Negotiating teams from ULFA and the Board of Governors met on Thursday April 4 to continue bargaining.

ULFA presented 5 Articles and Schedules and the Board presented 1. As always, you can follow the status of individual articles here.

Negotiations for the last several weeks have been held under an informal agreement from February 21 between the two sides to focus on core mandate issues.

At the February meeting, the Board of Governors indicated that they wanted to explore ways of moving negotiations forward in an expedited fashion through March and April. ULFA agreed provisionally as a result to provide weekly meeting dates and indicated our willingness to explore ways of expediting negotiations to meet the Board’s proposed deadline. In doing so, ULFA also contingently agreed to explore accepting reduced compensation in exchange for improved job security and other terms and conditions (the “Provincial Template”). It also agreed to suspend a provision in its mandate for the reorganisation of several articles on a similarly contingent basis tied also to a proposed MoU governing the starting point for our next round of negotiations.

Unfortunately, after some rapid initial progress, negotiations appear at this point to have slowed down considerably and bargaining is increasingly bogged down in discussions of side issues.

ULFA raised some of these concerns at the table directly with representatives of the Board of Governors, who have indicated that they have a more optimistic view of the current state of negotiations.

As a sign of good faith, ULFA has agreed to meet again on April 11. If we are able to resume progress at this meeting, ULFA has found several possible dates for full-day sessions in April which might assist in reaching agreement if the focus can be maintained on core issues. If not, we have three morning sessions including April 11 scheduled through the end of April as part of our commitment to the expedited process.

Either way, this current attempt at reaching an expedited agreement on the terms proposed by the Board in February comes to a conclusion at the end of April. If this expedited process fails, negotiating will return to a more sustainable pace for the rest of the summer and ULFA will turn its focus to concluding negotiations on the Essential Services Agreement (ESA), a key requirement that must be in place before formal mediation, job action, and other techniques for bringing difficult negotiations to a close can begin.

Negotiating teams from ULFA and the Board of Governors met on Wednesday March 27 to continue bargaining.

The session was very fluid. While some language was exchanged, considerable attention was also devoted to process. Although ULFA came prepared to sign off on the Board’s previous presentation of Article 4, for example, the Board of Governors’ side indicated they wished to treat Articles 4, 5, and 6 as a package. They also indicated they were unprepared to hear ULFA presentations on Articles 36 and 12, asking ULFA to present Article 12 in the upcoming session instead. As always, you can follow the status of individual articles here.

Negotiations for the last several weeks have been held under an informal agreement between the two sides to focus on core mandate issues. As noted in previous postings, this means exploring the degree to which the two sides may be able to settle according to a provincial template, whereby unions have been receiving smaller-than-otherwise-expected financial awards in exchange for significant improvements in job security and other terms and conditions. In addition to agreeing provisionally to exploring this template, ULFA’s negotiating team has also provisionally agreed to suspend further discussion of a significant reorganisation of the former Sessionals and Faculty Handbooks during the current round of bargaining, in exchange for concessions on terms and conditions and a Memorandum of Understanding that the proposed rearrangement will be the basis of negotiations in the next round.

This approach has resulted in considerable movement at the table on both sides on big issues. It has also made more apparent the areas where the two sides are going to have more difficulty reaching resolution.  The next few sessions are very important and will likely be strong indicators of whether this approach will lead to settlement or a reopening of broader negotiations.

Bargaining teams for ULFA and the Board of Governors met on Thursday March 21 to continue negotiations. This meeting was part of a series of weekly dates supplied by ULFA in response to a request from the Board of Governors on February 21.

During the meeting, ULFA presented its response to the Board’s most recent proposals on Articles 15 (Instructors/Academic Assistants), 35 (Sessional Lecturers), and Schedule A (Salary), while the Board of Governors responded to ULFA’s latest versions of Articles 4 (Applications and exclusions), 5 (Recognition), and 6 (Communication). As always, you can follow the progress of negotiations for individual articles here.

Negotiations during this session were conducted in keeping with a proposal from the February 21 meeting that the two sides would focus in the short term on core “mandate” issues in the hopes of reaching an expedited settlement. As part of this agreement, the two sides agreed to work on the basis of the “provincial template,” in which public sector unions in the province have considered lower-than-otherwise-expected economic proposals from management in exchange for advances in job security language and terms and conditions.

The resulting discussions have been largely positive, with considerable movement on both sides; if current progress continues, we may be close to reaching agreement in principle on  Articles 4, 5, 15, and 35. At the same time, the two sides appear to be finding less room to manoeuvre in the case of Article 6 (Communication). Here the particular sticking points involve transparency in the event of a breach of member data and the provision of letters of appointment (which constitute part of the contract between members and the university) to ULFA as Members’ exclusive bargaining agent.

The two sides are scheduled to meet again on Wednesday March 27, with weekly meeting continuing through to the end of April, if necessary.