Bargaining
CapilanoU – Bargaining Update #3 – Negotiations Update
May 27, 2022
To: All MoveUP Members at CapilanoU
Your bargaining team is writing to you today to provide an update on the status of our negotiations with Capilano University. This bulletin will be detailing specifically our exchange of proposals with the employer and where we are at in our negotiations.
If you haven’t read our Bargaining 101 bulletin from October 7, 2021, we recommend doing so before continuing. You can find it here. Same with our Bargaining 102 bulletin from May 19, 2022, which you can find here.
Any updates on the mandate?
Nothing so far. As previously discussed in our Bargaining 102 bulletin, the BCGEU published a news release on April 27 stating that they had reached an impasse at the bargaining table due to the proposed wage increases. 1.75% in the first year, 2% in the second year, and 2% in the third year.
Generally, the mandate is set when one or more unions sign off on monetary proposals. The BCGEU is currently the only other union that has publicly disclosed PSEC’s proposed monetary proposals, and they are currently conducting a strike vote across the province to determine whether or not they will be participating in job action.
To reiterate, the government’s wage proposals are just that: proposals, and we should not assume that the proposed wages are going to be PSEC’s final mandate especially if one or more unions are refusing the proposed wages.
Where we are at with bargaining at Capilano University:
The employer has tabled one single proposal containing a complete edit of our current collective agreement. The employer’s proposal is nearly 140 pages long and seeks to remove over 32 pages of language from our contract, or roughly 4500 words. The cuts are mainly focused around gutting our layoff protections in the collective agreement, and granting the employer more discretion for hiring temporary employees and to keep them precariously employed for longer periods.
These concessions are unacceptable, and they don’t consider the history of staff reductions during the course of this collective agreement. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and it’s impact on enrolment early on, the employer had proposed a staff reduction plan of nearly 40 employees to balance their projected deficit in July 2020. You can remind yourself of the details of this staff reduction plan from our bulletins here and here.
We fought hard at that time, and were successful in significantly reducing the staff reduction plan and fully utilizing our layoff protections to ensure that the employer explored all possible alternatives to terminating employment, rather than resorting to the most convenient option available to the employer at the time to balance their books. Over the course of 20 days while the union and employer reviewed every proposed reduction, the forecasted deficit was reduced by nearly $16 million.
The layoff language that the employer proposes to drastically cut has remained largely unchanged since it was negotiated into the collective agreement in 1984. This language is 38 years old.
In reviewing previous rounds of bargaining, we haven’t found one example of such concessionary bargaining from the employer since the contract was first negotiated in 1974.
As a reminder, we have never negotiated a contract to date with a retained third party, who respectfully has no historical context to the language being discussed or the intention of the parties at the time it was negotiated. For additional context, only one member of the employer’s bargaining committee was present briefly during the last round of negotiations of our contract.
What’s next?
The protocol agreement signed by the parties prohibits the tabling of additional proposals except by mutual agreement. The employer has not tabled monetary proposals or placeholders, just the single concessionary proposal tabled on May 25, 2022.
We intend on continuing negotiations as much as we can despite no wage mandate from the province and the employer’s intention in approaching this round with significant concessions. We are pushing ahead in the hopes that the government reconsiders its current proposed monetary package, and the employer reconsiders its proposal in consideration of the history of the language and the go-forward labour relationship of the parties once bargaining has concluded.
We are disappointed that the employer chose to seek concessions in what may be one of the most controversial and contentious public sector bargaining rounds since the implementation of PSEC in 1994.
We are currently scheduled to continue negotiations with the employer on July 6, 19, 26 and 28. We have requested the employer revisit their schedule to find more possible negotiation dates.
What you can do:
This is your contract. You are the union. Help us out by staying informed, reading our bulletins, and coming to our monthly membership meetings.
We will be holding a telephone townhall to go over mandate bargaining in the province and the state of bargaining with your employer on June 28. More information will be incoming via telephone invites and bulletins.
Update your contact information if you haven’t done so already, so we can ensure that you are getting the invite to our telephone townhall meeting and getting up-to-date information on the status of our negotiations. You can update us here.
For success at the table, we need to all move forward together.
If you have any further questions or comments, please contact me by phone or email me at nbeausoleil@moveuptogether.ca.
In solidarity,
Your Bargaining Committee:
Darin Feist, Executive Councillor
Eric Roberts, Executive Councillor
Suzanne Perreault, Executive Councillor
Christy Slusarenko, Vice-President Combined Units
Nathan Beausoleil, Union Representative