Please email us if you would like to set up an appointment with one of our Labour Relations Officers.
Please email us if you would like to set up an appointment with one of our Labour Relations Officers.
The Faculty Association is pleased to announce the award of 66 travel grants from the Sessional Conference Fund.
These grants will support our Sessional colleagues in their pursuit of important scholarly opportunities — whether that means attending conferences, presenting their scholarly/artistic work in international galleries or organizing symposia at major academic events.
The Association of Retirement Organizations in Higher Education (AROHE) and Fidelity Investments invite you to Charting the Journey to a Fulfilling Retirement, an exclusive six-session webinar series designed to help upcoming and current university retirees thrive in life’s next chapter, retirement. These sessions explore evidence-based strategies to harmonize financial security, identity, and emotional well-being.
As you’ll remember from our December 2025 bargaining update with its FAQ’s, we have been waiting for the provincial public-sector bargaining landscape to de-fog, since it took the province until late November of 2025 to settle with the first public unions in the province. By now, happily, most of the major unions in BC have reached tentative agreements with their employers, including BCGEU, the BCTF, and several others. And the provincial “mandate”—i.e., what the province is willing to fund—is becoming far clearer and has shown itself to be consistent in each settlement.
Bargaining is sometimes slow cooking food—worth it in the end, but needing a certain degree of patience. This is definitely one of those rounds. Normally, we know what the provincial funding for public sector bargaining units is by late spring, usually before our contract term is up. This year, however, it was mid-November, with the BCGEU mediated agreement, before we knew what the provincial “mandate” would be. So that delay has definitely slowed down our work toward a tentative agreement at the table.
Workload—the increasingly overwhelming onslaught of deadlines, administrivia, course-preps, projects, supervisions, marking, reporting, writing, meetings, experiments, editing, and endless emails—is becoming close to unbearable for many of us. For most of us, workload is our top concern and burden.
Many academics have spent time on short-term contingent appointments; by some measures, academia is in fact one of the most highly casualized work sectors in Canada. This is unhealthy for our institution and even less sustainable for the scholars who fulfill UBC’s public mission with very little in return. We want to keep improving this situation for all of our sakes.
Dear Colleagues,
The Canadian Association of University Teachers has published the following advisory regarding travel to the United States. The Faculty Association is in discussion with the University regarding whether a similar advisory will be issued on our campuses and will provide updates when available.
Sincerely,
Dory Nason
President
The UBC Faculty Association Executive Committee is deeply saddened by the unimaginable suffering and innocent human loss in Israel and Gaza. The Executive would like to acknowledge that many of our members have family, kin and colleagues directly impacted by the ongoing conflict and violence. Many are worried for their loved ones or in deep distress for all those who are suffering, making it difficult to fulfill faculty duties. These members may need information and assistance on navigating work at this difficult time.
Please reach out to the Faculty Association if you need information on supports available to you through the Employee and Family Assistance Program or about personal leaves and other supports available to all faculty in distress.
We hope for peace and healing for all our relations in the days to come.
Dory Nason,
On behalf of the Executive Committee
For those members needing assistance, please email the Faculty Association at [email protected].
