Bargaining Bulletin #5

Different universities have different cultures and different approaches to collective bargaining. At many institutions, a negotiating team’s first act is to hold a strike vote in order to arm them for a potentially contentious round of negotiations. Traditionally, the GMUFA has taken a much more conciliatory, interest-based approach, in which both sides identify key interests through talking and sharing language, and work together in finding a way forward. The results of such an approach are mixed. While MacEwan doesn’t have a history of engaging in significant labor action, its faculty are among the lowest paid among undergraduate universities and are burdened with some of the highest workloads in the sector. Moreover, an interest-based approach to bargaining only works when the other side is interested in negotiating a settlement.

Your FANC team has engaged in extensive outreach with members over the past 18 months to take the pulse of the faculty, to identify interests and concerns, and to understand what works at MacEwan and what can be improved. On the one hand, FANC has found a faculty genuinely dedicated to the institution and its goals of teaching excellence. We are passionate educators who are firmly committed to student success and to the mission of the university. On the other hand, many faculty feel they are at a breaking point. While the university celebrates grand ambitions to double in size, and to mentor students every step of the way—"to walk with them on their journey. When they struggle, we help them persevere. When they fall, we help them get back up"—faculty are exhausted. Workload creep exists in many forms—larger classes, burgeoning ADR accommodations, academic integrity issues, time-consuming online training modules, ballooning annual reports, a student body requiring ever-increasing levels of academic and pastoral care, and more. In this context, it seems like something has to change.

FANC entered negotiations with two major interests: workload and salary. To date, FANC reports having spent more than 90 hours in working meetings discussing faculty issues and interests, and formulating sustainable and common-sense solutions that would empower MacEwan to reach its 2030 goals. Moreover, FANC reports having spent more than 80 hours at the table with the Board’s team championing those issues and solutions and exploring mutual interests. Away from the bargaining table, senior members of the administration have publicly articulated some shared interests, like reducing TRS faculty workload to 5 courses per year, and shifting to a biennial system of performance reviews.

Unfortunately, FANC reports that such interests have not materialized at the table, and the Board’s team remains inexplicably entrenched on some key priorities.

In February, the Board’s team proposed a possible “expedited path” to conclude collective bargaining, in which both sides would attempt to structure a financial settlement similar to those emerging in our sector. The Board’s proposal included tabling outstanding language issues to the next round of bargaining, and a possibility of some small, additional “sweeteners”. This “settle fast in the same ballpark as others” proposal was made in the context of other institutions in the province, like SAIT, reaching a recent settlement that was subsequently approved by the Provincial Bargaining and Compensation Office, a central agency that coordinates collective bargaining in Alberta by imposing budgetary and other mandates as they see fit. Inflation has risen by 17% over the last 4 years, and FANC’s original proposal for a 24% increase over four years was proposed precisely because faculty purchasing power has slid that far over the last 7 or 8 years. Our university has run multi-million dollar surpluses in at least the last four years, and has engaged in enormous capital and discretionary spending. MacEwan therefore has the financial resources for a larger budgetary settlement. Nonetheless, FANC recognized the realities of provincial budgetary mandates and thereby agreed in February to engage in “without prejudice” discussions in an attempt to reach an expedited conclusion to bargaining. Without prejudice discussions mean that positions advanced during the course of those discussions aren’t considered binding or enduring, should an expedited conclusion not be reached.

Over multiple meetings and exchanges, FANC attempted to structure an expedited deal in within the Board’s stated monetary ballpark but insisted that some key language improvements be made, specifically in relation to Article 12: Workload, as well as student feedback on teaching and office hour requirements. While an expedited deal would mean no achievements on most language proposals tabled in June 2024, FANC explored this avenue to conclude bargaining with genuine interest. Unfortunately, FANC and the Board’s team remain unable to find common ground on important outstanding issues. Among other things, the Board’s team has:

• Refused to make any formal written commitment to funding course releases; 
• Refused to agree to a “credit system” that would allocate some course releases to recognize accumulations of unscheduled teaching activities like honours supervisions and independent studies; 
• Refused to offer any clear system of workload release to non-teaching faculty; 
• Refused to agree to FANC’s proposal to reallocate money the Board had originally proposed for sessional PD funding into sessional salaries instead; 
• Refused to increase the Chair’s stipend by $250 per year or improve administrative leave provisions for Chairs; 
• Insisted that the Workload Review Panel be removed from the Collective Agreement in its entirety—a move at odds with historical norms at MacEwan and with collegial governance standards enshrined at institutions throughout the sector. The Board would instead limit faculty appeals over workload to allowing a member to send an email to their Dean within 5 days to request reconsideration; 
• Not provided any detailed analysis of its costing for any budgetary items. 

Perhaps more important than the positions themselves, the Board’s team has failed to provide any compelling rationale for the above positions and some others, and has not proposed solutions that would realistically drive a settlement to conclusion, or that would help our institution achieve its 2030 goals. FANC has consistently drafted, tabled, and responded to more language than the Board’s team. Following ongoing member engagement and feedback from the Town Hall on March 12, it appears there is little appetite to accept a deal without movement on workload issues. It thus appears that interest-based negotiation—to the extent that it ever existed this round—has broken down. Bargaining has hit a wall.

So, where do we go from here? On the afternoon of March 25th, after yet another attempt to explore whether an expedited end to bargaining was reasonably close, the Board and GMUFA have agreed to pursue informal mediation. While this may be a historic first for MacEwan, mediation is a common practice in public sector bargaining and is currently underway at Mount Royal, the University of Alberta, and multiple other peer/public sector institutions. In collective bargaining, there are two types of mediation – formal and informal. Informal is an optional and non-binding process where parties agree to use a “tool” in the form of a skilled mediator in an attempt to bring the two parties closer together and hopefully reach consensus on matters. If no agreement can be reached in informal mediation, then the parties can return to collective bargaining or decide that they are at impasse. Once an impasse is reached, and only if an Essential Services Agreement is in place, then as a first step the parties enter formal mediation which is mandated by the Alberta Labour Board.

In the coming weeks, FANC will work with the Board’s team to contract a mediator and arrange dates for informal mediation. FANC will also continue to draft and refine any proposed language and prepare information packages for the Board’s team and the mediator. Currently, our expectation is that informal mediation will take place in late April or May. So, it is conceivable that the parties could be much closer together in a month or two, leaving open the opportunity to conclude bargaining by June 30, 2025.

The Parties have agreed to engage mediator Michael Hughes, and have booked April 24, 25, 28, and 20 for informal mediation.