Bargaining bulletin #4: Progress on some proposalsBut uncertainty about financial mandate
Dear colleagues,
Your bargaining committee met the administration on Friday, 13 February, for 3 hours. We worked on 5 CFA proposals and 3 from the administration, and reached tentative agreement on two minor proposals. However, the administration is still unwilling to talk about any CFA proposal that it sees as “cost items”—the ones that would affect its budget.
One surprise on Friday was that the administration’s committee had not booked negotiation dates beyond 13 February. This caught our committee by surprise, since our committee had booked every second Friday from now through June. The good news is that we are working with the administration to schedule weekly meetings starting on 27 March and going to the end of June. The CFA is awaiting admin's agreement to this schedule.
The next scheduled meeting is on Friday, 27 March, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Discussion of “non-cost items”
We made some progress on the proposals listed below. We are, however, still waiting for substantive responses from the administration on most of the proposals we discussed last Friday. And the two proposals on which we have tentative agreement are not really new— they simply codify existing rules. So there is much work to do.
Details on the proposals discussed on 13 February
Here are some specific details—with apologies for the inevitable union-geeky jargon. We will go through these proposals more closely with area stewards during their monthly meeting on Tuesday, 24 February. We will also check in with coordinators, chairs, and convenors in the separate “3Cs” meeting that day (both are during the CFA meeting block next week, 11:30 to 1 ).
Change from monthly to semi-monthly pay (though this is already a statutory obligation for the administration, and has been since May 2019)
Incorporate the right of regular faculty to “top up” their commitment level based on workload across all three terms into the body of the Collective Agreement
Establish a joint faculty-admin committee to review our evaluation processes holistically (looking at how we gather and act on feedback about individual instructors, courses and programs, and university systems that affect teaching and learning)
Establish a joint committee on reconciliation and decolonization (joint with reps from CFA, MoveUP, CSU, admin, and the Nations on whose territories we work—similar to a standing committee that met from the mid 2000s until it was disbanded in 2019)
A fast-track “troubleshooter” arbitration process for grievances (aiming to break through the logjam of disputes about, for example, regularization)
We don’t want to over-promise on the last three proposals. The administration seemed reluctant to entertain the idea of a holistic approach to reviewing the evaluation process, and at the moment opposes the establishment of a joint committee on decolonization. We pushed back on both points, and have shared with the admin team that their objection to the joint committee on decolonization uses language that strikes us as highly colonial. We expect a response at the next bargaining meeting, and are hopeful that they will change their minds.
It was actually the administration that proposed the troubleshooter in this round, though their troubleshooter proposal uses the language the CFA prepared in 2022 as part of the settlement of grievances about directors or AVPs being hired to play the role of deans for some departments. The admin’s proposal is to use the troubleshooter only where both parties agree to use it, which would give the admin a veto on its use for any particular dispute. The CFA has proposed that we use it for all grievances on a pilot-project basis for 3 years, after which we could discontinue it if it does not work. We are awaiting their response.
The CFA also responded to two proposals from the administration, noting that there is no apparent need to amend the Collective Agreement as they have proposed. We see the concerns they have raised as being easily addressed through improved HR procedures. These admin proposals were about:
Timing of scale placement (the admin does not want to make these retroactive to the term in which the placement currently take effect; instead they want the scale placement to start in the term in which they receive all the relevant scale-placement information from the member), and
Timing of new regular appointments (the admin wanted to change the target date for confirming appointments from 31 May to 30 April, even though the appointments don’t take effect until 1 September)
We hope this information is useful to you. The main theme is that we remain hopeful that we can achieve some good things in this round, but it is too early to say, especially when it comes to financial items.
We will update you as we approach the next meeting, on 27 March 2026.
In solidarity,
Your 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