"This strike is about fairness," said faculty association president Noel Roy, as members of the Memorial University of Newfoundland Faculty Association (MUNFA) walked out on Oct. 31. The strike at both the St. John's and Corner Brook campuses comes after a year of negotiations.
During their first week on the picket lines, strikers weathered cold rain -- from drizzle to downpours. "Spirits have remained high, as our members met the challenge of setting up picket lines at more than a dozen entrances to the campus," Roy said.
On Friday, Nov. 3, MUNFA members were joined at a rally and on the picket lines by CAUT's executive director Jim Turk, and by CAUT Defence Fund "flying picketers" from York, Carleton, Mount Saint Vincent, Cape Breton, Ottawa, and Acadia.
Also attending the rally to give support was a large number of students and representatives from the provincial federation of labour, CUPE, the Newfoundland and Labrador Association of Public and Private Employees and several other unions.
Five major public sector unions also issued a joint statement saying "this strike typifies the deterioration that has occurred in the public sector collective bargaining process in this province over the past decade. The members of MUNFA are struggling to achieve a collective agreement which fairly compensates their members. The university administration should concentrate their efforts on reaching a collective agreement and stop their misguided attempts at waging a public relations war with MUNFA."
Public support has also been widespread. "I have not seen a strike in years where so many drivers passing the picket lines honk horns and wave support," Turk said.
The union and the administration are at odds over a number of issues, including crucial items of workload and money. Association members have not had a salary scale increase since 1989. The administration is seeking to remove provisions in the current collective agreement that support faculty research, such as the banking of overload teaching and a one-course teaching remission for faculty with above-norm scholarly activity. The association wishes to have fair workload norms across the university. Currently some units have six course loads and others have five.
The administration has also insisted the union drop its proposals on pension reform, increased payment for teaching overloads, payment of a severance allowance, accommodation for members with disabilities, and collegial governance. The administration also wants to cap its payments to benefit plans.
"These matters are important to our members. They perceive the administration's refusal to negotiate these issues as a dismissal of their concerns," Roy said.
Monetary issues have been particularly difficult. Both parties propose approximately 20 per cent total salary increases over the three-year agreement (including scale and step increases).
They differ considerably on the distribution. The administration wishes to provide an additional four step increase (about $5,000) only for members with doctorates. This would seriously disadvantage about 25 per cent of the members, especially librarians, and faculty in the school of nursing, in fine arts and selected other departments. In many of these areas, doctorates are not available or have become available only recently. Many people who do not hold doctorates have worked for years at the university, often with distinction.
Under the employer's proposal faculty members with PhDs would receive about 20.6 per cent while those without PhDs get about 15 per cent. Sessional lecturers would receive an increase of only 8 per cent. MUNFA's proposal would distribute the increase far more fairly among PhDs, those with masters degrees and sessional lecturers.
Also, the association wants the salary increases to start early in the term of a new agreement, while the administration proposes to pay a large portion of the increase near the end of the proposed three-year agreement.
On the first morning of the strike the administration cancelled classes and declared the rest of the week "term break." Many students had already made plans to return home two weeks later during the regularly scheduled fall semester break. A student demonstration prompted the administration to offer financial compensation to students for additional travel expenses incurred by having to change their tickets. Keith Dunne, president of Memorial's student union, said the administration's action was taken "without the consultation of Memorial's students leaders," and that "students are being used to weaken the impact of the strike."
In a message to MUNFA members, CAUT president Tom Booth said, "Your issues are crucial to us all. I know you are negotiating with every tool at your disposal. You have my deepest respect and admiration."
At strike headquarters messages of support continue to pour in from across the country. Mark Lee, a Memorial alumnus and now an assistant professor at Mount Allison University wrote: "The future of Memorial University is being played out at this moment. I may only hope that this insidious, divisive threat, coming from an administration posing as the voice and vision of Memorial University, will serve its opposite purpose: to weld together the will of those faculty who make Memorial one of Canada's great, often untold, successes."