Bargaining Bulletin #10: We could make this place beautiful

Sent on behalf of Michael Stewart, Chair, CCFA Contract Negotiating Committee:

Check your email for my last bulletin on package bargaining. And follow the Open Bargaining discussion on our Discord.

Hi friends,

It’s been a month. We have had six bargaining days since our AGM on April 30 (that’s seventeen total). Both the Union and the Employer have each sent three packages across the table. I’m so proud of your Bargaining Committee. It’s been patient, gruelling work–but we feel we are close to a deal. 

We’ve made great progress on establishing Rights to Future Work for term faculty, Indigenizing our pay scale, streamlining Scheduled Development, and making Faculty Performance Reviews into a meaningful, collaborative exercise. None of this language is signed yet, but there’s a lot of agreement on these issues.

The final sticking point is workload. We’ve heard loud and clear that Faculty want fair, firm caps on class size, case loads, and contact hours. The Employer has not shown interest in budging yet, even though there is money on the table that can pay for improvements. We’ve told the Employer in no uncertain terms that without gains in workload, our members won’t ratify a deal. 

We’ve narrowed our demands as far as we can stretch them: 

• a minimum chair release
• a maximum class size
• a reduction in lab contact hours
• minimum student support ratios for CAL, libraries, and Counselling
• a faculty majority on Dean hiring panels.  

There’s a path to a deal here, but it’s up to the Employer to find it. With that in mind, I offer my sincere and abundant gratitude to all the observers who supported us this month. So many new faces, and you are all showing the Employer that we’re all at the table this time. We’ve had faculty from the Arts, from Access, from Student Services, from Science, from Tech, from Business, and from Health. It’s been gratifying and moving to see, and it hasn’t gone unnoticed by the Employer. I hope you will stick with us in this final push.

Read the whole package onDiscord (email me if you need an invite) and let us know what you think. Let’s a get a deal we can all be proud of.