Apr 15, 2021 | Bargaining, News
The ULFA bargaining team welcomes the appointment of Locke Spencer of the Department of Physics and Astronomy as its new Chief Spokesperson.
Spencer has been appointed by the ULFA executive on recommendation of the Bargaining Resource Committee to replace Daniel Paul O’Donnell upon his acclamation to the union presidency.
Spencer played an important role in developing the current mandate and preparing language for this round of negotiations and has been attending negotiating sessions as an observer. He will assume the duties of Chief Spokesperson with immediate effect.
The other members of the Bargaining Team are Olu Awosoga, Rumi Graham, Joy Morris, and Rob Sutherland. ULFA Executive Officer Aaron Chubb provides staff support.
Apr 15, 2021 | Bargaining, News
On April 8, representatives of the Board and ULFA held their fifth bargaining session since the exchange of full proposals on January 18, 2021 (eighth overall), as ULFA members entered their tenth month “without a contract” (i.e. since the expiration of the previous Collective Agreement on June 30th, 2020). By this time in the previous round of negotiations, we had met approximately thirty times and were about six weeks from agreement.
The focus of this extended meeting was a presentation by ULFA of its “Article XX package.” This is a proposal for a reorganisation of articles pertaining to job categories and evaluation processes that ULFA believes will reduce duplication and ambiguity in the current agreement and make these extremely common and important processes both easier to oversee and less open to error and misunderstanding.
The heart of the proposal is “Article XX.” This is a proposal for a new article that collects all information about evaluation, including the criteria and processes by which career progress, merit, and requests for tenure/continuing appointments, are considered and evaluated.
Currently, this information is spread throughout the following Articles:
- Article 12: Criteria for the Extension of Probation, Tenure, Promotion, and Salary Increments for Faculty Members
- Article 14: Professional Librarians
- Article 15: Instructors[/Academic Assistants]
- Article 18: Appointment of Faculty Members
- Article 21: Increments for Faculty Members/Professional Librarians
- Article 31: Salary Schedules, Career Progress Increments, Merit Increments, and Economic Benefits
- Article 34: Sessional Lecturers
There are two main problems with the way information about evaluation is represented currently in these articles:
- There is considerable repetition across the job categories: e.g. definitions of “teaching effectiveness” and how this can be demonstrated appear in similar language in Articles 12.01.1 (Faculty), 15.06.2 (Instructors and Academic Assistants, and 34.02.2 (Sessionals); and, conversely
- There are also considerable gaps, in which members of one job category are referred to Articles pertaining to a different job category for important information about evaluation, in some cases without any explicit mention being made about how this material is to be interpreted in their case: e.g. the process for extension of probation and tenure for Professional Librarians points to the process for promotion and tenure of Faculty Members, despite the fact that Librarians and Faculty are evaluated on different criteria (Teaching, Research and Service in the case of Faculty Members; “Performance as a Professional Librarian, Research and Professional Development, and Service in the case of Professional Librarians).
The ULFA proposal reorganises this by
- Collecting all information about processes and the criteria for evaluation that is common to job categories in Articles devoted to these general processes (i.e. Article 18: Appointment; Article 34: Reappointment [Term Limited positions]; and “XX” Evaluation);
- Collecting all information specific to individual job categories (such as ranks, expectations and duties, etc.) in Articles devoted to each job category (i.e. Article 12 [Faculty], 14 [Professional Librarians], 15 [Instructors/Academic Assistants]).
This was a major proposal and the explication and presentation by ULFA of the reorganisation, additions, and deletions across these eight articles took most of the five hours allotted to bargaining by the two sides, meaning that a number of other articles prepared by both sides for presentation on the 8th had to be held over for discussion at future meetings. In some cases (e.g. Articles 12, 14, 15, 18, and 34), ULFA’s presentation also involved a response to Articles opened by the Board. In other cases (e.g. Articles 21, 31, and “XX”), ULFA was presenting new material. As is common at this point in negotiations, there was considerable conceptual discussion, particularly in this case with regard to similarities and differences between the Board and ULFA’s positions regarding term-limited positions (e.g. Sessional Lecturer and Term Appointees).
The next step with articles in the “XX group” is for the Board to make a counter proposal.
You can follow the status of all Articles opened during this round of negotiations here.
Apr 14, 2021 | Bargaining, ESA, News
The teams representing the Board and ULFA met to continue negotiating an Essential Services Agreement (ESA) Wednesday April 7th. This meeting was in follow-up to the February 11th meeting in which ULFA presented a draft ESA to the Board. ULFA’s draft was based on the signed Dec. 2019 ESA with some additional points added in part due to lessons learned from the institutional COVID-19 shutdown this past year.
During the April 7th meeting, the Board presented their response ESA proposal which rejected all of the new elements introduced in the ULFA draft ESA and also removed one item from the expired ESA that both sides had previously accepted.
The majority of the discussion centered around three topics:
- Supervision of counseling practicums
- Time-sensitive research
- Job action safety
Within the discussion there was agreement that an ESA may contain mutually agreed-upon content above and beyond the minimum required by law to protect life and health of the public. There were also points discussed that reflect a diversity of perspectives.
- Counseling Practicums
While the December 2019 ratified ESA (now expired) included a provision to allow student practicums in counselling programs to continue during job action, the Board’s current proposal removes this permission. The rationale presented for rejecting the continuation of student counselling practicums was that the host agency responsible for supervising student work can just take over the practicum clients. ULFA’s team emphasized that there is a potential danger to health in high-risk clients if the therapeutic relationship is suddenly lost. In addition, the ULFA team noted that it is unlikely that agencies would be able to take on such a large pool of clients. Both sides indicated that they will explore this issue further by contacting managers at agencies partnered with UL counselling programs to better understand the risk to the public if all of the counselling practicum students were to withdraw their counselling at once outside of the therapy plan.
- Time-sensitive research
The ULFA ESA proposal included recognition that there is shared interest in maintaining certain time-sensitive research activities during job action. Interruption in these research activities could have a long-lasting impact that will cause harm to institutional reputation and individual research programs. Research interruptions with lasting effects can include missed applications in annual grant cycles, loss of tissue samples, cell cultures, and/or cultivated plant or animal samples. There was also a discussion thread started relating to the equity of the impact of job action on research programs in various disciplines. In contrast to ULFA’s position, the Board asserted that we cannot learn useful information to inform an ESA from the 2020 COVID-19 shutdown.
- Job action safety
While the point of an ESA is to ensure safety during job action, the Board rejected the inclusion of a 6 m picket zone on the west side of campus in the ESA. This perimeter space is intended to ensure that any picket activities do not block public sidewalks and are not too close to roadways. The Board stated the item would more properly belong in a strike protocol. ULFA maintained it would be prudent to include relevant items to maintain public health and safety within the ESA agreement and not leave those items up to a strike protocol, which, unlike an ESA, is not required to be in place prior to any job action.
At the conclusion of the meeting the Board indicated that it would further investigate the need for including provisions for the counselling programs within the ESA, and ULFA indicated that its team would develop a new draft ESA to present at the next meeting.
Mar 29, 2021 | Bargaining, News, Workshops & Events
March 30th, 7pm on Zoom
Students, faculty and staff have all been negatively impacted by budget cuts to our post-secondary institutions, but the impact also extends into the local Lethbridge economy. Join labour and student groups from Lethbridge College and the University of Lethbridge for a Joint Town Hall on Alberta Budget 21 and hear how it is impacting students, staff, faculty and the wider community.
Lethbridge College and the University of Lethbridge create hundreds of millions of dollars in economic activity each year for our city through well paying jobs, providing an affordable education for the citizens of Lethbridge and surrounding area, and attracting students from elsewhere, who then patronize our businesses..
Unfortunately, deep budget cuts year-after-year are eroding these two pillars of our community. The impact can be felt in reduced learning opportunities and less money in the local economy. With increased tuition, student spending power is reduced, or eliminated as students choose to study elsewhere. As staff and faculty face layoffs and salary rollbacks, their spending power in the local economy is reduced, which results in fewer dollars spent, hurting local businesses. Further, less investment in our institutions means fewer opportunities for tradespeople and other contractors in our community that benefit from these investments.
The working and learning conditions at both institutions are inseparable. The scale of these recent cuts have led to collaboration between all student and labour groups on both campuses with an eye to how we can support our community by supporting our college and university. Join student, staff and faculty representatives from Lethbridge College and the University of Lethbridge and hear about the impacts of these cuts, and what is being done to preserve the high quality post-secondary education Lethbridge and Southern Alberta deserves.
Please invite people you know from our community including friends, family, and political, religious, educational and business leaders.
This Town Hall is co-hosted by student and labour groups from both the college and university, and include: Alberta Union of Provincial Employees Local 053, Alberta Union of Provincial Employees Local 071, Lethbridge College Faculty Association, Lethbridge College Students’ Association, Lethbridge Public Interest Research Group, University of Lethbridge Faculty Association, University of Lethbridge Graduate Association, University of Lethbridge Graduate Students’ Association, University of Lethbridge Students’ Union.
March 30th, 7pm on Zoom
Media inquiries can be directed through Aaron
Please register in advance:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_PQI64Ku8RYSDc8gnDXKfmg
Mar 24, 2021 | Bargaining, News
On March 22, ULFA and the Board held their fourth bargaining session since the January 18th exchange of full proposals. The meeting opened with a discussion on the feasibility of scheduling meeting times more frequently than once every two weeks. The Board team suggested lengthening the two scheduled April meetings as a short-term substitute for more frequent meetings, given that significant portions of the packages exchanged in January have yet to be formally presented. The ULFA team agreed to extend the April 8 and 22 bargaining meetings to five hours each, and the Board team indicated weekly meetings would be possible for them beginning in May. The teams also discussed the desirability of continuing to bargain over the summer, and agreed to follow up around questions of summer availability.
The Board team presented proposals on Schedule E (Professional Activities Report) and Article 13 (Duties of Members), both of which have gone back and forth already. There remain differences to resolve regarding Schedule E. A significant gap exists between the two sides’ perspectives on aspects of Article 13: for example, the Board asserted management rights as a reason for not accepting ULFA’s proposal to contain workload by defining an average work week as 37.5 hours. The Board did agree with ULFA’s position that the existing language on PARs does not belong in Article 13, although the parties have yet to agree on where it will end up.
The last item presented by the Board team was their “Proposal #15” on “limited term and sessional appointments.” “Proposal #15” involves opening a number of Articles in order to make changes:
- 2 (Definitions)
- 14 (Professional Librarians)
- 15 (Instructors/Academic Assistants)
- 16 (Termination)
- 18 (Appointments)
- 34 (Sessional Lecturers) and
- Schedule A (Salary Schedules/Stipends).
Proposal #15 would move all provisions for term appointments into Article 34 (Sessional Lecturers) and would treat term employees like Sessional Lecturers for most purposes. This would include introducing a limited Right of First Refusal for term appointees while removing any limitations on how many times they could be employed on a casual basis. Suggested changes to Schedule A.01.4 would reduce the minimum stipend for Sessional Lecturer I and II and introduce a new Sessional Lecturer III category with a minimum course stipend at the current Sessional Lecturer II stipend. The new Sessional Lecturer III rank would apply to Sessional Lecturers who have taught sufficiently frequently and have previously been appointed at the rank of Sessional Lecturer II.
The ULFA team presented the proposed deletion of four Schedules, which it suggested are no longer needed: C (Grandfathering for Probationary Appointments MOU), F (Academic Career Implementation), I (Implementation of Academic Assistants/Instructor Language), and K (Student Evaluations of Teaching MOU). The ULFA team also proposed a minor wording change in Schedule J (regarding when Members must declare uses of University facilities as a possible conflict of interest or commitment).
The ULFA team made initial presentations on their proposals for Articles 4 (Applications and Exclusions) and 6 (Communication and Information). The Article 4 proposal consists of a single change to omit current language specifying how ULFA should allocate its Association dues. The Board was receptive to this change. ULFA’s Article 6 proposal, which seeks additional, timely information on its membership, led to some very productive interest-based discussion on possible ways to meet ULFA’s information needs within the Board’s staffing and system capacities.
ULFA’s final presentation in this meeting was a response to the Board’s Article 5 proposal. By including language adapted from the U of A collective agreement, ULFA’s response addresses the Board’s desire to affirm management rights. This offer is contingent on the parties finding a mutually agreeable way (such as ULFA’s Article 13 proposal to limit the work week) to contain the amount of work expected of members. ULFA’s Article 5 response also proposes language prohibiting the Board from contracting out work (teaching, research, performance as a Professional Librarian, etc.) commonly performed by members of the academic staff. The proposal gives ULFA the right to participate in new Member orientations and increases existing course release provisions. The proposal also contains a new collegial governance section which provides ULFA representation in some University decision-making processes such as budgeting and determining hiring priorities.
The two sides agreed to the deletion of Schedules C and K. The Board team indicated it will take a closer look at the proposals to delete Schedule F and I.
Both sides agreed to end the meeting a bit early so team members could participate in the GFC Committee of the Whole meeting. As a consequence, ULFA did not present its response to the Board’s Article 11 (Rights and Responsibilities) proposal or its Article 32 proposal as originally planned. For the next meeting on April 8, ULFA tentatively offered to respond to the Board’s “Proposal #15” (described above) with ULFA’s proposals for Articles XX (Evaluation) and the numerous Articles and Schedules most implicated by Article XX. The extension to a 5-hour meeting makes presenting this collection of Articles feasible, and will enable ULFA to explain the interconnections. Both parties agreed to exchange a list of items that will be presented at the next meeting on April 8 via email correspondence.
You can track the progress of exchanged bargaining proposals in this spreadsheet.
Mar 11, 2021 | Bargaining, News
Another productive meeting of the ULFA and Board negotiating teams took place on March 8. The Board team began with an update on the status of the ULFA team’s request for costing information on desired improvements to certain Schedule B benefits. They noted the costing requests have been handed off to the benefits carriers with an expected turn-around time of 4 to 6 weeks.
The ULFA team responded to the Board team’s latest proposals on Schedule E (professional activities report) and Article 13 (assignment of duties). While there is considerable distance between the parties’ respective positions on Article 13, progress was made toward a shared understanding of workable improvements to Schedule E. The ULFA team also presented its Article 28 (intellectual property) proposal, which has four main goals: organizational clean-up for easier readability, updating and standardizing language in the copyright section to align with the federal statute; specifying a process for staffing the IP committee; and improving provisions of the patent section to promote innovation, the commercialization of inventions, and the University’s ability to realize ancillary benefits from joint ventures between researchers and industry.
The Board team presented a response to ULFA’s Article YY (EDI) proposal that included a suggestion to rename the Joint Equity Committee (JEC) as the Joint Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) Committee. The Board team also presented proposals to clarify management rights in Articles 1, 5 and 11. You may recall that at the previous meeting on February 22, the Board team presented proposed changes to Article 11 dealing specifically with how service should be included among members’ responsibilities and in evaluation criteria. All of the Board team’s proposed changes to Article 11 have now been presented.
As the March 8 meeting was somewhat shorter than usual due to scheduling conflicts, the parties agreed to identify items for discussion via email in advance of the next meeting, which is scheduled for March 22. The Board team requested a presentation by ULFA on its Article 15 proposal in the near future. This will enable the Board team to continue working on a response to the ULFA team’s proposal to clarify the procedures for probation, tenure/continuing appointment, and promotion, so that the language covers all job categories explicitly (Articles 19, 20, and ZZ). These were presented to the Board team on February 8 and 22. ULFA’s proposal for Article 15 also includes the establishment of a Teaching Professoriate, which the sides discussed in broad terms on February 8. The Board team has expressed interest in considering the idea of a Teaching professoriate in some form, although the visions of this held by the two sides are initially far apart.
You can track the progress of exchanged bargaining proposals in this spreadsheet. Although progress is being made in getting all of the issues in these negotiations onto the table for at least an initial discussion, negotiations are still in the very early stages and there is a long way to go before we will be approaching anything like agreement on any of the major issues at stake.
