Today (June 27th) the parties met briefly in the morning and worked in caucus in the afternoon. Our team is awaiting the Employer’s monetary proposals which they said would be available this week.

This morning the parties signed off on LOU – Annual Planning Processes and LOU – Transition Provisions for Biennial Report and Review and reached agreement on Biennial Report and Review.

The parties continued to move toward agreement on Promotion and Continuing Appointment with the Employer’s acceptance of UWOFA’s proposal for the Chief Librarian or Dean to identify and invite Members eligible for Promotion.

Last week, your colleagues on the negotiating team presented compelling cases of deprofessionalization and the erosion of professional autonomy and control in librarian and archivist work. We were disappointed today when the Employer replied with a speech about what they perceive librarians and archivists already have to ‘safeguard professional status’ and an offer to discuss deprofessionalization in the Librarian and Archivist Forum. 

Bargaining Proposals in Members-Only Space

If you haven’t yet accessed the proposals from the Members only Sync folder, please contact a member of the Collective Bargaining Committee (CBC – see below) who can facilitate your access to this folder:

• Samuel Cassady
• Kristin Hoffmann
• Denise Horoky
• Erin Johnson
• Liz Mantz
• Brian McMillan
• Katya Pereyaslavska
• Stephen Spong
• Leslie Thomas
• Courtney Waugh
• Johanna Weststar

We hope to be at the table tomorrow, but if the Employer is not prepared to present their monetary proposals, we will reconvene next week. We have three days of bargaining scheduled for next week before the summer break.

This will be another busy week of bargaining as we have just finished the first of 3 full consecutive days. We anticipate that the Employer will present their monetary proposals this week, but we did not receive them today.

In the morning, the Employer returned Biennial Report and Review, LOU – Transition Provisions for Biennial Report and Review, Workload, Professional Leave and LOU – Members with Disabilities Joint Working Group. 

In the afternoon, UWOFA replied on all of these except for Workload. We also presented a revised proposal for Promotion and Continuing Appointment. 

The results of these exchanges were:

• Biennial Report and Review. The parties reached agreement on substantive elements for the transition to a biennial report and review process. The Employer has withdrawn its proposal for peer review. 

• LOU – Members with Disabilities Joint Working Group. This will add a librarian or archivist to the Joint Working Group, which will now review the work experiences of faculty and librarian and archivist Members with disabilities.
• LOU – Annual Planning Process. This clarifies how various planning processes in Western Libraries and the Faculty inform development of Members’ planned activities and contributions.
• Professional Leave. Discussion of our proposal to increase the salary while on Leave to 100% is pending the Employer’s monetary proposal.
• Workload. The Employer has accepted our proposals to ensure that Workload is consistent with Member’s job descriptions and to clarify processes for significant changes in a Member’s Workload. The Employer continues to reject our assertion that vacancies shall not increase Workloads of remaining Members.
• Promotion and Continuing Appointment. We had a useful discussion about UWOFA’s proposal for the Chief Librarian or Dean to identify and invite Members eligible for Promotion. UWOFA revised our proposal based on that discussion.

After several months of negotiating efforts, UWOFA has succeeded in reaching a tentative agreement with the administration on a deal that reopens the pay increase components of the collective agreement that the membership ratified in late November of 2022, just before a court ruling declared Bill 124 (the provincial legislation that capped public sector pay increases at 1%) to be unconstitutional.

This tentative agreement, in addition to offering greater percentage wage increases than those negotiated under the restrictions of Bill 124, moves some of the increases from the fourth year to the second year, thus allowing for more compounding. The overall increase over the 2022-26 period is comparable to the 2018-22 agreement. 

While members may well ask whether the pay increases in this renegotiated post-Bill 124 agreement are sufficient in the current inflationary context, the UWOFA leadership considers this to be the best deal the Association is able to get under the circumstances and recommends it to members of the Bargaining Unit for ratification. 

An online ratification vote will be held from Tuesday June 27 to Thursday June 29. The timeline is unusually short to meet the deadline for July payroll. Information on how to cast your ballot will be emailed to you tomorrow.

As we come to the end of a full week of bargaining, I would like to extend to this unit and the UWOFA team supporting the negotiation and communication processes a hearty round of gratitude. The strength of this collective is exemplary and indefatigable. Brava. 

The Employer returned 1 article:

• Workload – the parties are close to agreement

UWOFA returned 2 articles and 1 Letter of Understanding: 

• Professional Leave – the parties are close to sign-off pending monetary conversations 
• Workload – the parties are close to agreement 
  • UWOFA continues to reassert that workload should not be impacted by vacancies 
• LOU Planning Processes
  • The parties are discussing the best ways to ensure that language regarding planning accurately describes the experiences of all Members of the Bargaining Unit.

We are at the table next week from Monday to Wednesday.

Today’s session was short but significant in that we were able to outline key concerns about the increasing deprofessionalization of librarianship, informed by both relevant literature and autoethnographic research. Here is what we have to report. 

The parties signed off on the LOU Job Descriptions. 

UWOFA returned 2 articles and introduced 1 new LOU:

• Biennial Report and Review (no longer annual)
  • After consultation with Bargaining Unit members, we don’t have a clear mandate to accept peer evaluation as a component of Report and Review.
  • Members may request a meeting with immediate supervisors for an informal review between scheduled Reports 
• LOU Transition Provisions for Biennial Report and Review (new)
  • This LOU outlines the processes of transitioning from an annual reporting schedule to a biennial cycle – these changes will not apply until the 2023-24 reporting cycle.
• Responsibilities of Members
  • We continued our discussion of the deprofessionalization of librarianship. Librarian colleagues at the table shared examples from their lived experiences and those of their colleagues. The Employer thanked us for the depth of our presentation. The session was very powerful and we hope that it motivates the Employer toward creative solutions.   
  • We reiterated our proposal that when Members are assisted in Professional Practice by non-Members, such assistance must be led by Members.

The Employer returned 1 article:

• Professional Leave – the parties are very close to agreement

We are at the table again tomorrow for a full day.

This continues to be a busy week of bargaining with UWOFA and the Employer meeting each day. We are pleased by the progress we are making in some areas, but are disappointed to report that we remain far apart in others, most notably any proposals that involve a commitment to maintaining or increasing personnel in the Bargaining Unit.  

In the session today the Parties continued to exchange proposals:

UWOFA returned 2 articles and 1 Letter of Understanding  

Professional Leave – the parties have agreed to a new accrual timeline for Academic Activity Leaves which allows for Leaves to a maximum of 10 months (previously 9). 

Workload – the parties continue to move toward agreement. UWOFA reasserted our language that vacancies shall not increase Member Workload. 

LOU Job Descriptions – the parties have agreed on a process to create job descriptions. 

The EMPLOYER returned 1 Letter of Understanding 

LOU – Annual Planning Process – the parties continue to discuss the relationship between the annual planning process and a Member’s planned activities and contributions. 

Related to the LOU – Librarian and Archivist Qualifications, the parties also had a productive discussion about what it would mean to accurately identify and distinguish the roles of librarians and archivists in University documents and communications.

Thank you to everyone who completed the survey about Report and Review last week. Your feedback has been instrumental in helping us to effectively advocate for you at the bargaining table. We intend to discuss this article with the Employer later this week. Tabled proposals will be posted in the shared Member area. 

Please save the date for an information session on Wednesday July 5th, 10-11am. This will again be a hybrid session – location and Zoom link to follow. 

This is a busy week of bargaining as UWOFA and the Employer have 4 days of consecutive meetings scheduled. 

The parties have now signed off on Working Conditions.

In the session today the Parties also exchanged a number of previously tabled proposals (4 LOUs and 5 Articles):

• LOU on Members with Disabilities Joint Working Group – the parties are approaching agreement
• LOU Promotion of Members with Continuing Appointment at Assistant Rank – the Employer has rejected this proposal
• LOU on the Ratio of Librarians to Students – UWOFA reasserted this proposal and shared a figure with the Employer showing that the ratio of students to a single librarian or archivist has increased between 2010 and 2019, from 478 to 751 (a 57% increase). The Employer has reiterated that it will not entertain such a proposal. They argue that while we might all be unhappy with these numbers, we have no choice but to do more with less (citing a looming spectre of austerity).
• LOU Member Offices – the Employer rejected this proposal
• Appointments – UWOFA reasserted our proposals regarding how vacancies are dealt with in the case of transfer, secondment, leave, retirement, or resignation. UWOFA countered the Employer’s proposal to increase the possible length of Term Appointments with language that would convert positions filled by Term Appointments to permanent appointments after three years. 
• Library Directors and Heads – UWOFA rejected the Employer’s proposal regarding the length of Acting Directors or Heads. The Employer rejected UWOFA’s proposal regarding on-call work.
• Responsibilities of Members – the Employer agreed to remove the constraint on Academic Activity.
• Retirement and Resignation – the parties are approaching agreement, including on the introduction of a phased retirement supplement. The Employer has rejected UWOFA’s language to protect the complement. 
• Workload – the Employer continues to resist ensuring that workload not be impacted by loss of personnel 

UWOFA tabled a new LOU Job Descriptions which would classify the existing role definitions as job descriptions under the Collective Agreement and require the Employer to create job descriptions for any positions without an existing role definition. This LOU also reiterates existing processes in the Collective Agreement for changing a Member’s job description. The Employer accepted this proposal.

As always, details of the proposals discussed today can be accessed by Bargaining Unit Members in the Sync folder. 

The Employer plans to bring responses to UWOFA’s monetary proposals next week.  These include: Compensation and Benefits; Income Security; Pregnancy, Parental and Adoption Leave; and Vacations and Holidays.

Bargaining will continue through Friday, with three sessions also scheduled at the start of next week and three more following the long weekend.

LONDON, June 14th, 2023 – On Friday June 9th, UWOFA held a meeting of members and invited guests, to discuss academic freedom in the context of threats to research security and recent changes to government policies which place limits on both what research can be done and with whom. These policies have had a chilling effect on the capacity of many of our academic colleagues (both at Western and across the country) to do their work.

UWOFA is very concerned about these serious issues. Our goals with this session were to ensure members were well-informed, by including speakers representing a variety of vantage points, and to remind everyone that academic freedom is a lynchpin of scholarship which we all must defend.  

Currently, UWOFA has received minimal guidance from our Employer regarding what constitutes a research threat, how Members should respond if they are contacted by a CSIS agent, and how any information collected will be treated (where it will be stored and for how long, who has access to it).

UWOFA is calling for our Employer to commit to the Pearson-Laskin Accord particularly the following principles: Members need to be advised of their rights should they ever encounter CSIS agents, and Western Administration needs to be transparent in communicating with UWOFA regarding CSIS interventions, including letting us know when and how any collaboration between our Employer and government security agencies is taking place.

For more information please contact: uwofaco@uwo.ca   

UWOFA and the Employer had their fourth bargaining meeting June 12.  

In this session UWOFA presented all of our remaining proposals and the Parties exchanged a number of articles previously tabled. The Parties are reaching agreement on some; however, the Employer expressed strong rejection of a number of our proposals today. 

UWOFA Presented 2 Articles and 1 Letter of Understanding

• Compensation and Benefits (and related monetary items) 
• Duration of the Agreement 
  • We are proposing a 3 year agreement 
• Letter Of Understanding (LOU) for Academic Activity Support Fund 
  • We propose to remove this LOU and move it into the Compensation and Benefits Article 

The Parties Exchanged Several Articles

• The Parties have reached agreement on Working Conditions and the non-monetary elements of Education Leave. 
• The Parties continue to have productive discussion regarding Professional Leave, Promotion and Continuing Appointment, Retirement and Resignation, and Workload.
• The Employer rejected our proposals related to complement in Appointments and the New LOU for Librarian and Archivist Qualifications and the New LOU Ratios of Librarians and Archivists to Students LOU.  

Bargaining will resume next week on Tuesday, June 20th, with meetings continuing to the end of the week. 

Thank-you to everyone who attended the Bargaining Information session last week (May 31st), both in person and remotely. We appreciate your time, attention and input, as we work collaboratively to bargain for a strong collective agreement for all.

A copy of the slides are available in the Sync shared folder to which all Members of the Bargaining Unit have access. Please speak to a member of the CBC if you are accessing the folder for the first time. 

UWOFA and the Employer had their third bargaining meeting on June 6. All of the tabled bargaining proposals are available in the Sync shared folder.

In this session the Employer returned 3 articles with amended language for discussion – Report and Review, Promotion and Continuing Appointment, and Working Conditions: 

Annual Report and Review

• The Parties achieved broad general agreement and have agreed in principle to most of the revisions proposed by UWOFA.   
• The Parties continue to discuss evaluation by peer committee. UWOFA will send a survey to members to gather feedback. 

Promotion and Continuing Appointment

• The Parties achieved broad general agreement on UWOFA’s proposed changes, including the following areas:
  • Process for an annual meeting separate from ARR meetings for members on a Probationary Appointment
  • Procedures for disposition of P&CA files

Working Conditions

• The employer has agreed to UWOFA’s proposal.

Bargaining will resume Monday, June 12th.