Bargaining Bulletin #10

And Now for Something Completely Different . . . A CFA Bargaining Update

Dear colleagues: with so much happening in the last three or four weeks, it may seem like a long time since we issued a bargaining bulletin of our own.

Before we get to it, a reminder: today, Friday the 23rd, the CFA’s job action committee is calling for all faculty who can picket to do so at Shipyards, even if you were scheduled for a shift at the NV campus. Now, back to bargaining:

We would like you to know that our talks with the employer continue and that our next session is scheduled for Monday, June 26th.

A number of proposals are still under discussion. On May 29th, we tabled a monetary package, and on June 5th received a partial response to that package. The employer offered no specifics on our monetary proposals, and has promised a more substantial response to that set of proposals.

You have likely noticed that “cost items” are often the most sensitive items to be discussed. This round is not like some where we have been asked to “mine our own agreement” if we wanted to fund proposals that came with a direct cost–e.g., agree to giving up an existing benefit in exchange for a new one. But neither has the government offered an enormous amount of money to fund all cost items.

The one caveat placed on the “flex funding” pot of money the government is offering is that we cannot put this funding into a general wage increase. (As we have advised before, the government has mandated a general wage increase of 3.24% in year 1 (after a small boost to the starting amount), 6.75% in year 2, and between 2 and 3% in year 3 of the new Collective Agreement. The B.C. government passes this increase to employees through employers. The CapU administration has consistently told us they have no scope to negotiate about wage, and that they are in fact forbidden from exceeding these rates.)

We hope to receive a detailed response to our monetary package from the employer at Monday’s meeting.

Finally, this has been a strange month of stressful events and unexpected positions on the part of our employer. We would like to thank you for your ongoing support over the past month–and your support of the bargaining committee since negotiations began five months ago. Without your solidarity we could achieve nothing at the table.

We strive to work in the best interests of our members, promoting the rights that you have identified to us as your main priorities, but we also work in the interests of a better, stronger university. Excellence in education will never be achieved without the input of the people who actually teach the classes, provide the educational services that assist our students, and do the research that keeps us knowledgeable about (and contributing to) our own disciplines. This is where your support is crucial in any bargaining round–or any other year, for that matter. Rights we gain in bargaining become useless if we don’t exercise and defend them, working together collegially.

In solidarity,

Bargaining Committee members Tim Acton, Doug Alards-Tomalin, Eduardo Azmitia, Michael Begg, and FPSE representative Monica Staff