The new collective agreement (CA) came into effect earlier this year and has been posted to our site. In June of this year, we updated the membership on the finalization of the agreement and posted a compendium explaining the changes that were agreed to at the bargaining table. The compendium is available at this link.
We are pleased to announce that the Collective Agreement between the UBCFA and UBC, July 1, 2019 – June 30, 2022, has been ratified by both parties. A copy of the Agreement will be posted to our respective websites as soon as it is finalized.
On Friday, January 17, 2020, the bargaining teams for UBC and the Faculty Association reached an agreement for a new Collective Agreement for the period July 1, 2019 to June 30, 2022. Both the Faculty Association and the University worked hard over the past year to reach this mutually agreeable settlement.
Joint announcement on the status of collective bargaining
On the matter of student evaluations of teaching (SEoT), our position is clear: we propose that these measures not be used in the summative evaluation of teaching for appointment, reappointment, promotion, and tenure. The invalidity of these instruments has been known for a long time; the evidence that they are also biased against protected classes of people increases seemingly weekly.
We are all familiar with the titles associated with the research professoriate: Assistant, Associate, and full Professor. UBC’s “Educational Leadership” stream has titles that are quite a bit less tidy. In 2010 we entitled the final rank in the then-new Educational Leadership stream “Professor of Teaching,” but the first and second ranks in that stream don’t have matching titles. We’ve been trying to fix that.
The Association continues to seek to modify Part 5, Conditions of Appointment for Librarians to ensure that workload is collegially assigned in a fair and equitable manner, and to create Heads language for the Library that mirrors Heads language for faculty (i.e., term appointments, stipend, administrative leave). In addition, in this round we have proposed a change in the confirmation review process and introduced definitions upon which candidates for confirmed appointments will be judged.
When the BC Government announced in 2007 that it would end mandatory retirement in the province, the Faculty Association got busy to protect our most senior colleagues from forcible retirement while that legislation was pending. The result was our Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) #2 on page 26 of the Collective Agreement.
In addition to General Wage Increases and Career Progress Increments or salary steps, many of our members are regularly considered for merit awards and Performance Salary Adjustments (PSA). Merit and PSA are some of the more confusing features of our members’ compensation packages. We have made three proposals to rationalize, clarify, and simplify merit and PSA.
We are now on a summer break from bargaining with the UBC administration. Read the answers to a few key FAQ’s…
Lecturers are the fastest-growing cohort of faculty at UBC, but their terms of work have not kept pace with their increasing presence on our campuses. Lecturers are designed to be a teaching stream with teaching and service as their assigned responsibilities; they are full-time salaried faculty members with one- to three-year appointments and a presumptive right of reappointment as long as the work is available. But many other elements of their work-lives at UBC need attention.
Occasionally as we prepare for bargaining we uncover an issue that we didn’t know we had and that causes us to enunciate a principle. One such issue is the protection of our benefits coverage.
It is hard to imagine that there is a widely-used instrument as ill-suited to the purpose to which it has been put as student opinion surveys are to measuring teaching effectiveness.
This post focuses on our Sessional Lecturer job security/access to work proposals. Sessional Lecturers without Continuing status have a right of reappointment. But to what, exactly?
This post focuses on the benefits (pension, health benefits, and professional development funds) denied to our colleagues on sessional contracts.
This is one of three blog posts focusing on our Sessional Lecturers. The Association has proposals addressing salaries, benefits, and job security/access to work, for our colleagues in the precariat. This post focuses on our Sessional Lecturer salary proposals.
Workload is a major concern for UBC faculty and librarians alike.
In every bargaining survey from 2010 to the present, we have consistently heard that you are struggling with unhealthy workloads and difficult work-life balance challenges and significantly dissatisfied with the transparency and equity of workload assignments. The University’s Work Experience Survey (WES) confirms this unhappiness with workload…
Negotiations between UBC and UBCFA to renew the Collective Agreement that expires on June 30, 2019 began formally this week.
Both parties have presented all of their Day-One proposals; these are outlines of each party’s goals and objectives…
Preparation for collective bargaining is almost complete. Thank you to the members who have taken the time to fill out the survey, meet with us, or email us with comments and concerns. Your input was crucial for developing the proposals that we will take to the table. On January 17, 2019 the Executive Committee approved the proposals the Association plans to take to the bargaining table. Our first bargaining session with the University is scheduled for the third week of February.
In preparation for bargaining we have tracked the growth and changes in our bargaining unit over the past decade. Knowing who we are and how we’ve changed as a group of faculty, librarians, and program directors helps us determine how the university is evolving (or devolving) and which trends we might need to address. The table tracks the composition of our active membership in 2006, 2012, 2015, and 2017…
When the Faculty Association negotiates a new Collective Agreement with UBC, one of the issues that often seems intuitive and straightforward is actually an important part of our work to help our members: a General Wage Increase (GWI). There are four main factors that contribute to the core importance of negotiating a strong GWI.
A message from the Chair of the UBCFA Bargaining Preparation Committee:
Dear colleagues,
The Faculty Association is preparing to go to the table to negotiate our 2019 Collective Agreement, and we need to know what matters most to you.
