Resources for Members During a Potential CUPE Strike
August 29, 2024
The UWOFA Board of Directors met this afternoon and has set a strike deadline of 11:59 p.m., Monday, November 14th. This means that if we have not reached a deal by then, we will be on strike. Pickets will begin on Tuesday morning. In the meantime, negotiations continue and your bargaining team remains committed to achieving a fair and equitable deal at the table.
The Employer’s Offer is not Enough!
Your negotiating team met this week with the Employer for full days of negotiations on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Our president Hiran Perinpanayagam was at the table with our team. Despite some signs of progress, the team does not yet see a deal coming together. The Employer’s current offer on the table is not enough. We are tired and overworked after stepping up to save the teaching mission of the university during an unprecedented pandemic and the Employer’s words of gratitude for that must be backed up by concrete action in this round of negotiations. The Employer is saving more than $4 million under the restrictive Bill 124 and we need to see more on the table.Recent gains:
progress on making Performance Evaluation less onerous (no longer “Annual”) while providing mentoring and formative feedback
agreement to our proposed LOU to create a Joint Working Group to make recommendations to improve the working conditions of Members with Disabilities
improvements to the Workload Document process to increase transparency and equity in workload allocation and empower Workload Committees to press for needed resources
withdrawal of the Employer’s concessionary proposal for unilateral imposition of an Alternative Workload; no new management tools are needed.
Key Outstanding issues to get to a deal:
benefits (HCSA) for Part-Time Members
contract faculty job security
increase in PER allocations for Part-Time Members
additional PER allocations for Full-Time Members
pay equity for studio courses in the Faculty of Music
pay for the necessary additional work done by Part-Time Members but that falls outside their contract dates
insistence by the Employer on proposing a 4-year agreement with nothing in the 4th post-“moderation-period” year to make it more attractive than the 3-year agreement we have proposed – to their low 2.25% offer they have only added a small one-time only lump sum for Full-Time Members
Preparing for a Strike
You are advised to prepare for possible strike action that could begin as early as Tuesday, November 15th. This means doing things like removing any items from campus that you want to have available to you for the duration of a strike and advising your classes, and/or any graduate students you are responsible for, of what they can expect during strike action. For example, we advise you NOT to unpublish your Owl sites or to remove any course material already available to students, but to stop posting new material and adjust any settings needed to hide or prevent future material from being automatically released by Owl. You can find a comprehensive list of FAQs on our website. They will be updated as needed, so please check back regularly.
The Strike Information Survey is now closed. If you didn’t fill it out, we assume you are planning to complete picket duties in order to earn your strike pay, and that you don’t require accommodated duties or transportation to the picket line. If this is not the case, then please email membership services: uwofamembership@gmail.com. Members will be able to self-register for picket duties via Volgistics soon. Please stand by for further instructions.
What can you do?
Talk to your students about bargaining (see Strike Resources section of our website for a slide-deck, notes and handouts). Students are negatively impacted when our working conditions are unsustainable and together we can make a greater impression on the Employer to help achieve our bargaining goals.
Take action to help avert a strike! Send Western’s senior administrators a letter urging them to reach a fair and equitable deal with UWOFA in a timely manner that avoids a strike. The letter is ready to go on the Take Action page of the UWOFA website. All you need to do is fill in the email form with your details. Share this action with current and former students, colleagues and supportive community members.
Rally at Strike HQ on Friday, November 11th – 3-5pm – come tour our headquarters at 612 Colborne Street tomorrow, meet the UWOFA Beats Collective drum group and join the Strike Action Committee in making picket signs
Social Event – Sunday, November 13th, 1-5pm
The Social and Morale Committee would like to invite members to a social event at the Legion Hall, 311 Oakland Street. There will be pizza, drinks, music, and a cash bar. There will also be a drum workshop for anyone who would like to try it out or consider joining the drumline. Families are welcome.
If you travelled to campus recently, you may have noticed that port-a-potties have now been installed in preparation for possible strike action. Bargaining continues this week, but time is running out until we are in a legal strike position.
Given the recent passage of Bill 28 which aggressively attacks workers’ rights in Ontario, good faith collective bargaining is more important than ever.
Please find attached an update on our bargaining progress to date, and a resource for class talks with students.
As we announced earlier in the week, UWOFA stands with the CUPE education workers as they fight back against the Ontario’s government in its attempt to interfere with fair and democratic collective bargaining by hastily legislating an imposed deal and banning the constitutional rights of these workers to strike.
Urgent collective action is needed to oppose Bill 28 (the legislation being tabled right now).
Both CUPE and the London Labour Council are calling for mass mobilization on Friday (tomorrow) to support education worker picket lines across the province, as they will either be in a legal strike position, or off the job in response to unjust legislation.
Please use the Picket Line Finder to find local picket lines (you can join anytime between 7:30am and 6pm). As there are no PC MPPs in London, NDP MPP’s have been notified that their offices will be the site of friendly solidarity info pickets. This is where you will find your local CUPE education workers on Friday, November 4th – not outside of schools.
If your child’s school is closed for the day and they are at home doing remote learning, please bring them with you to any action you take part in. You are also encouraged to visit the UWOFA office on the 2nd floor of Elborn College to collect buttons, a t-shirt and/or a toque to wear on the line, and to post pictures on social media with the hashtags #OntEd and #39kIsNotEnough to amplify your support. Please also tag @UWOFA1 on Twitter, @UWOFA on Facebook, and @uwofaco on Instagram. The UWOFA office opens at 9am.
Please see picket location details below:
UWOFA stands with education workers in Ontario, represented by CUPE-OSBCU (Ontario School Board Council of Unions). We condemn the Ontario government’s proposed back-to-work legislation which seeks to interfere with free and democratic collective bargaining. We are further appalled by the threat being made to invoke the notwithstanding clause to protect this despicable legislation from constitutional and legal challenges.
We call on members to take part in a coordinated solidarity action on Friday, November 4th (stand by for a follow-up message regarding how/where in London, ON) to support our fellow workers in the education sector.
You can also take action right now: Tell Doug Ford: Hands off workers’ rights! Stop the attack on education workers!
An attack on collective bargaining and the legally protected right to strike is a threat to labour laws, charter-protected rights, and fair working conditions everywhere.
The “No Board” report UWOFA requested last week was filed yesterday with the Ministry of Labour. This means that our Union will be in a legal strike position as of 12:01am Sunday, November 13th and our Employer will also be in a legal position to lock us out. You can Take Action now to avert this.
Bargaining continues with a full slate of sessions planned over the next two weeks, and the UWOFA Board of Directors will ultimately determine a strike deadline, but we must be prepared for all contingencies.
If you have not already done so, please fill out the Strike Action Questionnaire immediately to ensure your voice is heard. There is a lot of volunteer labour involved for the Strike Action Committee to process this information for the entire membership, so the sooner all Members complete the questionnaire, the better.
As we meet with the Employer to negotiate a Labour Disruption Protocol, we will be preparing detailed FAQs to address the many questions arising about how a strike would impact members of the campus community. Please stand by for links to this information in the coming days.
We are tired of our concerns being ignored and dismissed. Although none of us want a strike, our working conditions are worsening and will ultimately become unsustainable. Faculty workload burden must be eased. Western’s strategic plan proposes an increased enrolment to 50,000 by 2030. Yet the administration refuses to negotiate real solutions to this problem, even as Full-Time faculty numbers decrease and precariously employed faculty numbers grow. Student class size increases are outpacing the available space on campus, and we are all forced to do a lot more with much less.
Every budgetary choice to not support faculty is exactly that: a choice — our Employer could instead choose to use its $1.3 billion in surplus funds to support the academic mission of our University. The pandemic has left us burnt out and overworked, while Western has accumulated larger surpluses than ever before. Western can afford to alleviate the problems that your negotiating team has raised at the table: excessive workload, unequal access to benefits, precarious employment for contract faculty.
The UWOFA bargaining team has proposed creative solutions to the weightiest challenges we face in our jobs, but too many of the answers we hear at the bargaining table are “no” or “we don’t know.”
“No” is neither creative, nor respectful. We deserve more, and we need to show the Employer we are serious about getting it. The UWOFA Faculty Bargaining Unit has never gone on strike but we are demanding better. If the Employer continues to make choices which don’t respect or support faculty, then they will leave us no choice but to strike to defend our rights and the core mission of the University. Together we can avert a strike. Take Action now to build a more sustainable campus community for everyone.
Thank you Members who have filled out the Strike Information Questionnaire. This
information helps our planning to adequately support Members in the event of a strike or lockout. For those who haven’t yet responded, please fill out the survey as soon as possible.
Updates on Negotiations
There have been three bargaining meetings over the last two weeks. Progress has
been limited with the Employer only now addressing Letters of Understanding on equity issues (i.e., Working Groups for Members with disabilities and Service workload for equity-deserving groups) which we filed some time ago. Disappointingly, the Employer’s response to both was “no”.
See Appendix A for an updated list of proposals and their status as of October 21st.
Last Thursday afternoon, we requested that Paul Pooler, the provincially appointed conciliator, file a “No Board” report with the Ministry of Labour. Once that report is filed, and an additional 17 days have passed, we will be in a legal strike position, supported by a strong strike mandate from the Membership last month (91% of votes cast were YES).
While the filing of a No Board Report is the final mechanism in making a strike or a lockout possible, this does not mean that negotiations are at an impasse. The Negotiating team will continue to work at the table for a fair and equitable agreement for all Members.
There are two bargaining meetings scheduled for this week and nine more planned for the coming weeks. Tomorrow (Tuesday), we plan to reply to the Employer’s proposal on compensation and benefits. Paul Pooler will be present at that time, along with Ruban Chelladurai, Associate VP, Institutional Planning & Budgeting.
What can you do?
Please see attached pdf below for the full Bargaining Bulletin and Appendix A: Core UWOFA Proposals Organized by Mandate.
As we reported earlier in the week, we now have a strong strike authorization mandate, with a 91% YES vote. This mandate is an important tool that will help us to get the fair and equitable deal we deserve. Great work to everyone who helped to organize and “get out the vote”, and to all who cast a ballot!
Updates on Negotiations
There have been five bargaining meetings over the last two weeks, with the conciliator at the table on September 28th and October 6th. Some progress is being made. The parties have now reached sign-off on six articles and we have received an initial response to our compensation and benefits proposals. See Appendix A for an updated list of our proposals and the Employer’s responses as of October 6th. The “No” column has grown from 20 to 26.5, while we still await a response to 6 items.
We received the Employer’s monetary proposal yesterday, Oct 6th. Our team is still analyzing it, but our initial impression is that it is insufficient and based on a limited reading of Bill 124. For instance, the Employer has rejected our proposal to increase flex credits for Full-Time Members and to increase Professional Expense Reimbursement (PER) for Part-Time Members. In addition, their proposal makes no indication of an intention to reinvest the savings that the Employer will accumulate under Bill 124. The difference between a 1% scale increase in each of the next three years and the 1.75% that we received in the final year of our last agreement amounts to $4.8 million. We are eagerly waiting to find out whether these savings will be invested to support the academic mission by hiring more faculty, for example, to reduce the workload burden.
Your Negotiating Team remains concerned that the Employer continues to reject many of our proposals for contract faculty and to refuse to redress inequities in treatment across our membership. The Employer seems determined to divide and differentiate us with artificial classifications. For instance:
Importantly, the Employer has shown no effort to solve our growing workload burden, even though they acknowledge that it is a significant problem. They refuse to negotiate to increase faculty complement, essentially throwing up their hands in the face of the exhausting overwork our Members are experiencing.
The next bargaining meeting is scheduled for October 14th.
What happens next?
While we will continue to work at the table to achieve the improvements to our Collective Agreement we have all earned (and we know our Employer can afford), we must also continue to plan and prepare for a scenario where our Employer will only acquiesce to our demands with additional pressure. So, with this in mind, we are now asking Members to fill out our Strike Information Questionnaire, which will help us to serve and support the membership in case of a strike or lockout. We need to know how to reach you off campus, what duties you would be volunteering for in order to collect strike pay, and what other specific circumstances may apply in case of a strike or a lockout. We also have some other preparedness steps we suggest you begin thinking about now.
What can you do?
We know that the list of suggestions below looks familiar, but that is because these strategies are effective.
uwofa@uwo.ca
alan.shepard@uwo.ca
provostvpa@uwo.ca
Please see attached pdf below for the full Bargaining Bulletin and Appendix A: Core UWOFA Proposals Organized by Mandate.
We are pleased to report that 91% of ballots cast were YES votes, in support of the UWOFA Board of Directors authorizing strike action if necessary.
Thank you to all who worked on organizing and mobilizing the strike vote, and to all who cast a ballot last week. This strong show of support will certainly strengthen our Negotiating Team’s ability to bargain better provisions for reward and recognition of faculty effort, equitable workloads, health and wellness, and job security, as they return to the table with our Employer on October 4th, 5th, and 6th.
Stay tuned for a detailed bargaining update later this week, which will address next steps, as well as a strike-preparedness survey and suggestions for classroom messaging.
Here is all the information you need to Vote “YES” to a strike vote next week.
WHEN
Between 1:30pm on Monday, September 26th and noon on Friday, September 30th. If you register to vote online, you may cast your ballot at any time during this period, once you have received an email confirming your registration (see “How” below). If you plan to vote in-person on campus, please see below for polling station dates, locations and hours.
HOW
Both online and in-person voting options are available. If you wish to vote online, you must register in advance. The deadline to do so, is Thursday, September 22nd. If you are voting in person, you will need to bring ID.
WHERE
If your next question is why, you can find our detailed explanation for calling for a Strike Vote in this week’s Bargaining Bulletin, which outlines the hard work your Negotiating Team has been doing at the table.
Please also plan to attend one of the information meetings being held at the start of next week:
Your support will make a difference and we all need to show strong solidarity to achieve our bargaining goals. Vote “YES” and help empower your Negotiating Team to get a fair and equitable deal which honours your hard work and commitment to university education.
This week’s Bargaining Update provides an overview of negotiating progress so far and explains why we are now calling for a strike vote.
To date, the Employer has said “no” outright to 20 of our 55 proposals, while considering an additional 3 to be constrained by Bill 124. Twenty more proposals still await a response. The Employer does not seem to be negotiating in a way which takes into consideration the substantial impacts of the last two-and-a-half years on faculty workload and wellbeing, despite the administration’s expressions of gratitude for our service in their public relations communications.
If the current rate of inflation holds, Faculty could be looking at a 25% pay cut over three years. Bill 124, meanwhile, saves the Employer $1-1.7M per year. We would like to see those dollars reinvested in the core mission of the university, but it’s now clear that the Employer is not going to do the right thing without some additional pressure.
In the attached document you will find a detailed record of proposals and responses from both sides of the table, along with a Strike Vote FAQ.
We encourage you to come out to one of these two information meetings scheduled for next week:
Help empower your Negotiating Team to get the best deal possible for you, by voting “YES”!