Another week of bargaining, another exercise in patience for the Units 1, 2, & 3 Bargaining Team!
Recapping Last Week’s Bargaining
We finished presenting all our proposals last week and are now focused on responding to the employer’s counterproposals as they trickle in during bargaining day caucuses, along with updates to our various information requests.
Members whose dues are paying for us to be at the table should know that the employer failed to send us an agenda (a practice which they seem unfamiliar with) for Thursday’s meeting and arrived at the table 20 minutes late. They also immediately asked to scratch our standing agenda item on Labour-Management Committee (LMC) matters.
Quick background: since the start of bargaining, LMC issues have been discussed at the table instead of at distinct committee meetings (as has been the case for at least 10 years of bargaining). This round, the employer is finding that LMC items are detracting to the bargaining process, which they want to prioritize during meeting times (once they arrive, that is). Some of their comments suggested that they would prefer to deal with LMC matters in an offline forum as well.
After caucusing to discuss this, we told the employer to reach out to the LMC and other committees ‘on pause’ during bargaining directly—and that we did not appreciate wasting the first hour of our meeting waiting for them, and then responding to what could have been an emailed suggestion. Unfortunately, this led to a separate discussion about what does and doesn’t count as a “waste of bargaining time” instead of bargaining.
Breakdown of the Employer’s Proposals This Week
Land Acknowledgement (All Units Proposal)
The Employer’s first proposal of the week was to include the university’s new land acknowledgement (gifted to the university by the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, following a Memorandum of Understanding between the parties). In recognition of this gift, the Employer wanted to include the land acknowledgement at the start of our Collective Agreement with “no strings attached,” which sits strangely with the BT’s understanding of the union as a social actor with responsibilities to the colonized land on which we work and live, and to peoples impacted by colonial violence. We hope that the Employer’s interest in DEDI remains when we return to those proposals aimed to materially improve the working and living conditions of Indigenous and racialized CUPE 3903 members (like our proposals to create Indigenous ceremony leave).
Article 4.03.04 and 4.04.3 – Sexual, Gender, and Gender Identity + Racial and Ethnic Harassment (All Units Proposal)
The employer here was countering our proposal to increase the reporting of informal and formal complaints of harassment, so that the union has a better sense of what our members are dealing with on campus. The employer’s offer (which limited to reporting of official complaints from the Centre for Human Rights, Equity and Inclusion and the Centre for Sexual Violence Response) illustrated a lack of procedural clarity on their end. They promised to get back to us after clarifying the university’s procedures.
Article 5 – Labour/Management Committees (All Units Proposal)
The employer gave us a proposal, which we countered on Thursday. We tentatively accepted changes in the proposal’s language to allow “up to four” members from either side to sit on the Employment Equity Committee. We also rejected language that specified that the Employment Equity Committee should meet “at least twice per year,” given that we signed a memorandum of settlement with the University in 2019 that determined that the committee should meet at least five times per year.
Article 6 – Grievance Procedure (All Units Proposal)
The most notable change in the employer’s proposal here is to add a third step to the grievance procedure that would add an ‘institutional response’ from the Assistant Vice-President Labour Relations or their designate. This would work on the employer’s overall goal to drive down the number of grievances in general and ensure that fewer grievances are resolved with third-party intervention rather than ‘in-house’. We formulated a list of questions about this proposal and its mechanics, as well as newly introduced explicit language it includes about Employer Grievances. The BT is evaluating the proposal and its actual potential to expedite the grievance process at Steps 1 and 2, especially given the employer’s repeated refusal to respond to rejected grievances with a written rationale.
Article 10.01.1 – Ticketed Course Directorship (Unit 1)
The employer is proposing to make the application process for a ticketed CD distinct from the blanket application process. Notably, they tabled this proposal two days ahead of an arbitration hearing that took place Thursday to discuss the employer’s consistent failure to meet equity representation thresholds for course directorships, which is a provision embedded in our Collective Agreement. Indeed, the employer offered to pay both sides’ cancellation fees should the union put the grievance in the matter in abeyance (which the union did not, given the long wait for an arbitration date and the proposal’s insufficient attention to the problem of meeting representational thresholds). The BT is evaluating this proposal too, though this is complicated by the employer’s uncertainty about how the IT infrastructure for this would look and our general weariness of YU-authored portals.
Article 23 – Affirmative Action & Article 24 – Longstanding Teaching Appointments (Unit 2)
The employer’s counterproposal focuses on loosening eligibility requirements to expand the pool of members eligible for LSTAs and conversions alike. Although the employer has already been told that CUPE does not bargain concessions, they did propose lowering the number of LSTAs from 6 to 3. Worth flagging is that the Employer has repeatedly characterized these programs as “exceptional” ones, an exceptionality that they are committed to limiting.
Next Up at the Bargaining Table
We left off for the week by presenting a list of proposals that we believe to be uncontroversial, in the hopes of building on shared interests. Next week, the employer has foreshadowed some Health & Safety proposals, some updates on information requests, and some counterproposals for us. Some good news: this was our first week bargaining with Owlene (the union’s new OWL device) which has improved the video and audio quality for Zoom participants, making our bargaining as open as accessible as possible. There’s never been a better time to join us at the table to see the employer’s preparation, attitude, and professionalism for yourself!
In solidarity,
CUPE 3903 Bargaining Team (Units 1, 2, & 3)
bargaining@cupe3903.org
Click here to read previous BT reports, and make sure to check the calendar for upcoming bargaining dates.