August 14, 2006
Welcome to our new members!
As President of the University of Guelph Faculty Association, and on behalf of UGFA, I'm happy to welcome new faculty and librarians to the University of Guelph. Congratulations on your appointment. I hope that, in years to come, you will feel - as I do – that choosing Guelph was a great decision.
You are joining the University at an exciting time both for the institution and for the Faculty Association. Student numbers this fall will be at or near their record high. This is an indication of our success but it also presents a great challenge. The scholarly reputations of the university and its Faculty are also, I believe, at a record level. Balancing the workload of teaching and research – and integrating these two aspects of an academic career into a coherent unity – are a daily concern for every professor. The Faculty Association is here to help you as you develop your career and interact with the university administration. Don’t hesitate to call us.
Certification and the first Collective Agreement
In early April 2006, UGFA Council and Executive decided that the relationship between faculty/librarians and the administration could be management most effectively if we had access to the tools of the Ontario Labour Relations Act. Therefore, we began a unionization cards signing campaign, culminating in a successful certification vote on May 16th. Although we are still awaiting the ruling of the Labour Relations Board with regard to the exact definition of the bargaining units, we are now a union.
Over the next few months, our focus will be on the negotiation of a first Collective Agreement for our members. This issue of UGFA News & Views provides an update on this important undertaking. The one aspect of the collective bargaining process that is probably most evident to people is the negotiation of a salary agreement. According to the motion pictures, this is generally accomplished by a gang of overweight men, with their sleeves rolled up, staring one another down across a boardroom table, long after midnight, smoking cigars, swearing and sweating profusely. This is not quite the negotiating style we intend to emulate! Nevertheless, at some point, we will be sitting down at the table and talking about bread and butter issues like wages.
But Salary is only one of a great number of things that need to be agreed upon in a Collective Agreement. Matters concerning your benefits and pension – effectively also components of what you are paid by our employer – need to be considered, as do other terms and conditions of employment. Among the other important issues to be discussed are workload, health and safety, leaves and sabbaticals, transfers within the institution, intellectual property rights, procedures for tenure and promotion, recognition of merit, grievance procedures, dispute settlement mechanisms, and the protection of academic freedom.
The negotiation process begins before we even sit down to talk to the administration. First, we need to talk to you, our members. UGFA cannot represent you effectively unless we know your hopes and concerns. We try to stay in touch with our members on an ongoing basis, especially by the input of our Council. But going into the process of negotiation, it’s especially important that we hear directly from our rank and file members. To that end, we will soon be preparing and distributing a detailed survey, asking your opinion about the proper goals and priorities for the Association as we negotiate our first collective agreement. We know that different members, and members at different stages of their career, will have different priorities, and so it is important that we hear back from as many of you as possible, so we can prioritize and balance the things that are important to you.
Recently, UGFA set up a large number of ad hoc committees, to begin drafting the elements of our initial bargaining position. Each committee is addressing a specific aspect of labour management relations which will need to be included in a collective agreement. Many of these aspects have been noted above. For some areas, the Special Plan Agreement or Faculty Policies may provide a starting point. For others, things need to change. If you are interested in serving on one of these Committees, or in providing input into them, please feel free to contact us by email (facassoc@uoguelph.ca) or phone (x52126), or speak to any of the members of UGFA Executive.
Experience elsewhere indicates that negotiations to achieve our first Collective Agreement could last for many months or even more than one year. As these negotiations continue, some degree of uncertainty is inevitable. Also, the attention of the Faculty Association is focused on the negotiations, leaving us less time to address the day-to-day concerns of faculty, not to mention the pursuit of our own scholarly careers. Therefore, our intention is to proceed with the negotiation process as expeditiously as we can. That’s why we have begun setting up our committee structure, mentioned above, during the “dog days” of July and August. We want to be ready to start the formal negotiation process with the Administration early in the fall semester. We will keep you apprised of the progress of negotiations with timely editions of UGFA News and Views.
Research Ethics
Faculty members conducting research involving human participants are required to follow procedures established by the Office of Research. UGFA is committed to maintaining high standards of ethics and accountability in any research involving human subjects. This is necessary both ethically and legally. However, Faculty have expressed concern that the ambit of the Human Participants review process has become too broad, encompassing even studies in which the degree of invasiveness of the research is minimal, such as completing surveys or conducting anonymous interviews. There are also concerns about the wording of forms which the Administration requires faculty members to sign before the approval of research protocols. Representatives of the Faculty Association have been involved in ongoing discussions with the administration, in which we have articulated these concerns and suggested ways in which they might be addressed. Although we have not yet achieved consensus, we are committed to making this process work in the best interests of faculty, students, and the Human Participants. If you have concerns about this issue, we would like to hear from you.