Bargaining Bulletins- Faculty

The UWOFA membership has voted to ratify the tentative faculty collective agreement reached with the university administration. Members of the faculty bargaining unit voted 90 per cent in favour of the deal in a vote that closed Friday, November 23.

Yesterday, at this late stage in bargaining, the employer asked your negotiating team for concessions in our existing health benefits package – concessions that had not been proposed in their previous offers at the table.

Western’s financial position is extremely strong, and yet the Board of Governors and administration consistently choose not to reinvest in the core mission of quality education, teaching and research. As our examination of the university’s budget reveals, the university has accumulated close to $700 million in surplus over the past 9 years. It recently completed a fund-raising campaign that raised over $800 million. Student tuition has been rising steadily over the past 5 years. In February of 2018, Standard and Poor’s affirmed Western’s AA credit rating, noting the university’s “high levels of cash and available financial resources.” According to the rating agency, Western’s “financial assets are sufficient such that it would likely not default on its obligations under a provincial stress scenario in which all government funding was temporarily disrupted”.

No one wants a strike at Western. UWOFA is working as hard as we can to avoid one. We know talk of a strike causes students a lot of anxiety, so we’ve prepared a set of answers to frequently asked questions here.

A “No Board” Report has been filed with the Ontario Ministry of Labour by provincially appointed conciliator Greg Long. The UWOFA faculty bargaining unit will be in a legal strike position on Friday November 9 at 12:01 a.m., and UWOFA’s Executive Committee has established this date as our firm strike deadline.

These guidelines represent policy adopted by the UWOFA Board of Directors; they represent what your Board is expecting of all Bargaining Unit members. The decision to honour or break a strike is the individual’s own. This is something that neither the Association nor the Administration can decide for you.

The UWOFA membership has voted 94 per cent in favour of strike action to strengthen bargaining goals during faculty negotiations. Thank you for your overwhelming support. Your strong expression of support for your negotiating team will empower them to work toward the best contract possible as we enter conciliation in October.

Negotiations with the administration to reach a new faculty collective agreement have continued to move forward since we last updated you in June.

Discontinuing the use of student questionnaires on courses and teaching for personnel decisions such as promotion, tenure, annual review and hiring is one of UWOFA’s goals during this round of faculty collective bargaining.