Final Agenda – ULFA Annual General Meeting

Nov 10, 2017 | News

Hello Faculty Association Members,

I would like to remind you of the Annual General Meeting on Friday, April 15 at 12pm in room TH204. The final agenda for our meeting is attached and can also be found on the ulfa.ca website. Lunch and beverages (alcoholic and non-alcoholic) will be provided.

Video conferencing will be offered using the University’s WebEx program. This will allow Members the ability to attend the meeting from anywhere in the world, whether they are on one of the Northern campuses, in their office holding office hours, or abroad on study leave.  Verification will be required before virtual attendance will be granted. To attend the meeting via WebEx make arrangements with Derrick (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or 403-329-2578) to receive the meeting-specific hyperlink, arrangements should be made prior to April 11, 2016.

Hope the semester is going well for you and I look forward to seeing you at the meeting.

ULFA Nominating Committee: Call for Nominations

Nov 10, 2017 | News

TO:        ULFA MEMBERS
 
FROM:  ULFA Nominating Committee
 
DATE:   March 7, 2015
 
The ULFA Nominating Committee is now actively seeking interested individuals willing to fill vacancies on the Executive, standing and other committees for 2016-2017. Nominations are being sought for the following:

                   Executive:
                            President
                            Vice-President/President Nominate (2 nominees)
                            Chair, Economic Benefits
                            Chair, Gender, Equity & Diversity
                   Handbooks Committee
                   Economic Benefits Committee
                   Grievance Committee
                   Gender, Equity and Diversity Committee
                   Study Leave Relocation Committee
ULFA reps to university committees: GFC Travel Committee, GFC Academic Quality Assurance Committee, GFC Strategic Planning Committee, Daycare Advisory Committee, Joint Work Site Health & Safety Committee.

Note: Additional information on committee involvement and responsibilities can be found on the ULFA website: /wp-content/uploads/2017/11/ULFA-Representatives-Expectation-Reference-Guide-2015.pdf      
 
The Nominating Committee will present its list of nominees at the Annual General Meeting on April 15 from 12-3pm. In addition, nominations will be open from the floor. In the event that there is more than one nominee for a single position, an election will take place by electronic ballot as soon after the AGM as is possible. In the event that there is more than one candidate seeking election to the Executive Committee, an All Candidates Forum will be organized prior to the election.
 
If you are interested in serving the Association in some way, or know of someone who might be willing or well-suited to fill one of these vacancies, please contact one of the Nominating Committee members listed below or contact Annabree Fairweather in the ULFA office at ext. 2328 or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
 
Nominating Committee Members:
Jo-Anne Fiske (A&S), Chair (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)
Jennifer Mather (A&S), Past Chair (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)
     David Kaminski (A&S) (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)
     Andrea Amelinckx, (Management) (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)
     A. William Smith (Fine Arts), (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)
     Ying Zheng (A&S) (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)
     Sharon Pelech (Education) (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

Message from President RE: Strike Rights

Nov 10, 2017 | News

Dear Colleagues,

 

 

A 2014 Supreme Court of Canada ruling in a case involving the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour asserted the right to strike for most public sector employees including, as it happens, academic staff at post-secondary institutions, and set a time limit for provinces to amend legislation that had incorrectly denied the right to strike to employees (and, by the way, right to lockout for employers). This deadline is looming in Alberta (happening in spring of the coming year) and so the provincial government has undertaken to amend the Post-Secondary Learning Act to come into compliance with the SCC ruling.

This is a profound shift in labour relations for CARI institutions since academic staff have waived strike rights for the past forty-some years in favour of adopting an alternate dispute resolution in the form of binding arbitration. This change will also grant strike rights to colleges and institutes that have up until now been legislatively precluded from striking. Any shift in labour relations of this magnitude will need to be handled delicately and with due consideration for mitigating labour unrest.

To that end, the government in early October released a discussion paper to the faculty associations, administrations and grad student associations of all post-secondary institutions in the province outlining essentially two approaches to developing compliance: one was bringing the PSE sector broadly under the labour code, and the other was to minimally tweak the existing PSLA into compliance. The discussion paper also invited respondents to offer up other possibilities for consideration, and set a deadline for receipt of responses by the Ministry of Advanced Education for the end of October (later amended to mid-November).

The faculty associations that together form CAFA (Alberta, Calgary, Athabasca, and Lethbridge Faculty Associations) clubbed together to produce a common response, and additional commentary as the individual Associations felt necessary, and submitted it at the end of October. The Executive Directors of each Association attended a meeting with the government and, subsequently, CAFA representatives and additional stakeholders were invited to roundtable discussions to discuss the Ministry’s options in determining how to comply with the SCC and to elaborate on their written submissions. The CAFA response favoured the so-called “option 1” in which minimal changes to the PSLA were called for, an approach apparently favoured by most of the administrations of the universities in the CARI sector, and by our counterparts in the colleges in the province.

At the CAFA council meeting held last Friday in Calgary, CAFA’s member Associations agreed to make public their common response to our members, and so if you are interested in seeing what we have told the government about what should be kept in mind when changing legislation to come into compliance with the SCC, you can find it on the CAFA website at https://www.ualberta.ca/CAFA/, or at the following direct link: https://www.ualberta.ca/CAFA/assets/cafapslasubmission—final-oct-2015.pdf.

Your ULFA Executive expects to provide additional detail about this matter, and some of the possible implications for us in our collective bargaining environment, at our fall general meeting. Once draft legislation has been made available to stakeholders, ULFA plans to hold townhall meetings to take the measure of our membership’s thoughts on the draft legislation, and subsequently convey that to our elected representatives prior to the passage of final changes to the PSLA.

 

Vigilantly yours,

 

David Kaminski

ULFA President