Category: USFA e-Letter

It has been a challenging two years for many Canadian faculty at the bargaining table. You may be interested in the following outcomes.

Most recently, Carleton faculty have reached an agreement after hundreds of hours and one year of collective bargaining, with the assistance of a mediator. Details will be reported soon.

Earlier this month, the University of Manitoba Faculty Association (UMFA) and its members received an apology and more from the University of Manitoba administration for committing an unfair labour practice. Senior administration there will pay the maximum fine as directed by the Labour Board: $2,000 to each member of the Association, and $2000 to UMFA for withholding important information from the Association during bargaining in 2016, with a total price tag of more than $2 million.

In secret talks with the University government, the Pallister government imposed a one-year deal with a 0% salary increase. At the direction of government, the senior administration at U of M kept this information from the Association for weeks, revealing it only a few days before the strike deadline.

If you are interested in the state of bargaining nationally, the USFA’s homepage displays our Twitter feed, which reports this and similar items.

 

Two recent events in Eastern Canada suggest that University Employers are taking a cynical attitude towards collective bargaining.

At Carleton University, the faculty association negotiating team found out just a day ahead of their May 3 regular bargaining session that the Employer had unilaterally filed for conciliation, then advised faculty how mutually beneficial this would be. The Carleton faculty association is taking steps to prepare its members for a lock-out.

Lock-outs are uncommon enough that this might seem far-fetched. However, the University of Quebec at Three Rivers (UQTR) locked out its 445 professors effective May 2, unilaterally declaring a stalemate in bargaining. Faculty there have been without a contract since May 2017. Government has appointed a mediator.

Recently, members of CUPE 1975 set up information tables across campus on the theme “PAWS off our Pensions”.

CUPE’s Employer, the University of Saskatchewan, went to arbitration to determine whether it had the power to unilaterally change the terms of the CUPE pension plan. The arbitrator ruled in favour of the Employer.

Though it is not clear at this time what actions the Employer will take, unilateral action is not consistent with years of past practice of negotiating the terms of their pension plan with CUPE.

The Collective Agreement offers significant protection for collegial governance, and resolutions to recent grievances help to illustrate these various protections.

The Collective Agreement is clear that the collegial committees established pursuant to the Collective Agreement (renewal and tenure committees, promotion committees for example) are required to determine their own operating procedures provided they are consistent with the Collective Agreement; that is, each collegial committee determines whether or not their meetings are to be recorded.  The Chair of the collegial committee does not have the right to unilaterally declare that collegial meetings are to be recorded.

In departmentalized Colleges, membership on the College Review Committee (CRC) is to be made up of no fewer than 6 tenured members of the College plus the Dean who shall be chair.

In spite of a long held practice of interpreting Article 15.8.3 as restricting nominations to in-scope faculty members, the employer has recently challenged this interpretation and is seeking to “open” up nominations to out of scope faculty in addition to the Dean as Chair.  A grievance has been filed, and pending resolution of this grievance, the Employer has agreed that only in-scope faculty members will be eligible for nomination to the CRC of departmentalized colleges.  College Nominations Committee members should ensure that only those eligible to be a member of the CRC are nominated.   College Nominations Committees should not divest themselves of the responsibility to solicit the names of interested faculty to sit on the CRC. The College Nominations Committees should consider carefully the criteria for nominating faculty members and are responsible for overseeing the nominations process.

As a result of a second grievance, the Sabbatical Appeals Committee was required to “re-do” their appeal meeting when the Appeals Committee went ahead without the required attendance of the Faculty Association Observer.

Academic employees of the University have a right to have a voice in guiding the academic mission of the University. The provisions in the Collective Agreement are to safeguard the principles of collegial governance.  Through peer review, faculty ensure that the highest academic standards are being met.

Faculty are encouraged to take an active role in establishing fair procedures for their committees.  Any committee member can contact the Faculty Association for assistance in interpreting the Collective Agreement.

Online applications for the USFA Scholarship will be accepted until 11:59 p.m. Friday, June 1, 2018.

The USFA Scholarship Program is open to students who are immediate family members of USFA members.  Immediate family includes spouse/partner, sons, daughters or children whom USFA members have served as legal guardians.

The application form for the 2017-18 USFA Scholarship Fund Program is now available exclusively online at: paws.usask.ca/go/awards. Students can apply online through their PAWS account as follows:

• Log into the Scholarships and Bursaries channel in PAWS: paws.usask.ca/go/awards

• Click on the green “Apply for awards” button

• Click on the “Select Application Form” scroll-down menu

• Select the “2017-2018 USFA Tuition Scholarship Fund Application”; click “Apply”

 

Once the student has completed the application, an automated email will be sent to the Faculty member’s University of Saskatchewan email address. On receipt of that email, the Faculty member will need to log into PAWS as instructed by the email to confirm the Faculty member/ student relationship.  Both the student and the faculty member will get a confirmation email that the application has been made.  If you do not get the confirmation email please contact student awards immediately at 306-966-2897. 

Each year $250,000 is contributed to the USFA Scholarship Fund. The $250,000 is divided by the number of credit units eligible applicants have successfully completed for credit courses taken in the 2017-2018 academic year (May 1, 2017-April 30, 2018).   Recipients will be emailed in late July 2018 with the results of their application.

Scholarship money will be applied directly to the recipient’s student account. Any balance of account, after outstanding tuition and fees are paid, will be refunded by cheque and will be mailed to the student’s address listed on PAWS.

For further information contact Awards and Financial Aid at awards@usask.ca or 306-966-2897or the Faculty Association Office at usfa@usaskfaculty.ca or 966-5611.

A recent Globe and Mail article cites Harvey Weingarten, CEO of HEQCO (a research agency funded by the Ontario government), as saying “As the professoriate ages, it has … a constraining influence on … renewal.”

In contrast, the Human Rights Office at Queen’s, a U-15 University, publishes on its website examples of what age harassment might look like at Queen’s.

The Globe article attributes an aging workforce to the abolition of mandatory retirement several years ago. What it doesn’t say is that the retirement landscape has completely changed with the erosion of secure pension benefits. Whereas retirees of a previous generation could look forward to a guaranteed lifetime benefit, today’s retirees receive a fixed pot of money to manage in a volatile market.

Although the Charter prima facie disallows age discrimination, until relatively recently mandatory retirement was considered an acceptable practice across Canada. Not long after abolition, newer modern narratives began to characterize it as age discrimination.

Other changes are on the way. It is clear from the above-mentioned article that ‘voluntary’ ‘buyouts’ combined with covert social pressure are replacing mandatory retirement in many jurisdictions as a ‘legal’ means for dumping older employees. Closer to home, we have lately become aware of many examples of dumping of older workers under the aegis of “restructuring” where collective agreements do not offer strong job security benefits. Word has it that some institutions have even reinstituted “perp walks” for such employees.

USFA is closely following developments in this area.

 

USFA has heard from faculty members who have found (to their surprise) that they have been designated by the Employer as “non-active researchers” – something you may wish to explore among colleagues within your academic unit.

Where did this designation come from? Certainly not from any negotiation or collegial process.

Its origin seems to lie in TransformUS, the cost-cutting exercise of several years ago initiated with fanfare and now operating behind the scenes. Two legacies of that era – Responsibility Centre management (RCM) and the Transparent Activity-Based Budget System (TABBS) – were established to find productivity metrics to assist in the ongoing resource allocation exercise, and this seems to be where the metric originated.

It appears that in some cases, “research-active” was unilaterally and without consultation defined as “faculty holding tri-council grants”. Besides being excluded if you have grants from other sources, you may also be excluded if your research funding comes from another unit or institution, if you are involved in interdisciplinary research, or if you are not named as PI on a grant.

Perhaps it was an administrative efficiency, but faculty should be aware this arbitrary designation should not affect terms and conditions of employment. Research activity varies widely across the campus, but for “faculty evaluated under this category, research, scholarly and/or artistic work is creative, intellectual work which is in the public realm and which has been subjected to external peer review. This includes, in the case of artistic work, exhibitions and performances.”

A forthcoming e-Letter will suggest ways of dealing with this appropriately.

You can let us know your concerns simply by responding to this e-Letter.

Claims for reimbursement for any expenses from any of the benefit plans must be submitted to Sun Life within 90 days of the end of the calendar year in which the expense is incurred.   This deadline applies to 2017 claims made under the Dental Plan, Health Plan or Flexible Spending Program (Health Spending Account or Personal Spending Account). This means that the deadline for submitting claims incurred between January 1 and December 31, 2017 is March 31, 2018.