Memorandum of Understanding: A Response
Marcia Macaulay and Yvette Szmidt
On September 17 there will be a meeting to ratify or not a tentative settlement between the employer and YUFA. This tentative settlement fails to reflect the bargaining positions which YUFA members approved and gave the Bargaining Team a mandate to negotiate at a General Membership Meeting on June 2, 2009. There are a number of significant concerns which we wish to bring to your attention.
1. Consultation Process
The Chief Negotiator’s Report stresses the extensive involvement of the membership in shaping the settlement. However, this Negotiator ignores the fact that a motion passed by the membership at a Special Membership meeting on March 3, 2009 has been violated. This motion requires that “the Bargaining Team hold regular, open membership consultation meetings, at least once monthly, to keep members informed about developments in negotiations.” No meetings were held.
2. Memorandum versus Contract
YUFA has sent out a ratification package that supplies only partial information about the settlement. In the past, members have been given packages which clearly indicated both proposed changes on the one hand and the articles which remain the same from the old contract on the other. In order to read this package in any comprehensive way, one must refer to the existing contract. Only then can there be understanding of the overall and actual improvement in the contract negotiated. Since the current contract will be nullified once a new contract is ratified, the impact and extent of change need to be absolutely clear.
3. Clarity
There is no explicit comparison between the tentative settlement and the actual positions which the membership approved on June 2, 2009. For example:
• Some important changes made to Appendix Q have not been mandated by the membership.
• There is no reference in the tentative settlement to the New-Appendix S approved by the membership.
• There is no reference to the New-Appendix T (Complement [Total Number of Full-Time Faculty]). Nothing has been agreed to with regard to Complement and in particular provisions to replace retiring members. Extensive time and attention was given to New-Appendix T in the Membership Meeting on June 2, but there is no reflection of this serious concern in the Memorandum.
4. Salary
Members approved an increase of 4% per year over three years. What has been negotiated is 3%, 3% and 2.5%.
5. Workload
On June 2 members approved the following position: “All probationary and tenured faculty shall [our emphasis]have a maximum teaching load of 2.0 FCEs.”
• A benchmark of 2.0 FCEs has not been achieved in this contract.
• Nor has 2.5 FCEs been established as a benchmark in keeping with the purpose of 18.08.2 to bring faculty with a teaching load of 3.0 FCEs down to 2.5FEs.
• The benchmark at York remains at 3.0FCEs, putting York in the rearguard of other universities such as U.B.C. which have improved the working conditions of their faculty and in turn encouraged research.
• Members gave no support for the notion that salary and workload should be intertwined, yet this tentative settlement does just this, and in so doing, erodes both.
6. Framework of ‘Opportunity’
Intertwined with salary and workload is a proposal designed to establish a process to provide for “equitable opportunities for professional, tenure stream faculty members to reduce their teaching load to 2.0 FCEs per year.”
• There has been no negotiation of a benchmark of 2.0. What is proposed is a virtual ‘framework’ to be established over time to arrive at a possible workload of 2.0 for some faculty but not all.
• The language of the Memorandum of Understanding guarantees nothing.
• Explicit tierification of faculty is a distinct possibility arising from this ‘framework’.
• $1.5 million is assigned to workload reduction (for some) attached to a 2.5% increase (for all) in the third year of the contract.
• Faculty should not have to pay for reduced workload (which may or may not apply to all).
• It should not take two years to provide a ‘framework’ to arrive at ‘equitable opportunities’.
• The important issue of workload has not been resolved for the totality of our membership and as well as being attached to an arbitrary figure of 1.5 million dollars is also deferred for a two and possibly three year period. This major issue is therefore taken off YUFA’s agenda with no actual achievement or resolution.
7. Foregoing Grievances
The Memorandum of Understanding requires that two grievances concerning unresolved issues surrounding workload be given up with the ratification of the tentative settlement. It is highly irregular to negotiate ongoing grievances through contract negotiations. This serves in fact to undermine the proper protocol of the grievance process. This Memorandum maintains the language of 18.08.2 which provides a framework for arriving at a teaching load of 2.5 for faculty at 3 full courses. Failing resolution of workload issues through 18.08.2, two faculties (FES and Humanities) have the right to grieve as their only recourse to arrive at appropriate workload levels for themselves. Grievances should be respected as separate processes from contract negotiations.
8. PTRs
Language concerning PTRs is extremely unclear. Several references made to PTR in the Memorandum fail to answer the following questions: Do we in fact get PTR for the three years of the contract? And if so, how much per year? Why is Promotion through the Ranks being linked to Progress through the Ranks? The Memorandum makes the following references, but they do not hang together well:
• Point 7 of the Memorandum of Settlement specifies a PTR amount of $2700 in the first year of the contract.
• Under an amended Article 25.05, reference is made to “The Progress-through-the-ranks increment of Article 25.04.”
• Article 24.04 exists in the current contract but refers to PTRs for 2006, 2007 and 2008, the last PTR of which is $2700.
• Since the PTR is a mechanism by which members can adjust to the cost of living, the absence of clarity is very important.
• Further, two PTRs have been added to the promotion of Full Professor. This is clearly a kind of monetary incentive or carrot, but this change does not reflect the real purpose of PTRs which is not to reward promotion, but rather to recognize on an annual basis every employee’s professional development and improvement.
9. Benefits
Members mandated the Bargaining Team to bargain for increased coverage in benefits including prescription sunglasses, post-surgery eyeglasses, and dental implants as well as an increase for massage therapy and acupuncture.
• Reference in the Memorandum to Article 26 which includes benefits is scant.
• The Report of the Chief Negotiator indicates only that there is an increase of $100 in vision care, as well as immunization coverage up to $200.
• Nothing has been negotiated with respect to other mandated positions.
• The Memorandum also makes no mention of a dearly needed review of the York University Guaranteed Housing Loan Plan.
10. Last Comment
This is an extremely inadequate contract which does not represent the actual concerns or positions endorsed by the membership. The provision to withdraw two grievances is reactionary and should have no involvement within the language of a collective agreement, especially since the language of 18.08.2 remains in the tentative settlement. This contract does not advance the interests of the membership but constitutes an erosion of working conditions and salary.
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If the settlement proposal is defeated in a ratification vote, that does not trigger a strike. For one thing, unless there have been drastic recent changes to labour legislation of which I am unaware, YUFA would have to have go through a conciliation-mediation process and get a no-board report before any strike could be called. But that is just the legality of it- there are other political options available to YUFA if ratification fails. I remember a negotiation in which I was involved where the membership voted at the meeting to discuss the proposed settlement to send back the negotiating committee to improve the settlement in several specific areas. In that case, the negotiating committee was happy to be sent back, with the backing of a membership vote. But what can happen in such a circumstance is that the negotiating committee takes the failure of the ratification vote to be a vote of non confidence and they resign, and another committee takes over. Please note that I am not advocating any of these strategies for this situation. I am just clarifying that voting against the proposed settlement does not mean voting for a strike. It is very important that that be made clear because it may be a good strategy to get as many people as possible to vote it down and if some of them believe that voting it down means voting for a strike, they won't do it.
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