Forty delegates from across Canada gathered recently at Val David, Quebec, to consider the Challenges of Concessionary Bargaining, this year's topic at the annual Collective Bargaining Conference.
The conference, organized by the Collective Bargaining and Economic Benefits Committee of CAUT, was originally conceived as a training camp for inexperienced negotiators.
But in the last few years the conference has expanded to include policy sessions for experienced negotiators þ thus delegates participated in Level 1 (negotiating training) and Level 2 (policy) sessions over three days.
The conference began June 8 with a keynote address entitled "Bargaining in the Midst of Restructuring" by Andy Todd, chief negotiator for the Ontario Public Services Employees Union (OPSEU). In recent negotiations with the Ontario government the union was able to attain a settlement after a three-week strike, the first strike of public servants in the history of OPSEU.
Mr. Todd pointed out in his remarks that the real issue was the value of a public service and just how many of the tasks formerly entrusted to government departments the population of Ontario is willing to offload to the private sector.
Donald Savage, Executive Director of CAUT, presented an overview of recent trends in collective bargaining. He pointed out that faculty unions are in peril but have been militant in response to the threat. Driven by right-wing government agendas, Canadian universities have been placed under the heavy burden of fiscal restraint, and administrations are pointing fingers at collective agreements as being at the root of the problem.
He placed particular emphasis on the negotiations at the University of Manitoba and at Memorial University of Newfoundland.
In the first instance, the U. of M. administration proposed outrageous changes to financial exigency and redundancy clauses that ultimately forced UMFA to strike for three weeks before a mediator was appointed to broker a deal.
At Memorial, it appeared the administration was contemptuous of the bargaining process, breaking off negotiations after only a couple of days of talks, and attempting to impose an administrative handbook of its own after conciliation failed, with the claim that the contract had lapsed. MUNFA eventually obtained a strike mandate and settled within hours of the strike deadline.
The Level 2 sessions over the next two days followed the thread that Dr. Savage had established in his remarks. Maureen Kilgour, formerly a professional officer at CAUT and now in a similar position with UMFA, and Dr. Savage talked about how to keep associations strong under pressure.
They stressed the importance of keeping the membership informed so that they are ready to respond in times of crisis, and having clear lines of authority within the union executive and negotiating team.
It is clear in negotiations across the country that university administrations are targeting two components of collective agreements: financial exigency and redundancy articles; and salaries and salary scales. Two sessions were devoted to these issues.
In the first, Kevin Banks (professional officer at CAUT) and Maureen Kilgour addressed the nuts and bolts of negotiating financial exigency and redundancy articles, highlighting the need to retain a well-defined process with reasonable timelines and adequate investigative mechanisms in which faculty, either as members of senates or members of commissions of inquiry, are participants.
It is particularly crucial that language contained in these articles does not allow individual faculty to be laid off, as was the intent of the University of Manitoba administration in their initial proposals.
Michael Piva (Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations), Ron Melchers (Ottawa) and Roseanne Hood (UBC) dealt with the rationale of salary scales. Most university salary scales contain a career progress increment of some sort and giving these up at the negotiating table has dire consequences on career earnings, especially for young faculty at the beginning of their careers.
Also addressed was the issue of the fairness of current salary scales, especially as negotiated scale salary increases tend to favour the top end of the scale more than the bottom, thus placing young faculty at a further disadvantage. The issue of how to fix salary scales promises to bedevil faculty unions as long as the money allocated to salaries remains scarce.
The sessions in Level 1 were under the capable tutelage of various members of the CAUT staff, augmented with visiting experts. CAUT Professional Officers Christiane Tardif and Pierre Choquette designed and coordinated sessions on the legal framework of collective bargaining (led by Kevin Banks), verbal skills and one-on-one negotiating exercises.
CAUT Professional Officer Maureen Webb introduced the grievance process and led the participants through some simulations. Two plenary sessions, one on developing proposals and clause drafting, and another on models of conciliation, mediation, arbitration and dispute resolution were led by Ed Lavalle, President of the College Institute Educators' Association of BC, and Bill Graham, Vice-President of CAUT, respectively.
Prior to the traditional conference-ending all-day negotiating simulation, all the delegates assembled in a final plenary session to compare views on strategies for collective bargaining under siege, moderated by Ed Byard. It was clear from the discussion generated that those present had no shortage of ideas about what needs to be done. A brief summary of the discussion follows:
Build strength within the union: Be vigilant, get the facts, challenge assumptions; educate your members on an ongoing basis; deal with dissent within the union by focusing on issues; reexamine your membership base; and keep recruiting and training new members. If your association is not a certified bargaining unit perhaps it's time to reassess whether certification is warranted.
Maintain strength at the negotiating table: Audit your agreement to see where changes are needed; develop a strategy for negotiations by consulting widely within the membership; executive needs to decide on priority items; and negotiating team needs to develop tactics within the mandate provided by the membership and the executive.
Opening positions should be clearly stated, defensible, and should uniformly represent improvements to the collective agreement, but they should not raise unreasonable expectations within the membership. Assume that accepted rules of bargaining may be broken by the employer or the government but don't overreact þ hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
Support the principle of collective bargaining: Counter arguments made by politicians and administrators that collective agreements are impeding the ability of the university to maintain excellence and efficiency; good collective agreements promote labour peace, and the process has withstood the test of time, including hard times. If collective bargaining is not working well, find out why not. Is it the employer's fault, is it the union's fault? Perhaps the wrong people are in union posts.
Take political action: Build coalitions with other unions, both on and off campus; get support of union members whose livelihood depends on students and the presence of the university in their community; participate in non-partisan action groups (eg Target Education, Coalition for Fairness) that support quality in education; keep the profile of the university and its contribution in the public eye, through the media, the internet, Web pages, or even over-the-fence conversations; enlist the help of administrators or alumni to promote the value of post-secondary education; talk to politicians about education issues whenever the opportunity arises.
The plenary session ended the training and policy sessions and all delegates participated in an all-day negotiations simulation as either a member of an "association" or "board" team trying to conclude negotiations on a collective agreement. In all cases, agreement was reached, but only after hard bargaining by all. (It is actually scary to see the relish with which our faculty colleagues can emulate the unreasonable and intransigent behaviour of university administrators in these simulations!).
As the delegates departed, planning was already beginning for next year's conference at Val David in June, 1997.
I wish to thank all the facilitators and participants for making the conference a success - especially Dorothy Milne, my co-organizer from the Collective Bargaining and Economic Benefits Committee, as well as Christiane Tardif, Pierre Choquette, Louise Desjardins, and Nancy Gordon from the CAUT office.
Ed Byard is a member of CAUT's Collective Bargaining and Economic Benefits Committee.