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. Indeed, some aspects of that mandate appear to be still in some flux—so it is obviously not in our interests (to the tune of several million dollars) to pull the trigger before those values have settled. Hence the crock-pot method this round.
Some common FAQ’s, so that you can understand where we’re at and next steps:
- Can we still rely on the terms of the Collective Agreement? Yes, the general terms of the Collective Agreement remain in force while we negotiate.
- Will we have to wait until there’s a new Agreement to get our salary increases? Merit, PSA and CPI, as well as the 1% lump-sum payment, are now given out regardless of whether or not we have a new agreement in place, so these will have come to you as usual in July and will again in 2026. General salary increases will be applied retroactively once we have a tentative agreement ratified by you, the members, or once we have an Arbitration award should we fail to reach agreement at the table.
- Are some of the proposals already agreed upon yet? We have signed off on several proposals, which means that they will likely be part of a final settlement, if we reach that settlement at the negotiating table. But we have agreed generally that those signed-off proposals are contingent on how the end-game works out, so we’ll have to see how this round concludes before we can discuss any details.
- How are negotiations proceeding? Aside from the unusual delays, our discussions are courteous and often productive, with a helpful amount of listening on both sides. The University definitely has priorities that we do not share, and vice-versa, but that is just the nature of the beast. Both sides can always say “no” or “not yet” to the other, and we do that a lot, but we all understand it. Once the provincial landscape becomes clearer, we have a foundation of good mutual respect which will facilitate continued progress.
- What have you achieved so far? Here’s what we’ve done to date:
- Framing our objectives: We have presented all of our Day One proposals and the rationales behind them; see our bargaining blogs for more details on our general and specific objectives.
- Researching and writing: We have done research on and crafted specific Collective Agreement language on virtually all of these proposals.
- Iterating: this is the heart of bargaining: rewriting and revising our proposals and theirs to achieve a version both sides can live with: how about this wording? What about this issue? Would this term suit you better? Could we live with this phrasing? Would these criteria be an improvement? Endless, endless reviewing, rethinking, revising, confirming, explaining.
- Waiting: a surprisingly big part of bargaining is waiting for the other party to reflect upon, decide upon, and craft responses. It is not wasted time, of course, as we do much of the same work ourselves while we wait.
- Calculating: making sure that we are using good data, confirming the math, double-checking the formulae, constructing useful comparators.
- Communicating: both to the University bargaining team and to you, our members, as well as to other university and public-sector bargaining teams about our objectives, our state of play, and our intentions. We talk and write a LOT!
- What is next? Once the provincial mandate becomes more visible and reliable, it will not take us long to determine whether we have a plausible deal at the table or will need to make use of our arbitration option. In the new year we’ll remain ready to take the last few steps. In the previous round it was almost a year from the start of bargaining before we were able to reach agreement at the table; we hope it won’t be that long again this round, but slow and good are much better than quick and half-baked when it comes to both dinner and contracts.
Contact us at any time if you have ideas or questions.
