Category: Bargaining Updates 2025

Bargaining is sometimes slow cooking food—worth it in the end, but needing a certain degree of patience.  This is definitely one of those rounds.  Normally, we know what the provincial funding for public sector bargaining units is by late spring, usually before our contract term is up.  This year, however, it was mid-November, with the BCGEU mediated agreement, before we knew what the provincial “mandate” would be.  So that delay has definitely slowed down our work toward a tentative agreement at the table. 

Many academics have spent time on short-term contingent appointments; by some measures, academia is in fact one of the most highly casualized work sectors in Canada. This is unhealthy for our institution and even less sustainable for the scholars who fulfill UBC’s public mission with very little in return. We want to keep improving this situation for all of our sakes.

There are three central issues that we have brought to the bargaining table this round related to our extended health benefits plan: (1) that any changes to our benefits plan must be approved by the Faculty Association; (2) an across-the-board increase to the specified coverage limits in our SunLife benefits plan; and (3) benefits for all!

Many of our bargaining proposals on salaries, benefits, and workload will apply to all of us in the Faculty Association, but we also seek to ensure that protections offered in the Collective Agreement recognize the vitally important work of librarians and archivists within the University, and build in parity with other bargaining unit members whenever possible. For this round for Librarians and Archivists, we are focused on selection committee processes, recruitment and selection procedures and processes, and clarifying and expanding our criteria for appointments.

We are now on a summer break from bargaining with the UBC administration.  You have questions, we have answers:

Welcome to the start of a new collective-bargaining season!  As we start preparing for the next bargaining round, here are three ways we can collectively make this a powerful and successful set of negotiations.