Bargaining Bulletin #2: Proposals exchanged

Dear colleagues: Last Friday, your bargaining committee met with the administration to exchange bargaining proposals.

Talks start with a positive tone

As we reviewed with you in general meetings last fall, our proposals are focused on developing and supporting faculty and the University. We made 59 proposals in total. These include paid work for research and scholarship, improved pay and benefits, simplified regularization, improvements to the evaluation process, and a University-wide process for decolonization.

We were pleased with the tenor of the meeting, with the administration explicitly affirming their intention to bargain with us at the table in a collaborative manner as we move toward “substantive bargaining” about specific proposals in the exchanged proposal packages, which will begin on 30 January 2026.

We will discuss this round of negotiations during our general meeting today, 20 January, 11:30 to 1 pm (on Zoom). And once we have reviewed the administration’s proposals more closely, we will discuss them with area stewards and provide a more detailed explanation of them to you in an upcoming bulletin. For now, please see some notes about their proposals and our initial impressions below.

Administration’s proposals centred around cost-cutting

Unlike last round, in 2023, the administration has not proposed drastic changes such as deleting the collegial model. Our impression of their proposal package is that it primarily intends to reduce expenditures. Some of the most notable examples are:

1) Changes to Benefits that pass along more of the premium costs to our members, including proposals that would:

• Charge faculty who voluntarily reduce below part-time the cost of benefit premiums on a pro-rata basis (currently the employer is required to cover benefits for regularized employees regardless of the amount of work).

• Charge the cost of benefit premiums to the Union during job action (currently the employer covers the cost of benefits during the first month of  strike)

2) Changes to section banking that would limit overload banking for future underload to 2 sections (currently it’s 8).

3) Changes to the Benefit Trust Fund in Article 21. The administration says it is no longer in a financial position to give investment returns on 0.5% of the existing fund, even though the Collective Agreement requires this.

Despite the cost-cutting theme of many of its proposals, the administration has also tabled a few proposals that we think may spark meaningful, interest-based discussions at the table. These proposals include the creation of:

1. A joint committee on diversity, equity and inclusion

2. A faster “troubleshooter” process for addressing disputes about the collective agreement that would exist in addition to the standard grievance process

3. A review committee for proposing changes to the evaluation process

These proposals connect to some of the CFA’s proposals, which is encouraging. However, the administration’s proposals on these topics are very general, so it is too early to tell how discussion of these topics will go.

We look forward to further discussions with their bargaining team on these issues and on our substantive bargaining package, and we look forward to discussing this with the membership in more depth at our General Meeting tomorrow.

In Solidarity, The Bargaining Team

Doug Alards-Tomalin, Dwayne Beaver, Michael Begg, Chelsea Bell Eady, Iris Gordon, Ferdos Jamali, Reini Klein, and FPSE representatives Monica Staff and Robin Wylie