After almost 6 months of bargaining, AU has yet to provide its full opening offer. Last week, over 50 AUFA members emailed AU’s bargaining co-chair Margaret Kierylo as well as Alain May asking them to provide AU’s full open offer. These messages ranged from polite to outraged.
AU has made no move to change its behaviour in response to these messages. Consequently, AUFA has filed a bad-faith bargaining complaint with the Alberta Labour Relations Board. This blog post explains what this complaint means.
Incomplete proposal
In late March, AUFA and AU exchanged opening proposals. The majority of AU’s opening proposal comprises placeholders for language AU indicated it would provide later. These placeholders included:
Article 3: Academic Appointments
Article 6: Salaries and Economic Benefits
Article 13: Professional Development
Article 14: Annual Research Leave
Article 15: Research and Study Leave
Article 16: Other Leaves
Article 26: Equity
Schedule A: Salary Scales
Schedule B: Benefits
Letter on Discretionary Benefits Fund
Letter on Market Supplements
Letter on Overload
Almost six months later, AU has not provided a complete proposal (including its monetary asks) despite being asked repeatedly for a full proposal by AUFA’s bargaining team.
Withholding a full opening proposal thwarts progress in collective bargaining. Imagine, for example, that you were seeking to buy a car. But the seller would not tell you the price or what features the car had. Is there really any possibility that you could come to an agreement to buy a car in these circumstances? Obviously not.
In the context of collective bargaining, refusing to table an opening proposal for months is not consistent with the employer’s obligation to bargain collective in good faith and make every effort to enter into a collective agreement.
AU’s Strategy
It is unclear what AU hopes to achieve by delaying the start of meaningful bargaining. AU refusing to comply with the law (which requires them to bargain in good faith and make every effort to achieve a collective agreement) appears strategically stupid because:
AU acting unreasonably makes AUFA members angry and increases support for AUFA among its members. This, in turn, makes AUFA members less amenable to agreeing to whatever AU’s proposal actually contains.
Fighting a bad faith bargaining complaint will unnecessarily drive up AU legal costs.
AU will eventually be required to provide an offer, allowing the union to claim a victory and demonstrating to AUFA members that, when they fight, they win.
Refusing to table a full opening proposal may be a strategy of exhaustion. That is to say AU may be hoping AUFA will lose the will to resist employer demands for a concession. AUFA has never given up in the past so, if this is the goal, AU is unlikely to achieve it.
AU may also be seeking to simply delay a bad reaction from staff when its full offer is tabled. During the most recent days of bargaining when AU’s legal counsel (Chantal Kassongo) said of AU’s full offer, “As soon as we table it, you will immediately declare impasse and strike.”
AUFA has, in the past, always continued to bargain when faced with awful proposals by AU so an immediate strike is unlikely. Further, eventually, AU will be forced to provide a full offer. Delay and additional (pointless bargaining) only serves to further run up AU’s already substantial legal costs and further anger AUFA members.
It is also possible that AU has no particular strategy and is just making it up as it goes along.
What’s Next
AU could avoid further litigation by providing a complete proposal. This would be the responsible thing for AU to do.
If AU decides to fight this complaint instead of bargain, the ALRB will request from AU a response to AUFA’s complaint. The ALRB is then likely to hold a resolution meeting and/or a hearing. This is likely to take a month or so to resolve.
AUFA has requested numerous remedies, including an order directing AU to immediately provide AUFA with the outstanding bargaining information, including its monetary proposals, and to set additional dates for bargaining.
We will keep you apprised of any developments on this issue. In the meantime, based upon AU’s lawyer’s assertion that AU’s proposal will be unacceptable to AUFA, AUFA will regrettably begin preparing for a strike. You can read about the steps required before a work stoppage can begin here:
Your Turn
If you haven't done so yet, the bargaining team asks that you express your concerns about AU’s approach to bargaining directly to the three members of the AU bargaining team who are AU employees:
Alain May, alainm@athabascau.ca
Margaret Kierylo, mkierylo@athabascau.ca
Jessica Butts Scott, jscott@athabascau.ca
Please copy AUFA (aufahq@aufa.ca) on your correspondence.
Bob Barnetson, Chair
AUFA Job Action Committee