The Board and ULFA negotiating teams held their twenty-ninth and thirtieth sessions toward a new Academic Staff Collective Agreement (ASCA) on September 3 and 4, 2025. At different times over the two sessions, a total of four ULFA members attended as observers.
Over the two sessions, the ULFA team presented 11 response proposals and its opening Schedule A proposal. The Board team presented 4 response proposals and accepted 3 previously presented ULFA proposals, which are now provisionally agreed. Details are summarized below.
On September 3, the ULFA team presented response proposals for Article 39 and Schedule WW (key components of the Teaching Professoriate), followed by response proposals for Articles 13 (Evaluation Criteria), 21 (Assignment of Duties), 9 (Grievance), 11 (Rights & Responsibilities), and 19 (Supervision & Discipline). The ULFA team reiterated that its proposals for a Teaching Professoriate and Articles 9, 11, and 19 together comprise a package. The Board presented response proposals on Articles 4 (Applications & Exclusions), 10 (Appointments), 32 (Leaves), and 35 (Faculty Members). The ULFA team’s last response presentations of the session were on Articles 23 (Evaluation Procedures) and 24 (Increments). Following some discussion, the Board indicated it would use the first part of September 4 to caucus and would inform the ULFA team when it was ready to meet.
The September 4 session began with some questions for the ULFA team on aspects of the proposals shared the previous day, and further discussion on motivations and philosophies underpinning the career progress and merit proposals. The Board team provided written acceptance of the ULFA team’s most recent proposals for Articles 5 (Recognition), 8 (Delegation), and 12 (EDI) as a follow-up to verbal acceptance mentioned the previous day. The Board team said they accept the ULFA team’s conditional agreement to withdraw 5.02.2 (no contracting out) from its May 5/25 Article 5 proposal but cannot guarantee the work currently in progress to transition all Music Studio Teacher positions to be academic staff appointments under the ASCA will be done by the end of this bargaining round and encouraged the ULFA team to verify this progress with Members within the Faculty of Fine Arts. The ULFA team presented response proposals for Articles 3 (ASCA Amendments) and 35 (Faculty Members), followed by a presentation of its opening proposal for Schedule A (Salaries & Stipends).
The ULFA team noted that, per the membership-established bargaining mandate in which fair compensation is a primary concern, Schedule A is the last remaining priority item needing to be tabled in this bargaining round. Given that several other items point to Schedule A, the team believes it is essential for it to be on the table alongside all the other open items currently in play.
The ULFA team reiterated that it continues to use the institutions identified as suitable comparators for salary matters (University of Alberta, University of Calgary, University of Saskatchewan, University of Regina, and Trent University) in the 2014 report of a joint Working Group on Salary Structures that has been used in past bargaining rounds, as no other mutually agreed set of comparators has since been established.
From the start of this bargaining round, the ULFA team has consistently maintained that an exchange of full proposal packages is the most efficient way to enable both parties to fully explore each other’s proposals and work toward the creation of a ratifiable new agreement. The ULFA opening Schedule A proposal was drafted prior to being informed by the Board team that they preferred not to exchange full proposal packages that included financials.
As important context for its Schedule A opening proposal, the ULFA team provided three figures compiled using data from Statistics Canada and collective agreements of ULethbridge and the five aforementioned comparator institutions. Figure 1 compares the salary floors of ULethbridge to those of the five comparators noted above. Figure 2 compares historical Alberta and Canada consumer price index inflation data to recent ULFA cost of living adjustments (COLA). Figure 3 compares the faculty salaries at ULethbridge to all other Canadian universities, to our established comparator group, and to the Canadian U15 universities (blog continues after these figures).
Fig. 1. ULethbridge salary floors compared to those of our historical comparator institutions.
Fig. 2. ULethbridge salary adjustments compared to Alberta and Canada consumer price index (CPI) data. Top: ULethbridge COLA adjustments in recent years in the context of the average Alberta/Canada CPI inflationary pressures. Bottom: The compounded salary erosion at ULethbridge resulting from COLA not keeping pace with inflation.
Fig. 3. ULethbridge 2024/2025 salary figures compared to other aggregate data. The comparisons provided are all Canadian universities (red), the historical comparator group (orange), and the U15 (lime green). Data are shown for all faculty ranks combined, Assistant Professors, Associate Professors, and Full Professors (source: Stats Canada).
Collectively, these figures demonstrate the magnitude of the gap between ULethbridge academic staff salaries and those of our counterparts within the sector, as well as the severe salary erosion arising from sustained high inflationary pressures and stagnant compensation levels. Salary erosion is a key concern in the ULFA bargaining mandate for the current and preceding negotiation rounds. Failing to have this issue appropriately addressed earlier has led to the current position where we have fallen far behind our colleagues at other institutions across the country.
The ULFA team rejected the Board team’s contention that ULFA’s opening Schedule A proposal was intended to result in an impasse. Some discussion centred around the pattern emerging within Alberta public sector bargaining and how the ULFA team’s proposal differed from that pattern. The ULFA team recognizes that addressing salary erosion as part of the ULFA bargaining mandate established for this round is a critical aspect of reaching a ratifiable settlement. The team invited the Board team to respond to this proposal and the other proposals on the Board’s side of the table in the interests of taking meaningful steps toward a new agreement.
Of the 46 items opened in this round of bargaining, there is provisional agreement of new language in 5 articles and on the deletion of 6 outdated schedules. The ULFA team is currently responsible for preparing responses on Articles 4, 5, 10, 32, and Z, and it looks forward to receiving responses from the Board team in upcoming negotiation sessions on the rest of the opened items that have not yet been provisionally agreed.
The remaining scheduled Fall 2025 negotiation dates are: October 2, 3, 23, 24; November 12, 14; and December 11, 12. A summary of the progress of items opened in this round of bargaining is available here.
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