Strike Deadline Set for November 14, 11:59pm

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.