Good morning,

As part of the process to amend the Land Use Plan (LUP) for the Vancouver campus, a legislatively required public hearing was held November 7, 2023. The purpose of the public hearing was to give everyone with an interest in the LUP an opportunity to share comments. It was the final phase in an 18+ month Campus Vision 2050 public engagement process that included opportunities for UBC community members and campus residents to give input, share ideas and raise concerns through workshops, a design charrette, open houses, meetings, and surveys, resulting in over 13,000 engagement touchpoints.

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].

The Faculty Association’s Income Replacement Program (IRP) provides partial salary coverage for faculty who are unable to return to the workplace at full time after illness or injury following a six month qualifying period. It is a critical part of the benefits plan provided to our members and the Association strives to ensure that it functions properly and efficiently. In October 2022, Association members advised us that they had not received their September payment from the IRP provider, Sun Life. Our professional staff alerted the University’s Benefits Manager  who immediately contacted Sun Life to address the concern.

The last meeting between the University’s negotiating team and the Faculty Association’s team was Thursday, February 2nd. As a result of that meeting, negotiations have now stalled.

There might well be no aspect of collegial governance that matters more to faculty members than our ability to participate as experts in the appointing, reappointing, tenuring, and promoting (henceforth, ARPT processes) of our colleagues.  The Faculty Association has tendered four proposals that are directly concerned with ARPT processes.

We have told UBC that we would give them until Dec 1st to see if we could achieve a tentative settlement at the table.  If that didn’t happen, we said we would move toward Interest Arbitration.  We are now at that moment.

Here’s how Interest Arbitration works.

This post focuses on the top bargaining issue for most of us: the Faculty Association’s proposal for a general wage increase in response to current inflation trends.