THE
AUFA PRESIDENT COMMUNICATES
Negotiations: The facts
AUFA members voted November 18 – 21 on a motion
presented by the AUFA executive to authorize collective action up to and
including a full withdrawal of services.
273 members voted. 250 were in
favour of the motion (92 %). 90 % of all
AUFA members voted. In response to this
overwhelming support that AUFA members have shown for their negotiating team,
the administration of Acadia has posted information concerning negotiations on
its website, and has sent this via email to all Acadia students.
I would like to comment on the information on
this website, and some of the terms used.
First, I wish to contest the use the administration has made of the word
“university” in this document. Consider
the following statement: “AUFA walked
away from negotiations; the university remains committed to reaching a
settlement.”
Who, in this case, is the university? Since we signed our first Collective
Agreement in 1979, “university” and “Acadia” have been defined in the
Definitions section as: “that entity
which includes, but is not limited to the Board, Faculty members, Senate,
students, Alumni, and all those employed by Acadia.” A university exists because of its professors
and its students, who come together because they share a common quest for
knowledge and respect for the truth. Yet
in the administration’s statement it is clear that neither professors nor
students are considered to represent “the university.” Their view seems to suggest that it is the
administrators and the Board of Governors that are at the core of the
“university.”
This misappropriation of the word “university”
reflects the disrespect for both students and professors that has characterised
negotiations from the onset. What is
even more disturbing here is that it also reflects the administration’s
disrespect for the truth, and for the negotiating process itself. It is not true to say that “AUFA walked away
from negotiations.” No meaningful
negotiations had occurred in the sessions held since rejection of a tentative
agreement, and it was because of this stalemate that the AUFA negotiating team
left the bargaining table.
The administration claims to be “committed to
fair bargaining that focuses on key issues.” The question here is who decides
which issues are key? This has to be a
matter of negotiation between the two parties, not an arbitrary decision made
by the Board’s negotiators. The Board
has filed a complaint of “bad-faith bargaining” against AUFA, claiming that we
have not made “every reasonable effort to conclude and sign a collective
agreement.” AUFA could have filed its
own complaint of “bad faith bargaining” against the Board for its repeated
refusal to discuss what we consider to be our key issues. We did not do so because we wanted to move
the bargaining process forward with the help of a conciliator appointed by the
provincial government.
The Board’s response to our request for
conciliation was an attempt to block the appointment of a conciliator. This attempt has failed. The Minister of Labour has granted our request. A conciliator, Darrell Foley, has been
appointed and dates have been set for conciliation -- December 11, 12, 15, 16
and 17.
The administration claims to want conciliation
to go forward unburdened by the “myriad of demands presented by the new AUFA negotiating
team.”
Many of these so-called “demands” are changes
to the collective agreement that are required to implement the Labour Relations
Board ruling that the part-time and full-time bargaining units be
amalgamated. In most cases, these
changes are simple and could be dealt with quickly. Other “demands” referred to as being new were
in fact in our original proposals presented last May. The administration refers to them as “new”
because they did not appear in the proposed agreement that we rejected in
September. The Board is effectively
refusing to recognize the 90 % rejection vote, and insists that the rejected
agreement be the basis for negotiations.
The administration claims that there are “still
too many issues that detract from meaningful bargaining.” However, it is their team that has refused to
engage in meaningful bargaining. In
particular, they refused to sign off articles to which neither side proposed changes. They have insisted throughout that they have
the right to reintroduce matters that were signed off. They did so in the recent part-time
negotiations, bringing those talks to the breaking point.
The administration’s claim that they are
offering an 18% salary increase over three years is a misrepresentation. The real salary offer is 4 %, 3.25 % and 3
%. The 18 % to which the administration
refers includes the grid step increase.
Note that by withholding our grid step increase in July, the administration
can now claim that it is part of their salary package.
This salary offer does not, as the
administration claims, “put Acadia salaries near the top for similar regional
universities and competitive nationally for similar institutions.” Compare the recent salary settlements reached
at Saint Mary’s, Saint Francis Xavier and Brock. I compared the salaries offered for Step 3 at
the Assistant Professor scale at several primarily undergraduate universities
and found that Acadia offers $50,768, Mount Allison $51,696, Saint Francis
Xavier $52,133, and Trent $57,869.
Comparing step one on the Full Professor scale, I found: Acadia $72,428, Mount Allison $75,086, Saint
Francis Xavier $77,885, Brock $82,576 and Trent $86,071.
The administration mentions competing demands
for financial resources as one of the reasons they cannot make a more
competitive and reasonable salary offer.
While AUFA recognizes these demands, we believe that the
administration’s priorities are wrong.
From 1999 to 2003, tuition at Acadia rose by approximately 20 %. The total salary package for full-time faculty
increased by approximately 5 % during that same period. In contrast, the number of administrators has
risen; their total salary package has increased by over 80%. AUFA recently filed a request for salary
figures for administrators under the Freedom of Information Act. The administration has responded to our
request by setting forth an exorbitant fee in order to provide this
information.
We question the priorities of a university
administration that constantly increases student tuition, seeks to reduce the
number of full-time professors, and misrepresents the bargaining positions of
those professors. Such actions undercut
the essence of the university as a place where faculty and students share as a
common goal the quest for truth and knowledge.
Rather than allow the administration’s team to
dictate what the key issues for negotiation are, let me summarize them here.
Since the proposed 11th Collective
agreement was rejected on September 3, no progress has been made. All of the problems that led us to reject
that proposed agreement remain, and new problems have been created. The Board’s team has presented new proposals
for Articles 14 and 17 which are worse than the ones we rejected; these
proposals attack the principles of progressive discipline and a fair hearing,
and they introduce ways to punish new faculty members who do not apply for
external funding in their first year of employment.
Despite the fact that we won our case on
amalgamation, the Board’s team is still refusing to discuss integration of
part-time faculty. This refusal weakens
all of us because in so doing the Board insists on applying different
definitions of academic freedom to full-time and part-time employees. Such a measure seriously undermines the idea
of the University as a place of free and open exchange of ideas.
There are, in my view, three main thrusts in
the Board’s current proposals: First, to
deny us rights, even those guaranteed by the law; second, to force us into
litigation to regain those rights; third, to create distinct categories of
employees in order to further encroach upon our rights. We have ample evidence of these
intentions: since August, we have had
three different cases before the Labour Relations Board of Nova Scotia: the integration hearing, the grid step
hearing, and the “bad faith bargaining” claim.
These are all costly and time-consuming legal procedures.
As our negotiating team returns to the
bargaining table, we should all pay close attention to the collective rights
that the administration seeks to deny us by insisting on a managerial approach
to university governance which, if successful, will undermine the collegial
tradition that is the very basis of the university.
What are the rights the administration seeks to
deny us? Here are some:
- the right to maternity leave in the first
twelve months of a woman’s contract
- the rights to sick leave and accommodation
- the right to ownership of intellectual
property and the right to decide when and if to commercialise our intellectual
property
- the right of Instructors to ownership of
their intellectual property
- the right to a fair hearing involving
progressive discipline
- the right to retain all salary and benefits
while awaiting a hearing
- the right to teach a course elsewhere
- the right to use the university’s facilities
and name
- the right of Heads to schedule courses
- the rights of CLTs
to participate in department decisions
- the rights of retirees to library and email
access
Other problems in the Board’s proposals include
ambiguous language, particularly in article 15 concerning course
evaluations. The Board’s team has
introduced a new mandatory course evaluation form, yet the form itself has
three blank questions and there is no mechanism for defining what questions
would be asked. Evaluations provide key
information for decisions on tenure and promotion.
Finally, there is no commitment in the Board’s
proposals to recruitment and retention issues, which must include competitive
salaries, a dental plan, competitive and equitable workloads, and adequate
support for research. Despite the
increase in student enrolments we have seen this fall, the Board proposes to
reduce the complement of full-time professors.
I conclude in asking you to join with me in
wishing our negotiating team (Jim Sacouman, Karmen Bleile, Martin Hallett,
Richard Cunningham, Sonya Symons, Mary MacLeod) courage and resolve in their
efforts to defend our view of the University as a place of equity and respect,
collegial dialogue, and truth.
Janice Best
President