Academy for Academic Personnel Administration

Fall 2003

Round Table Report

 

1.  Institution Information

 

Name of Institution/System: Memorial University of Newfoundland

 

Name of Individual Responding: Jack Strawbridge

 

Title of Individual Responding: Director of Faculty Relations

 

2a. Description of Faculty Bargaining Unit(s) – Size and Composition

 

725 full-time faculty members, 36 librarians and 13 co-operative education coordinators

 

Bargaining Agent: Memorial University of Newfoundland Faculty Association

 

Date of First Contract:  1989

 

Number of Succeeding Contracts:  4

 

 

3. Activity Report (e.g., status of current agreement or negotiations, details of last contract settlement, etc.):

 

After a desultory beginning to bargaining on 7 October 2002, we concluded an agreement on 9 June 2003.  Salary increases: 5% on 1 September 2002, 2.5% on 1 September 2003, 2.5% on 1 March 2004, 2.5% on 1 September 2004 and 2.5% on 1 March 2005.  The union dropped its demand for a separate pension plan possibly due to the most recent valuation report of the unified defined-benefit plan showing a deficit of $78M (compared with a surplus of $56M at the last valuation).

 

 

 

4. Special or noteworthy happenings (e.g., relevant arbitration or court decisions, organizing campaigns, labor agency decisions, etc.)

 

1.      The union failed in its second bid to organize the part-time faculty.  However, the Canadian Auto Workers’ union has been on campus twice meeting with graduate student assistants.  We are being quite good to this group at the moment.

2.      The university won an arbitration case stemming from a policy grievance against the implementation of a Senate resolution to implement standard course/instructor evaluations by students.  The award ruled that student evaluations were not an infringement of academic freedom, did not add to the workload of faculty and that the results could be posted on the university’s website.

3.      Long-time attendees of AAPA may be interested in the latest actions of our serial litigant.  We hired a woman as Professor with tenure and into an externally-funded research chair position for a term of 5 years renewable for a further 4 years.  That was in 1993.  After hiring, we discovered she was 4 years away from our mandatory retirement age. We retired her and she sued for breach of contract. The case went to court and we won on the grounds that the court had no jurisdiction.  It was a matter arising from the collective agreement and therefore she should have grieved.  She then appealed to the Appeal Division of our provincial Supreme Court.  We won at this level, as well.  She then sought leave to appeal  to the Supreme Court of Canada and she commenced an action suing the union for lost wages, reduced pension and legal fees for not taking her grievance at the time she retired ($1.5M).  The union, in turn, sued their lawyer who continues to represent them in all other matters.  The Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear her case.  Meanwhile, she charged the union with unfair representation before the provincial Labour Relations Board.  The Board dismissed her complaint.  She has now petitioned the provincial court to overturn the Labour Relations Board decision.

4.      The Labour Relations Board decided that the Co-operative Education Coordinators (CECs) had sufficient community of interest with faculty and librarians to be in their bargaining unit.  CECs, half of whom hold a bachelor’s degree and half of whom hold a master’s degree, are meant to find job placements for students in Business, Engineering and Human Kinetics and Recreation cooperative education programs.  In addition, they teach the students how to prepare a resumé, how to conduct themselves in interviews, etc.  In some cases, they grade work term reports.  We used interest arbitration to settle whether they get all the perquisites that faculty and librarians get (sabbaticals, academic freedom, etc.) and the arbitrator mainly agreed with our position that they are specialized support staff notwithstanding being in the faculty bargaining unit.

 

 

5.  Special happenings related to fiscal issues (e.g., salary reductions, health and dental insurance costs, reductions in force, early retirement programs, program consolidation or elimination, etc.):

 

Nothing to report in this category.