The Board and ULFA negotiating teams held their thirty-second bargaining session toward a new Academic Staff Collective Agreement (ASCA) on the afternoon of October 24, 2025. Eight ULFA members attended as observers.
This is the third in a series of posts on the full proposal package and supplementary documents tabled by the Board team at that session. Part 1 in the series outlined the contents of the proposal package. Part 2 focused on the Board team’s proposals for Schedules A and B. Part 3, below, looks at the Board team’s latest proposals for evaluation procedures and merit awards.
Article 23 (Evaluation)
In this round of bargaining, making the evaluation and increments system more transparent, streamlined, and equitable is a mandate item for both ULFA and the Board (Sept 25/25 post). Article 23 currently specifies the timelines, required documentation, and process for evaluating performance. Deans use a member’s submitted Professional Activities Report (PAR), current CV, and relevant personal file materials to assign a performance rating and overall performance score (professors and librarians) or overall performance score (instructors and academic assistants).
Areas in which the Board and ULFA teams’ most recent Article 23 proposals share some commonalities include the following:
- harmonizing the performance evaluation process and increment award system for professors/librarians and instructors/academic assistants,
- limiting the length of submitted PARs to 5 pages,
- no requirement to submit any evaluation materials in non-evaluation years.
Areas in which the Board and ULFA teams’ most recent Article 23 proposals differ significantly include the following:
- performance ratings: Board team proposes a 3-point scale – satisfactory (1 career progress increment), below satisfactory (½ career progress increment), unsatisfactory (no career progress increment); ULFA team proposes to retain the current 7-point scale (ranging from 2.0 to 0, where 1 reflects satisfactory performance),
- appeal of a performance evaluation: Board team proposes to limit the grounds for appeals to substantial errors by the dean in interpreting a member’s submitted evidence and/or failure of the dean to comply with ASCA procedures; the ULFA team proposes to increase the timeframe for such appeals from 5 to 10 working days after receiving an evaluation letter,
- purpose of performance ratings: Board team proposes to use the ratings to determine career progress increment awards only; ULFA team proposes to retain the current practice of using the ratings to determine career progress and merit awards.
Article 24 (Increments/Merit)
Article 24 currently specifies the eligibility for and value of salary increments (based on career progress and merit), the process for determining and allocating merit awards, and the maximum number of career progress increments that may be awarded to professors and librarians. These elements are retained in the ULFA team’s most recent proposal to make the increments system more streamlined, equitable, and transparent.
The Board team proposes to address only merit awards in Article 24 via a new process that includes the following:
- interested members must submit a separate merit application letter (maximum 3 pages) addressing exceptional performance in at least one category of assigned duties,
- deans may optionally grant a merit award to a member who has not submitted an application,
- two levels of merit award:
- merit award: $750 per year for 2 years
- outstanding merit award: $1,500 per year for 2 years
- specification of how merit pools are organized within academic units and across the categories of academic staff,
- no more than 20% of eligible members in a faculty/school would receive an outstanding merit award,
- after distributing outstanding merit awards, the rest of a merit pool would be distributed through merit awards; any unused merit funds would be distributed proportionally among all merit recipients,
- instructors and academic assistants at the salary cap for their rank are not eligible,
- teaching-stream faculty members at their salary cap for their rank may only receive merit via one-time payments,
- merit award decisions cannot be appealed.
Currently, the remaining scheduled Fall 2025 negotiation dates are November 12 and 14, and December 11 and 12. A summary of the progress of items opened in this round of bargaining is available here.
