UWOFA Calls for Conciliation, Bargaining Bulletin – Vol. 8, No. 6

UWOFA’s negotiating team met last Thursday and Friday with the administration’s team.

The team presented on your behalf a full overview of the extensive mandate it had prepared based on your input, addressing through 19 articles and 14 Letters of Understanding (LOU) (4 of them new) the following thematic areas:

• Support, Recognize and Reward Faculty Effort
• Support Faculty Health and Wellbeing
• Achieve Fair and Equitable Workloads
• Protect and Enhance Collegial Governance and Due Process
• Enhance Job Security for Contract Faculty
• Achieve Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Decolonization (EDID) and Just Representation

Your team also presented bargaining proposals for the following:

• Annual Performance Evaluation
• Professional Expense Reimbursement
• Compensation and Benefits
• Discipline
• Workload
• Appointments
• LOU Limited Duties Conversions
• LOU Teaching Scholars

In addition, UWOFA negotiators provided to the employer in electronic form the rest of the proposals it has been busy preparing over the past few months for which there was insufficient time in the two days of meetings to give a full presentation at the table.

The employer presented a document with brief notes on its goals for the 17 collective agreement articles it proposes to open, 8 of which UWOFA is also opening. The Employer also responded to UWOFA’s proposal on Annual Performance Evaluation.

*Further bargaining meetings are scheduled for August 23, 25, and 29 as well as September 2.

UWOFA Calls for Conciliation

While your negotiating team appreciates the constructive dialogue that is taking place at the table, it remains concerned about the consequences of delays for progressing to a timely agreement that it can take back to you, the membership.

Your team knows how hard you have worked in the unprecedented conditions of the past two years. To ensure timely progress towards the kind of agreement you deserve, the UWOFA Board of Directors have unanimously decided to call for conciliation, which means applying to the Ontario Ministry of Labour for the appointment of a conciliation officer to assist the parties in negotiating a collective agreement.

Please watch for a Bargaining Bulletin in the next few days for information on what conciliation entails.

Take Action

As we await further meetings in August, we ask for support in voicing your concerns to the Employer so we can work together for the best outcome for faculty, many of whom have been working overtime to adhere to the university’s mission of teaching and learning during the last two years of the pandemic.

Get loud on social media:

• Make sure to tag us! Twitter: @westernu @westernuProvost @uwofa1; Facebook: @UWOFA, @Western University; Instagram: @uwofaco, @westernuniversity

Send a letter or an email to the President and Provost (cc uwofa):

• uwofa@uwo.ca
• alan.shepard@uwo.ca
• provostvpa@uwo.ca

Get in touch with UWOFA’s Communications Officer to make a short video recording of you expressing a message of support, which would then be posted to social media.

If you want to get involved in building support for our UWOFA bargaining goals, please contact our Mobilization Chair, David Heap.