Your bargaining team has shared all of their non-monetary proposals including draft contract language. The union’s proposals are rooted in feedback from consultations with faculty and students; existing best practices in our system and in other post-secondary education (PSE) institutions; model language from and discussions with Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) and other PSE leaders; and through review of both the language proposed by the locals this round, along with language that has been tabled previously. It is all backed by research and bolstered by the findings in the updated Report on Education.
Bargaining Updates Feb 9 2022
Legal Brief Supports Faculty Proposals
February 9, 2022
Throughout this round of bargaining, the College Employer Council (CEC) has repeatedly refused to negotiate significant issues regarding workload, staffing, or fairness for partial-load faculty. They have justified their obstinacy by claiming that changes to these areas would violate Bill 124, which limits compensation increases to individual employees in the public sector.
At no time has the CEC ever offered a substantial legal analysis to support their position, which they have often repeated.
OPSEU requested a legal brief on Bill 124 as it impacts our bargaining, from Christine Davies of the law firm Goldblatt Partners LLP. The conclusions of this brief, which will be sent to members’ personal e-mail accounts, are clear:
“In our view, the union’s proposals regarding workload do not offend Bill 124”, since the tabled faculty proposals “…do not result in an increase to salary or compensation, as defined by Bill 124.”
Davies confirms that impacts to Employer costs through changes to workload or staffing are distinct from the changes to employee compensation that are the subject of Bill 124. She writes, ”Nothing in Bill 124 requires employers to limit themselves to 1% increases in the cost of delivering their services[, including] from hiring additional staff or changing staffing models. . . . Rather, Bill 124’s focus is more narrowly on restricting the increases in salary/compensation that flow to employees.”
Davies further explains that disagreements in Bill 124 actually justify referring unresolved issues to arbitration, as the faculty bargaining team has proposed since November. She concludes, “a solution to the parties’ disagreement regarding whether the Union’s proposals are consistent with Bill 124 would be to resolve the outstanding bargaining through binding interest arbitration”.
The CEC has frequently relied upon a report written by Mediator Brian Keller–written following the failed mediation between OPSEU and the CEC–to support their claims about Bill 124. Davies, however, notes that Keller’s report is not a legal analysis, but rather was written, “in a mediation context,” where Keller “did not have the benefit of legal submissions regarding the application of Bill 124 to specific proposals.”
For months, the faculty team has argued that the CEC should either bargain, at the table, the issues that are important to faculty or refer outstanding issues to binding interest arbitration. In her legal analysis, Christine Davies concludes that both of those options are permissible and appropriate in light of Bill 124.
Your bargaining team,
JP, Jonathan, Katie, Michelle, Ravi, Rebecca, and Shawn
January 26, 2022
In this video, CAAT-A Bargaining Team Chair JP Hornick discusses costs and the College Employer Council’s messaging.
The forced offer vote will be held February 15 to 17, 2022.
Local 110’s web page for work-to-rule documents: https://www.opseu110.ca/work-to-rule/
Proposals and Bulletins
Prior Union Proposals
- Workload Proposals with margin notes U2
- Partial-Load Professor and Instructor Proposals with margin notes U3
- Working Class Definition Proposals U4 with margin notes
- Academic Freedom, Intellectual Property, Shared Governance Proposals with explanations U5
- Staffing Language with margin notes U6 FINAL
- Joint committee work Language with margin notes U7
- Outside Work proposal with margin notes U8
- Coordinator proposal with margin notes U9
- Union Bulletin #3
- Bargaining Team Update Aug 11 2021
- 10192021 Union Offer of Settlement
- Union Offer of Settlement 8 November 2021
Current Union Proposal
For further updates, see collegefaculty.org
Management Proposals
- 2021-07-08-Employer Non-Monetary Proposals
- 2021-09-10 M04_Proposal Harassment and Discrimination Amendment
- 2021-09-10 M05 re Union Release Time
- 2021-09-09 M06 assignment of Coordinator duties
- 2021-09-14 M07-Equity Diversity and Inclusion
- 2021-09-13 M08 Truth and Reconciliation
- 2021-09-15 M09 – Housekeeping Amendments
- Faculty Bargaining Team Comments on M10a
- Faculty Bargaining Team Comments on M10b
- 2021-09-15 M11 – Monetary Proposal
Videos
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