The University of Lethbridge Faculty Association (ULFA) recently ratified a new settlement following a lengthy strike. This blog post provides an overview of the ULFA settlement. Overall, this settlement extends the public-sector and PSE wage pattern but with some additional monetary and language improvements.

Term and Money

This four-year deal has a term of July 1, 2020 to June 30, 2024. The cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for all salaries and grids is as follows:

  
    July 1, 2020:
    0%
  
    July 1, 2021:
    0%
  
    July 1, 2022:
    0%
  
    April 1, 2023:
    1.25%
  
    December 1, 2023:
    1.5%
  
    Additional increase December 1, 2023:
    0.5% (not guaranteed)

The additional increase scheduled for December of 2023 is contingent upon the province achieving a real GDP for the 2023 calendar year that is at or above 2.7% as of February 2024. If this condition is met in February of 2024, U of L will retroactively apply an additional 0.5% COLA to December 1, 2023. If this condition is not met, then no additional increase will be forthcoming.

This means the ULFA settlement could see an (uncompounded) COLA increase of between 2.75% and 3.25% over its four-year term. Even with the addition of gain-sharing payments, this settlement will not maintain the purchasing power of ULFA salaries over time. For example, year-over-year inflation as of January 2022 was 5.1%.

The ULFA settlement matches the COLA agreed to by AUPE for its government services bargaining unit, the Mount Royal Faculty Association (MRFA) settlement from late February, and the Association of Academic Staff: University of Alberta (AASUA) from early March. This appears to be the current “secret’ financial mandate issued the government.

Extra Compensation

In addition to the COLA settlement, ULFA was able to negotiate some additional changes. Key changes that have clear monetary implications include:

Grid floors rise: Effective July 1, 2022, sessionals will see an 8% increase to the minimum stipends. Assistant and associate professors and some librarian grids will see a 10% increase to their grid floor. Assistant professor and one category of librarians will also see a 2% increase in salaries.
Benefits: The employee and family assistance plan will be extended to cover sessional and term staff. A flexible benefit spending plan of $250 per year for all members except sessional or term staff was created.

The value of this additional compensation is unclear. Additional compensation in non-salary form is also a feature of the AASUA, MRFA and United Nurses of Alberta deals.

Language

There were a significant number of language changes which vary across categories of employees. Of relevance to AUFA members include improvements in equity language that include:

An expansion of the definition of service to better recognize work often done by members of equity-seeking groups,
A larger equity committee with clearer terms of reference and purpose,

A requirement to perform regular EDI studies, including pay equity studies, with redress of inequities normally within 12 months,
Clearer language on what medical information is required for an accommodation, and
New Indigenous evaluation language.

You can read the full ratification package online.

ULFA and the U of L also negotiated a returned-to-work protocol (a common thing after a strike). This protocol includes Board agreeing to allow ULFA members to purchase their pensionable service during the period of the strike as well as the Board agreeing to pay travel, professional, and research/grant expenses incurred during the strike. The U of L also agreed to destroy all surveillance data collected during the strike, and that ULFA members will face no strike-related disciplinary measures, reprisals, or legal action.

Analysis

The ULFA agreement provides a cost-of-living increase of between 2.75% and 3.25%. This mirrors the provincial and PSE wage pattern (and the government mandate). This is the same deal that AU offered AUFA on February 28 after filed for mediation. Additional compensation, in the form of benefits, grid, and salary improvements, adds to the overall improvement of compensation.

ULFA also appears to have achieved some language improvements, particularly around equity issues. Notably, the ULFA deal does not appear to contain any of the massive language rollbacks that AU is trying to push on AUFA members.

To get this deal, ULFA was required to strike for approximately 40 calendar days. The U of L was not available to bargain for the first 23 calendar days. One way to read this delay by the U of L is as a form of punishment for ULFA striking.

Social media comments by ULFA members also suggest that the government was very much involved in the structure of the eventual agreement. This includes reports that the U of L negotiator had to call to get permission from the government to agree to certain outcomes. Whether this was actually the case or whether this was some sort of elaborate “talking to the manager in the back” ruse is unclear.

ULFA’s language improvements likely reflect that, in order to get ULFA to accept the government’s lousy wage-mandate, the U of L had to agree to some of ULFA’s other proposals. Time will tell if AU prefers this option to a work stoppage.

Jason Foster, Chair

AUFA Bargaining Committee

Bob Barnetson, Chair

Job Action Committee

On Friday, 20 AUFA members joined about 200 academic and non-academic staff at a lunch-hour picket at the University of Alberta. The academic and non-academic staff associations have been frustrated by threats of rollbacks and a lack of progress at the table. Thanks to these AUFA members, who spent their lunch hour showing solidarity. Faculty members from MacEwan and NAIT were also in attendance.

The U of A denied staff permission to picket on campus, so an initial rally was held on the sidewalk on 87th Avenue. U of A workers then proceeded to lead a march though campus, chanting “Whose campus? Our campus!” before rallying in the quad.

On the same day, the U of A’s admin posted a surprise new offer to its faculty association. The nub of the U of A’s proposed settlement is:

A four-year salary freeze, ending in June of 2024.
Further negotiations to slow the growth of faculty salaries over their career. Absent success (i.e., revenue neutral solution) by February, the whole offer becomes void.
Hard salary caps for lecturers (i.e., teaching-only faculty).
All other demands for rollbacks would be withdrawn.

This shift away from the U of A’s early threats of massive rollbacks tell us a couple of things:

Mandates have likely changed: The government has altered its secret mandate to the U of A’s administration (requiring salary rollbacks). Rumours suggest this mandate change is sector-wide, although we cannot yet confirm this. These same rumours suggest the new mandate is a series of wage freezes to spring of 2023 (cynically right before the next election), when there would be a small cost-of-living bump. This increase likely tracks the 1.25% increase AUPE accepted for government workers.
Mandates change with pressure: What this tells us is that government interference in the collective bargaining process is not set in stone. Widespread UCP unpopularity and growing labour unrest likely means the UCP is hoping to avoid public-sector strikes by offering workers tiny increases. Additional pressure on public sector employers and the government may well result in further mandate changes.
Progress is modest: The U of A’s new offer (four zeros) is better than its most recent offer (-3% and then three zeros). But, in the context of inflation of 4% or more per year, this still entails a large loss of purchasing power.
Bad offers are a framing strategy: Proposing a series of harsh rollbacks only to walk away from most of them is a clear employer strategy. Its purpose is to frame a lousy offer as some kind of victory of workers (because we avoided an even worse offer), even though the actual offer is still lousy. The countermove to this employer strategy is maintaining a credible strike threat, forcing employers to move off their slightly-less-lousy offer to one that actually benefits workers.

The Association of Academic Staff: University of Alberta (AASUA) has filed an unfair labour practices complaint against the U of A regarding this offer. The crux of the complaint is that the U of A allegedly launched an end-run around the faculty association and is attempting to negotiate directly with the membership. The facts, according to the faculty association are:

The last bargaining date was November 10, with no dates expected until the new year.
The employer phoned the AAUSA bargaining chair late in the day on November 25 (as the chair was getting on a plane) and verbally explained a new offer would be coming by email. The union arranged a meeting of its bargaining team for today (November 29) to review the offer.
Without notice to the union or any further discussion with the AASUA bargaining chair, the employer then posted the offer publicly on November 26, claiming that the offered had been ”tabled”.

This behaviour, according to the union, is not bargaining in good faith. The offer was never presented at the bargaining table and the union was not given sufficient opportunity to review and understand the offer and communicate it to its members. In effect, the employer is interfering with the union’s ability to represent its members. The sequence of events suggests that this was an intentional effort to undermine the union.

While the AASUA does not speculate about what the U of A hopes to achieve through this behaviour, one possibility is that the U of A is laying the groundwork for a proposal vote. Alberta’s Labour Relations Code allows each side one opportunity per round of bargaining to present an offer directly to the other side for a vote. If accepted, the offer becomes the new contract.

The subtext of the U of A’s November 26 communication is “this deal will let you avoid a strike.” What gets lost in that message is that the deal requires the faculty to take (another) wage freeze, slow salary growth, and throw teaching-only faculty under the bus. Making members aware of these important trade-offs and the corrosive effect of the employer’s wedge tactics is one of the roles of the union and, in part, why unions get so shirty when employers communicate directly with members.

Meanwhile, back on the ranch, AUFA’s bargaining team returns to the table on November 30th. AUFA continues to wait for AU to table the 14 articles that it withheld from its opening offer, including its monetary position. Progress is unlikely until AUFA can see and evaluate AU’s full offer. AUFA also continues to wait for the Alberta Labour Relations Board to hear the unfair labour practice complaint AUFA filed in September about AU’s unwilling to present a full offer.