On December 3 and 4, 2024, the Board and ULFA negotiating teams held their fifteenth and sixteenth bargaining sessions toward a new Academic Staff Collective Agreement (ASCA).
Teaching obligations and other commitments required that these be half-day sessions and that some ULFA team members be absent for portions of the sessions. One ULFA Member observer attended on December 4.
The December 3 session began with the Board team presenting a proposal on the Teaching Professoriate consisting of a new Schedule and an explanatory note. This follows ULFA’s July 24, 2024 presentation and proposal on the Teaching Professoriate which was based on the signed Teaching Professoriate Joint Working Group final report.
The Board Teaching Professoriate presentation elaborated on the structure of their proposal as a Schedule and how it interacts with the ASCA as an amendatory component. Described as cost-neutral, the proposal includes the introduction of three ranks of Teaching Professor, replacing “continuing” with “tenured” status for Teaching Professors, and the opportunity for Teaching Professors to apply for exceptional duties involving teaching-related projects but no dedicated funding for these projects. The discussion that followed included concepts of transition into a teaching professoriate for Instructors.
At the December 4 session, the teams discussed issues related to two opened Articles. Topics included the Right of First Refusal for Sessional Lecturers and Sessional course development implications (Article 38), and the ability of inactive Members serving as Board of Governors representatives to fully engage in their appointed Board responsibilities (Article 4). The teams also discussed negotiation dates for the Winter 2025 semester and ideas for optimizing use of scheduled negotiation time.
December 19 and 20 are the remaining negotiation dates scheduled for the Fall 2024 Term. There are 9 negotiation dates tentatively scheduled for the Winter 2025 term: January 20, 22, 29, and 31, February 14, March 19 and 21, and April 2 and 4.A summary of the progress of articles opened in this round of bargaining is available here.
