After a last-minute tentative agreement was reached on Thursday the 7th, AUFA members have voted to ratify a new collective agreement with an 83% majority with 88% of members voting. We assume the Board of Governors will ratify the deal shortly and enshrine the new contract.
This round of bargaining was a severe concessions-only attempt by the university with little to no movement made during open bargaining until AUFA members began to show a willingness to strike to get a fair deal. This required a strategy of taking incremental steps closer to a strike, which resulted in the employer coming closer to a deal.
Throughout the past two months a flurry of extended negotiations took place which included beginning and ending formal mediation, returning to the table, bringing an offer to members which was rejected, and finally taking a strike vote. The strike vote appeared to finally move Athabasca University to the point of agreeing to a deal AUFA members would vote for. The goal, as always, was a deal and not a strike. The deal is not ideal, but rather the outcome of a decision on how much more a strike would potentially gain. If AUFA had gone on strike, it may have been the first online strike in world history.
I’d like to extend my thanks to our bargaining team and the entire AUFA membership. While the bargaining team sat in 14-hour sessions, members spoke with one another, engaged politically, and drove one another to get involved rather than simply take direction from union leadership.
The AUFA Executive have now met to discuss next steps. A large lessons-learned session will be scheduled with AUFA committee members to discuss what worked and what did not in the support for negotiations and organization of a potential strike. As well, several members have suggested a potential non-confidence vote in the university executive team which will be investigated along with other campus unions. Finally, a major demographics survey will take place as a component of our ongoing equity audit.
I am enormously proud to serve this union and membership. AUFA is a stronger union than ever now with greater organization, engagement, and sense of community.
In Solidarity,
David Powell
AUFA President