Uofr academic staff back a strike
The University of Regina’s academic staff members have voted overwhelmingly in support of a strike, but the union and university administration remain “optimistic” that one won’t be necessary.
About 87.4 per cent of these University of Regina Faculty Association (URFA) members support a strike, according to a strike vote taken last week.
“We are always optimistic about reaching a fair agreement,” said URFA president Sylvain Rheault.
No one from the U of R administration was made available for an interview, but it expressed the following in a prepared statement: “The University of Regina is committed to the collective-bargaining process and remains optimistic that a settlement will be reached at the bargaining table.”
The most recent collective agreement expired in June 2017, and negotiations began in April 2018. The union has 1,050 members in its U of R academic-staff contingent — including lab instructors, librarians, sessional lecturers and fulltime professors of varying ranks.
Rheault said “it’s hard to say at this point” whether a strike will be held, because “the process is so long.”
The two sides meet on Nov. 14 to continue negotiating a new contract, and there are further dates scheduled through December.
If neither side budges, that means notifying the Ministry of Labour Relations to resume bargaining with a ministry-appointed mediator. If mediation fails, there is a two-week cooling-off period.
After that, with 48 hours’ notice, the union could strike, or the university could lock out staff.
Students will not have to worry about an interruption to the current semester, said Rheault. The labour process means a strike couldn’t happen before December: “It’s impossible.”
However, said Rheault, “We are confident that we will be reaching a fair settlement within our few next bargaining sessions.”
This is not the first time in recent memory that negotiations have taken so long or been so “passionate,” said Rheault.
By the time a mediator helped to finalize the 2011-14 collective agreement, there were only 16 months left in the contract, said Rheault.
The recent strike vote was held with the goal of sending a clear message to university administration. Rheault said the union takes issue with the university’s proposal that professors should have a focus, whether it’s teaching or research.
“We feel it’s kind of like chain work at Ford. Maybe the comparison is a little extreme, but our view is that university teachers should be well-rounded,” said Rheault.
Members prefer a 40/40/20 split on research, teaching, and administrative and community-service work.
The university’s overreliance on sessional lecturers is also an issue, said Rheault. Sessionals receive much less compensation than permanent faculty.
“Some sessionals have been doing this their whole life, and it’s not fair for them just to be used as complementary personnel,” said Rheault. “They have no security, they have no benefits as would permanent employees, and we would like to give sessionals a chance of becoming permanent after a few years of involvement.”
According to the union, the university wants to eliminate peer review in tenure and promotion decisions and wants career progress to hinge on 20 reference letters from students.
The university is proposing a wage increase of zero, zero, 0.5 and 0.5 per cent over four years, and is seeking to cap further raises (or “merit”) to 50 staff per year.
These negotiations concern academic staff at the U of R only. Staff at Campion, Luther and First Nations University have separate bargaining units.