begg and Diana Twiss