Category: Bargaining

This will be at least the third round of collective bargaining in which we have beseeched UBC to act like a university, respect the overwhelming scholarly evidence, and stop using student survey data for purposes for which they are manifestly unfit.  Statistically unreliable, obviously not addressing the question at hand, and riddled with discriminatory, toxic, and uninformed opinion, anonymous student surveys (SEoT’s, or SEI’s) are deeply inappropriate for their intended purpose.

We have now started table negotiations with UBC’s team representing the employer; you’ll see here posted both the Faculty Association’s and the University’s “Day One” proposals.  These catalogue the particular objectives that we and UBC plan to discuss in this bargaining round.  

As we prepare for the upcoming round of collective bargaining, we need to hear from you about your issues, priorities, and concerns. Below is a list of Zoom Consultation Sessions geared to specific constituencies that we’ll be holding over the fall. 

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.

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.

Almost all of us will during our career at UBC experience a life event which requires us to take time away from work. Some of these events are joyous, as when we welcome a new child; some are catastrophic, as when we face the serious illness or death of a loved one. Leaves are essential to balancing work and life in periods of these extreme demands. It is essential that these leaves be a right accessible to all.

The process by which the money in the three pools is to be allocated could definitely be better. This blog explains the problems the Association is attempting to rectify, and the objectives it is attempting to achieve, with our proposals.

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.

It would be hard to over-state how much of a problem workload is for our membership. Everybody feels it; everybody wants it fixed. So: members who have read our “Day One” proposals will have noticed our Proposal #2: “The Association proposes to modify Part 1, Article 13 and Part 5, Article 7, to create workload language that is consistent with best practices at major Canadian research universities.” What exactly do we mean by that?

We know from our consultations that workload has created significant problems for most of our members, and we are addressing those in several different proposals. Here in Proposal #2, we are asserting one broad principle that appeals to the whole membership, and two that apply more specifically to the members (librarians and tenure-track faculty) with a pronounced mix of assigned and self-directed work. We have other workload proposals to address the additional specific issues facing Lecturers and Sessional Lecturers as well; these will be the subject of future bargaining posts.

As anyone who has read the headlines, or gone to the grocery store, or filled their car knows, inflation has recently surged to levels unseen in Canada in over thirty years. And it’s not going to get better in a hurry.

In this first edition of our Bargaining Advisories, we respond to common questions and concerns you’ve raised about the rights and protections we have already negotiated. 

Last fall, as we prepared for the upcoming negotiating round, the Faculty Association’s Bargaining Preparation Committee (BPC) surveyed  the membership on areas of bargaining priorities. We were pleased that almost 1500 of you responded to the survey with meaningful feedback.

We are pleased to announce that the Collective Agreement between the UBCFA and UBC, July 1, 2019 – June 30, 2022, has been ratified by both parties. A copy of the Agreement will be posted to our respective websites as soon as it is finalized.

On the matter of student evaluations of teaching (SEoT), our position is clear: we propose that these measures not be used in the summative evaluation of teaching for appointment, reappointment, promotion, and tenure. The invalidity of these instruments has been known for a long time; the evidence that they are also biased against protected classes of people increases seemingly weekly.

The Association continues to seek to modify Part 5, Conditions of Appointment for Librarians to ensure that workload is collegially assigned in a fair and equitable manner, and to create Heads language for the Library that mirrors Heads language for faculty (i.e., term appointments, stipend, administrative leave). In addition, in this round we have proposed a change in the confirmation review process and introduced definitions upon which candidates for confirmed appointments will be judged.

We are now on a summer break from bargaining with the UBC administration. Read the answers to a few key FAQ’s…

Occasionally as we prepare for bargaining we uncover an issue that we didn’t know we had and that causes us to enunciate a principle. One such issue is the protection of our benefits coverage.

This post focuses on our Sessional Lecturer job security/access to work proposals. Sessional Lecturers without Continuing status have a right of reappointment. But to what, exactly?

Workload is a major concern for UBC faculty and librarians alike.

In every bargaining survey from 2010 to the present, we have consistently heard that you are struggling with unhealthy workloads and difficult work-life balance challenges and significantly dissatisfied with the transparency and equity of workload assignments. The University’s Work Experience Survey (WES) confirms this unhappiness with workload…

Preparation for collective bargaining is almost complete. Thank you to the members who have taken the time to fill out the survey, meet with us, or email us with comments and concerns. Your input was crucial for developing the proposals that we will take to the table. On January 17, 2019 the Executive Committee approved the proposals the Association plans to take to the bargaining table. Our first bargaining session with the University is scheduled for the third week of February.

A message from the Chair of the UBCFA Bargaining Preparation Committee:

Dear colleagues,

The Faculty Association is preparing to go to the table to negotiate our 2019 Collective Agreement, and we need to know what matters most to you.

We are trying to solve a major problem with our proposal #3 (Merit, PSA, and CPI certainty).

The existing language pertaining to Progress Through the Ranks (PTR) contains specific dates for the distribution of this money to faculty members. The 2014-2016 Collective Agreement specifies that the PTR be allocated on July 1, 2014 and July 1, 2015. Normally what would happen is that the 2016-2018 Collective Agreement would specify new dates: July 1, 2016 and July 1, 2017. However since negotiations to renew the Collective Agreement have not yet been completed, the July 1, 2016 payments have been delayed, much like those for 2014 and 2015. This delay happens every bargaining round that is not settled before the Collective Agreement ends and is always a source of considerable irritation by the members.

The Association has proposed a significant revision to the maternity and parental leave Article in our Collective Agreement (Part 3, Article 6). There are a number of particular issues around maternity and parental leaves that we are attempting to solve.

Occasionally the bargaining team asks members for permission to share their thoughts via the bargaining blog. In September 2016, Christina Hendricks, Chair, Instructor Network Leadership Team, sent a letter to the Provosts at UBC Vancouver and UBC Okanagan, the President of the Faculty Association and the Chair of the Okanagan Faculty Committee discussing the need for change in the Educational Leadership titles. The correspondence follows:

As current faculty members in the Educational Leadership stream we are requesting that you advocate a change to our titles to align appropriately with our job descriptions and career trajectories, as well as to parallel our Research stream colleagues. We suggest that titles of Instructor and Senior Instructor be replaced with Assistant Professor of Teaching and Associate Professor of Teaching, respectively. Such a shift in titles would create a sensible, clear trajectory of rank that ends with the extant Professor of Teaching. The University of Toronto has just recently made a change to their instructor/educational leadership stream faculty titles.

A Lecturer is defined in the Collective Agreement as a person holding an appointment without review for a term of twelve (12) months or less with responsibilities limited to teaching and related duties. Those related duties may include administrative responsibilities normally undertaken by faculty members (i.e., not work normally undertaken by administrative staff). The university has proposed adding service to the duties of Lecturers, something to which the Association is not opposed in principle, although we recognize that with additional responsibilities should come additional compensation.

After a long hiatus caused by scheduling difficulties, the Faculty Association and the University resumed bargaining on April 5th and 6th. We are bargaining today and have another 8 full days of bargaining scheduled between now and the end of June. 

In preparation for the 2016 round of negotiations with the University, the Faculty Association is seeking applications for volunteers for the Bargaining Preparation Committee and the Bargaining Advisory Committee. 

As part of its general wage increase offer the University has made what must be described as a most peculiar proposal. Their proposal is that on May 1, 2016, in addition to the general wage increase they have proposed, our salaries will also be increased by 50% of the amount by which the Economic Forecast Council forecast underestimates real (inflation adjusted) GDP growth in 2014.  They also proposed similar forecast error increases on May 1, 2017, May 1, 2018, and May 1, 2019. This will take some explaining.

Two of our proposals pertain to pensions. First, we propose that the university provide pension plan contribution for all sessional lecturers. Currently the university only pays full compensation (salary plus pension plan contributions) to sessional lecturers with at least 50% workloads. Second, we propose to work out a way for members’ full compensation not to be reduced at age 71, which would happen if the university stopped paying the pension plan contributions at that age.

To understand why we feel so strongly about these proposals it is first necessary to understand how our pension plan works.

By far and away the largest single complaint we received from members while we prepared for bargaining concerned UBC’s budget model. Members are justifiably unhappy about a budget model in which the departments and Faculties are not treated as central to the core mission of the University. The comment “I am particularly concerned about the apparent over-allocation of University funds to administrative positions/costs, and a concomitant reduction of funds available to support scholarly activity and investment in hiring faculty” sums up the comments of many, many members.

Negotiations between UBC and UBCFA to renew the Collective Agreement that expires on June 30, 2014 began formally on April 7 – 8, although the parties did engage in some preliminary discussions in the preceding months.

On July 25, 2013, the Faculty Association and the University sent out a joint memorandum describing the details of the arbitration award for the years 2012 – 2014. We also linked to the actual award so that members could read it in its entirety. However many members have found the entire award a bit much to internalize and have asked us for a short, non-technical, explanation of the reasoning behind the salary settlement. Here it is.

The interest arbitration to resolve the dispute between the Faculty Association and the University about the terms of the 2012-14 Collective Agreement finished on Wednesday, June 5, although the arbitrator asked for additional information, which was supplied last week.

On May 8, 2013 the Faculty Association and the University exchanged their formal submissions with each other, and with the Arbitrator, Colin Taylor. The actual arbitration will take place on June 3-5, 2013. The two parties have submitted final proposals (UBCFA and UBC) on all outstanding issues.

Last week the University contacted the Association and suggested they were prepared to make a new offer in the week of December 10. Although we started meeting with the University at the beginning of the week, unfortunately, it turned out that they were not, in fact, prepared to make an offer until today. 

The Faculty Association and the University had set aside this week (October 22-26) to continue negotiations towards a new Collective Agreement. Both parties had hoped that an agreement could be reached at this time, but unfortunately the parties are still far apart on a number of issues, key among which is the Across-the-Board (ATB) salary settlement.

After a long hiatus over the summer, negotiations between the Faculty Association and the University have resumed. As we noted in our June 28 blog, our intention was to set arbitration dates before resuming. The parties have agreed on a date for binding interest arbitration with arbitrator Colin Taylor.

In 2010, one of our bargaining proposals was for a unified minimum salary scale for all sessionals. We have this as one of our bargaining objectives this year as well. Here is the rationale we provided to the members in 2010:

Negotiating for a new Collective Agreement began in earnest on February 14, when the Faculty Association proposals and the University proposals were exchanged.

In preparation for the 2012 round of negotiations with the University, the Faculty Association is seeking applications for volunteers for the Bargaining Preparation Committee and the Bargaining Advisory Committee.

Under the provisions of the Collective Agreement, if a negotiated agreement has not been reached within six weeks of the receipt by the University of official notification of the operating grant allocated to it, the matters in dispute shall be submitted to binding arbitration. This type of arbitration, which is designed to resolve a bargaining impasse, is known as “interest arbitration”, as opposed to rights or grievance arbitrations which resolve disputes about the interpretation or application of the Collective Agreement.

Our Collective Agreement has a technical expiry date of July 1st, 2010. Don’t panic. There’s nothing to worry about if we don’t reach agreement by that date. We have what’s called an “evergreen clause” (Article 26 in the Framework Agreement) in our Collective Agreement, meaning that it remains in force until such time as we reach a final agreement.

In 2009, the Faculty Association had to work hard to ensure that UBC withdrew a bad privacy policy – one that would have given the university access to all of our private information, including in filing cabinets, emails and offices.

Technology has made surveillance, including that done surreptitiously, so easy that its use is growing dramatically, often forcing us to surrender our privacy for no tangible or even foreseeable benefit.

Salaries in most jobs are characterized by seniority-based pay systems. This is partially to account for increasing productivity over time, but primarily it is designed to defer compensation from the early part of the employee’s career to the latter part.

Our bargaining Proposal 2 flows from the premise that UBC faculty members have the right to promotion and tenure processes that are fair. We should be able to trust that the evidence is appropriate, that the processes are iterative and responsive, that there are safeguards and mechanisms to ensure accountability.

Our proposal to the university on faculty workloads (Proposal 5) aims to make sure that our members have a healthy and productive work environment, with workloads assigned collegially, fairly and equitably.

We have bargained with the university weekly (usually twice a week) between March 1 and April 27. That amount of intensive bargaining time has allowed both the Faculty Association and the university to present their proposals in great detail, and also answer any questions the other side had about the objectives that were trying to be achieved through specific proposals.

Before the University tabled its proposal with the Faculty Association, they suggested that the Association consider a two-year “rollover agreement” which would write in the 0/0% salary increases recommended by the province for the public sector but not otherwise discuss or negotiate any revisions or new language for our Collective Agreement.