A provincially appointed conciliator, Greg Long, will join your negotiating team and the employer at the bargaining table beginning this Thursday, October 11. Additional conciliation dates have been scheduled for October 12 and 15.

The role of the conciliator is to confer with the parties and endeavour to reach a collective agreement. The conciliator has no authority to impose a settlement.

The appointment of a conciliator does not signal an unwillingness to negotiate, nor is it a declaration of an impasse. In recent years, conciliation has been a normal part of collective bargaining. It is a service provided by the Ontario Ministry of Labour at no cost and it is aimed at facilitating an agreement.

What’s next?

There are three paths to a collective agreement using conciliation services:

• The two parties could come to an agreement through conciliation.
• The parties could agree to continue with negotiations without third-party assistance after some conciliation sessions with the possibility of returning to conciliation at a later time.
• The conciliator could file a “no board” report if he determines that the two sides are unable to reach an agreement.

Seventeen days after the conciliator files a “no board” report with the Ministry, a lockout or strike is legally possible. Your negotiating team continues to work hard at the table to achieve a fair and equitable collective agreement and defend the university’s core mission of quality teaching and research.

What are the issues?

The university’s 2017 financial statements report a $139.9 million surplus for the past fiscal year. Western can easily afford to invest in the university’s core mission of teaching and research. And yet, on the frontlines, some contract faculty have lost their jobs, while many others still lack meaningful job security. In addition, the administration’s salary proposal for all faculty members fails to keep up with the rate of inflation. All of this is happening at a time when huge reserves make these choices unnecessary.

Compensation and benefits

As of 2016, based on the latest available UCASS data, Western sits at 11^th place in the province in terms of average full-time salary for its professors. In the current round of negotiations, the administration has offered a 1.25% scale increase for all faculty, part-time and full-time, in the first year and 1% in each of the remaining three years, for an average of 1.1% scale increases over four years. Given recent settlements at other universities (1.5% at Guelph, 1.7% at McMaster, 1.75% at Queen’s, and 2.6% at Waterloo), if the administration’s offer is accepted, Western’s salaries are certain to fall even further behind our comparators’ in the years ahead.

Job security for contract academic staff

The administration has rejected all of UWOFA’s proposals to improve job security for contract academic staff – our colleagues with limited-duties (LD) and limited-term (LT) appointments – including conversions from LD to LT, and from LT to a proposed new continuing teaching appointment (CTA) category.

Click here to read a previous Bargaining Bulletin on the issues.

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.

If conciliation is not successful, the Board of Directors is now authorized, based on the recommendation of your negotiating team, to call a strike when and if it is deemed necessary. An additional vote will not be held. Please refer to previous Bargaining Bulletins for a list of frequently asked questions about what a strike vote means and for more on the remaining issues.

Next steps

A positive strike vote does not mean there must be a strike. A provincially-appointed conciliator will join your negotiating team and the administration side at the table on October 11, 12, and 15. UWOFA remains hopeful a fair and equitable settlement can be reached through the conciliation process.

If the two sides are unable to reach an agreement, the conciliator could file a “no board” report with the Ontario Ministry of Labour, 17 days after which a lockout or strike is legally possible.

Your negotiating team continues to work hard on your behalf to reach a fair and equitable collective agreement and defend the university’s core mission of quality teaching and research.

Last week, UWOFA announced that a strike vote will be held for members of the faculty Bargaining Unit. Please see below for some frequently asked questions about the strike vote process. For more details about the process and, most importantly, the issues that remain on the table, please plan to attend a Bargaining Unit meeting on Thursday, September 20 at 9:30 a.m. in the Law Building, Room 52.

What is a strike vote?

A strike vote is a way for the membership to indicate their support for the work of the negotiating team and their stand on the issues.

What does a “yes” vote mean?

Voting “yes” expresses your support for the team and gives them more leverage at the table during conciliation because it provides the association with the ability to call a strike.

What does a “no” vote mean?

Voting “no” indicates your desire that the negotiating team accept what is already on offer from the administration.

Are we on strike after a “yes” strike vote?

No. A strong “yes” vote does not mean we automatically go on strike. Any decision to go out on strike has to be made by the UWOFA Board of Directors on the recommendation of the negotiating team, and will come only after all other options have been exhausted. The Board may also consider other kinds of labour action (rotating strikes, one-day strikes, work to rule) if/when there appears to be no other way to reach an agreement.

Can I vote online?

Only if you have already registered to vote online because you are away from campus or cannot for other reasons. Otherwise, as a show of solidarity, voting takes place in person at designated places and times around campus from September 20-21 and September 24-26.

Is there a second vote to go on strike?

No. A positive strike vote delegates authority to the Board to decide based on the recommendation of the negotiating team.

What issues remain unresolved?

Crucial issues that remain and will be addressed during conciliation are compensation and benefits for all faculty members, and job security for contract faculty. For more detail please read past Bargaining Bulletins.

What happens if conciliation fails?

If the conciliation process fails to produce a result, both sides can continue to bargain without the presence of a conciliator, or either side can ask that the conciliator file a “no board” report stating that they are at an impasse. A strike or lockout is legally possible 17 days after the report is filed, but it is important to remember that neither is required. The two sides can keep trying to reach a deal after a “no board” report has been filed.

Is UWOFA financially prepared?

Yes. UWOFA has approximately $4.9 million in reserve to pay our members in the event of a strike. In addition, the Canadian Association of University Teachers’ (CAUT) Defense Fund contributes $84 tax free per calendar day for each member after the first three days of a strike. UWOFA’s Board can decide to top up this amount.

As you know, UWOFA and the employer jointly filed a request to appoint a conciliation officer with the Ministry of Labour on Friday, August 30 in an attempt to bridge remaining differences at the table in negotiations for a new collective agreement for the faculty bargaining unit.

While some progress has been made since bargaining began in June, several issues remain that a conciliator can help move along. These issues include the employer’s offer of an extremely low scale increase of 1.25% in the first year and 1% in each of the remaining three years. This offer is below the rate of inflation, thus effectively amounting to a pay cut. It is also below the scale increases that our colleagues at Ontario comparator universities (Guelph, McMaster, Queen’s and Waterloo) will receive. The proposal on the table would cause Western faculty to lag even farther behind counterparts at comparator universities.

In addition, the employer has rejected all of UWOFA’s proposals to improve job security for contract academic staff – our colleagues with limited-duties and limited-term appointments – as well as almost all of UWOFA’s proposals to improve benefits, the pension plan, and other retirement provisions.

Your negotiating team is committed to reaching an equitable collective agreement that supports and defends the university’s core mission of offering high quality teaching and research comprehensively, across the university. As UWOFA has repeatedly demonstrated, the university is not suffering financially; in fact, the annual surplus for the fiscal year ended April 30, 2017 was almost $140 million. The administration’s low compensation offer is not necessary during a time of overall financial health.

Conciliation is simply the next step in the collective bargaining process, whereby a third party can help the two sides reach agreement. Your team will make every effort to reach a negotiated settlement via the conciliation process.

What is Conciliation?

The Ontario Ministry of Labour appoints a facilitator who may act as a mediator between the two parties in order to try to reach a settlement. It will likely take a few weeks before the conciliator joins the negotiation process. Your negotiating team believes that the request for conciliation will help focus discussions and support efforts to bring about an equitable settlement.

Negotiations with the administration to reach a new faculty collective agreement have continued to move forward since we last updated you in June. The process is paused now for a one-month summer break.

The tone between the two sides remains collegial. Both sides have presented all of their proposals, including initial compensation proposals, and agreement has been reached on a number of smaller articles. The last bargaining sessions took place on July 17 and 18, with mediator Greg Long present. Further meetings are scheduled for the week of August 20.

Your negotiating team is working hard to achieve the best deal possible for faculty. We will update you again later in August.

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.

When used as a means of providing formative feedback to teachers, student questionnaires can help teachers make improvements to their course and their teaching approach. They can also affirm that particular classroom strategies were successful and be a source of motivation for teachers to continue in successful approaches. There is little debate in the literature as to the benefit of student questionnaires for such feedback.

However, the use of student questionnaires for career-shaping decisions raises serious concerns about how faculty teaching is evaluated. Indeed, an arbitrator recently ruled that student questionnaires cannot be used to measure teaching effectiveness in promotion and tenure decisions at Ryerson University. William Kaplan ruled in favour of the Ryerson University Faculty Association and ordered its Faculty Collective Agreement be changed to reflect the decision, which included other measures. Moreover, the literature on faculty evaluation shows that there are problems with student questionnaires in terms of bias. A 2015 study found implicit bias in students of an online course who were asked to rate both a male and female instructor in different sections of the course (MacNell, Driscoll, and Hunt 2015). Both faculty members assumed two different gender identities: male and female. Students gave higher ratings to the male identity, regardless of the instructor’s actual gender.

“This study demonstrates that gender bias is an important deficiency of student ratings of teaching,” the authors note. “Therefore, the continued use of student ratings of teaching as a primary means of assessing the quality of an instructor’s teaching systematically disadvantages women in academia.”

Both male and female students show that bias, Moehring noted, “and indeed we know that implicit bias is not something within men that’s harboured against women – it’s something that we all have the potential to carry.” Each single evaluation may have a subtle bias to it, she added, but that subtle bias at every step along the way can compound across the course of a career. This is particularly troubling for contract faculty members who focus primarily on teaching.

The literature on faculty evaluation also clearly shows that no single data source can allow one to make a reasonable assessment of an individual’s teaching. Other data sources, such as self-reports or ratings by colleagues, are better able to assess aspects of teaching such as the course design, delivery methods, appropriateness of course materials, or grading standards. Without these additional sources, student questionnaires cannot provide a reasonable and accurate reflection of teacher effectiveness and student learning. A 2016 meta-analysis of student questionnaires unequivocally found that “students do not learn more from professors with higher student evaluation of teaching ratings” (Uttl, White, and Wong Gonzalez 2016). Those researchers suggest that universities whose primary focus is student learning should give minimal weight to student questionnaire ratings, but that universities may want to emphasize such ratings if their focus is on student perceptions or satisfaction.

For Moehring, the effectiveness of a professor’s investment in teaching should not be measured using a flawed or biased instrument as it undermines a core devotion of most professors.

“I care deeply about the teaching that I do,” Moehring said. “Like most professors, I invest significant time and effort into my courses in order to make complex material clear and engaging.”

Work Cited

MacNell, Lillian, Adam Driscoll, and Andrea N. Hunt. 2015. “What’s in a Name: Exposing Gender Bias in Student Ratings of Teaching.” Innovative Higher Education. Accessed June 12.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10755-014-9313-4.

Uttl, Bob, Carmela A. White, and Daniela Wong Gonzalez. 2016. “Meta-Analysis of Faculty’s Teaching Effectiveness: Student Evaluation of Teaching Ratings and Student Learning Are Not Related.” Studies in Educational Evaluation. Accessed September 21, 2016.
dos:10.1016/j.stueduc.2016.08.007.

Faculty collective bargaining began on Wednesday, June 6, with your UWOFA negotiating committee meeting with the Administration’s representatives for several hours to exchange initial proposals.

Ten days of meetings have been scheduled between now and July 18. This includes three days of pre-scheduled mediation in mid-July, in an effort to arrive at an agreement in a shorter time than in prior rounds of bargaining.

Your Negotiating Committee

Jeff Tennant, Chief Negotiator
French Studies

Johanna Weststar, Deputy Chief Negotiator
DAN Department of Management & Organizational Studies

Ann Bigelow
DAN Department of Management & Organizational Studies

Cindy Cossar-Jones
UWOFA Professional Officer

Kristin Hoffmann
Western Libraries

Jamie Johnston
English & Writing Studies

Steve Lupker
Psychology

Beth MacDougall-Shackleton
Biology

Warren Steele
Information & Media Studies

In anticipation of faculty bargaining beginning on June 6, the following is a collective bargaining primer for UWOFA members.

The process

During negotiations, UWOFA’s and the employer’s negotiating teams will hold a series of meetings to exchange proposals and respond to each other’s positions. Each side also meets separately throughout the process to discuss and redraft their respective proposals. This can be a time-consuming process. While it plays out, both sides generally do not comment publicly on the positions on the table because it could discourage them from putting frank and open positions forward for discussion. So, while we are all curious about what is going on, our negotiating team can usually only give us the broad strokes of what is happening – for example, which articles have been signed off and which have yet to be negotiated. In addition, members will be informed of crucial matters that are affecting the progress of negotiations. UWOFA will publish more detailed negotiating reports when possible in future Bargaining Bulletins.

While the two sides do not have to meet with any particular frequency or structure, the Ontario Labour Relations Act does require that they negotiate in good faith and make every reasonable effort to reach a collective agreement. Though it rarely occurs, both parties can agree to refer some or all issues to arbitration at any time. After the current agreement expires on June 30, either party can declare that negotiations are at an impasse and apply to the Ontario Labour Relations Board to have an appointed conciliation officer meet with both parties and help them reach an agreement. If this is unsuccessful, the Minister of Labour can state that a conciliation board will not be appointed, and after 17 days following such a “no-board report” either a strike or a lockout can legally take place, though this is far from inevitable.

A vote of the faculty bargaining unit will be held before a new collective agreement is ratified. The decision to call such a vote is made by the Association.

What can change and what remains the same during negotiations?

According to the Ontario Labour Relations Act, the employer may not alter wages or any other employment condition while collective bargaining is going on unless UWOFA has given consent. It would not be appropriate, for example, if an employer imposed a general pay cut during negotiations or changed any other employment provisions.

Everything essentially stays the same. But it is worth noting that procedures currently in place for changing individual faculty members’ employment remain in effect during negotiations. We can still obtain tenure and promotion, make new appointments, or get an administrative stipend for being appointed as a Chair.

If UWOFA considered that a proposed change to someone’s employment violated the “freeze” during negotiations, the issue could be decided by the Labour Board if it could not be resolved with the employer. Examples of previous board rulings, involving other unions, where employers violated “freeze” conditions include:

• Restructuring work to abolish positions
• Introducing procedures to monitor employees
• Revoking privileges previously enjoyed
• Unilaterally changing work hours
• Changing the method of payment or the calculation/accrual of vacation entitlement

If you face any of these situations, UWOFA is here to help. Contact the Association at 519-661-3016.

Your negotiating committee, led by chief negotiator Jeff Tennant (French Studies), is bargaining for an equitable new collective agreement with improved working conditions.

THE CURRENT PROCESS

UWOFA has been working for several months on preparations to negotiate a new faculty collective agreement. The current agreement expires on June 30, 2018.

A Collective Bargaining Committee and Negotiating Team have been formed (see below) and in early September they participated with the Board of Directors in a day-long meeting to discuss the process and goals for negotiations.

While we do not know exactly when negotiations will start, in previous rounds of bargaining they have begun in mid-May.

UWOFA’s role at the bargaining table is to represent the interests of our membership. To that end, we will continue to consult you in various ways in the coming months as we prepare to negotiate.

Please complete our current survey by January 19, 2018 (https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/XLGB5FY). This survey includes questions about demographics, salary, benefits, evaluation/APE, appointments, workload and equity. There will be other opportunities for input, such as meetings, but the survey is a very important tool for your Negotiating Team. Please take the time to complete it. It will help us be truly representative of our membership when we engage in the bargaining process.

We plan to submit goals to the membership for approval in March 2018.

Your input is essential to allow us to negotiate the best collective agreement possible for you!

OCTOBER SURVEY

We were very pleased with the high level of participation in the short survey on bargaining priorities we asked members to complete in October 2017. The results of that survey not only informed the early stages of our goal development by letting us know what issues were of importance to you, they also helped us identify issues on which to focus more specifically in the survey you are currently being asked to complete.

INTRODUCING THE COLLECTIVE BARGAINING COMMITTEE (CBC)

The CBC, which includes all members of the Negotiating Team plus six additional members, is responsible for developing bargaining goals in consultation with the membership, drafting proposed contract language, supporting the Negotiating Team during bargaining (with research, for example) and, after an agreement is reached, final drafting and checking of contract language.

Members of both the 2018 Negotiating Team and the CBC:

Jeff Tennant – Chief Negotiator (French Studies)

Johanna Weststar – Deputy Chief Negotiator (DAN Management & Organizational Studies)

Ann Bigelow (DAN Management & Organizational Studies)

Cindy Cossar-Jones (UWOFA Professional Officer)

Kristin Hoffmann (Western Libraries)

Jamie Johnston (English and Writing Studies)

Steve Lupker (Pychology)

Beth MacDougall-Shackleton (Biology)

Warren Steele (Information & Media Studies)

Additional members of the CBC:

Paul Charpentier (Engineering)

John Ciriello (Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry)

Darren Meister (Ivey School of Business)

Barbara Murison (History)

Stephen Pitel – UWOFA president (Faculty of Law)

Nina Zitani (Biology)