The CAUT
Librarians Conference and Workshop
October 26-27, 2007
At the end of October, I took a break from the picket line and flew to sunny Vancouver for this very demanding 2 day conference and workshop on collective bargaining. Given the subject of the conference and our situation at that time, Acadia University was the focus of much discussion and I enjoyed my mini-celebrity status as our sole representative at the conference.
Day 1 was the conference day and was attended by CAUT President Greg Allain, Executive Director James Turk, Assistant Executive Director Peter Simpson, Professional Officer Paul Jones, and the Chair of the CAUT Librarians Committee Kent Weaver along with about 70 librarians from across the country. We were introduced to the basics of collective bargaining, bargaining skills at the table, principles of clause drafting, and the major issues facing librarians in academic staff associations.
At lunch the first day, we had a rather passionate and rousing speech by Jim Sinclair, President of the B.C. Federation of Labour, on the future of collective bargaining and the importance of unions and higher education in society.
After a full day of conference sessions we worked into the evening with our breakout groups to prepare for our bargaining simulation the next day. The simulation was the most demanding, intense, and valuable part of these 2 days. Each group played the role of either the administrative or union bargaining teams trying to resolve the last few outstanding issues and reach an agreement. The remaining issues were all librarian issues, of course, and focused on matters of salaries, workload, academic freedom, copyright, and compensation. I was happy to find myself on the union team and we felt we worked very well to be the first group to reach an agreement early in the afternoon of the second day. Unfortunately, the administrative team seemed very happy with the outcome as well, which left us all scrambling to see if we had overlooked something.
Although this workshop was narrowly focused on librarians’ issues, it followed the basic model for other CAUT collective bargaining workshops and I would highly recommend the experience to anyone who has the opportunity to attend one.
Anthony Pash