Update: AUFA phone survey, designation, and bargaining

This blog post contains a round-up of AUFA-related matters for the past week. Thanks to AUFA’s volunteers for their hard work.

Fall AUFA Phone Survey

On October 26, the Membership Engagement Committee (MEC) will be launching AUFA’s autumn phone survey of members. This survey helps the AUFA executive understand the concerns of AUFA members and set direction for the union. AUFA volunteer callers will be contacting 100 randomly selected members and conducting a five-minute survey.

The survey includes a small number of recurring “climate” questions as well as questions addressing designation, equity, workload, and the proposed OneAU re-organization that was announced last January.

As with past surveys, all responses are anonymized. Detailed anonymized results are made available to the AUFA executive and aggregated results will be publicly reported to the membership.

If you would like to volunteer as a caller, please contact Rhiannon Rutherford.

Designation

The Faculty Association at the University of Calgary has joined AUFA’s visiting student boycott pledge, indicating that it will advise its members to not recommend U of C students take AU courses if AU de-designates any AUFA members. Eleven faculty associations have now joined the boycott, including associations at the top visiting student sending institutions. Like all of these boycott pledges, the U of C’s pledge has been sent to Board Chair Nancy Laird.

AU has not yet responded to AUFA’s proposed settlement offer on the designation dispute. Consequently, AUFA will commence soliciting a second wave of boycott pledges. Additional news coverage of AU’s bad behaviour around designation occurred last week.

AUFA has updated it FAQ on de-designation and included some information about the potential impact of de-designation in individual AUFA members. AUFA is also continuing is series of biweekly meetings with affected groups. A meeting for academic coordinators will take place on October 23rd at 10 am. A meeting with library staff will follow at a later date.

Bargaining

Last spring, AUFA served notice on AU that AUFA wished to commence bargaining for a renewed collective agreement. Prior to this notice, AUFA undertook an extensive member engagement process. This included presenting members with a high-level draft of AUFA’s bargaining goals for ratification. This proposal received support from 91% of voting members. In light of the challenges associated with COVID-19, AU and AUFA agreed to post-pone the start of bargaining and no bargaining dates have yet been set.

Last fall, the government gave itself the power to set binding and secret mandates for public boards. Last week, the government announced that political staffers would be taking a 7% wage-cut to help Alberta cope with an expected budget deficit. This announcement should be read both as the government telegraphing its expectation of wage cuts as public-sector bargaining commences and an effort to show that politicians (or at least their staffers) are willing to share the pain.

Although AU has run operating surpluses for many years, it is likely AU will demand a wage freeze or cut at the table. It is helpful to reflect upon the history of wage settlements at AU over the past few years.

The table below shows that AUFA members have seen a cumulative increase to salary grids of 12.8% over the past 10 years. During that time, inflation has eroded purchasing power by 16.9%. This means the real-dollar (i.e., inflation adjusted) value of AUFA salary grids has decreased by 4.1% since 2010.

Some members have continued to receive salary increases (merit pay). Many other members have reached the ceiling of their salary grid and, thus, are not eligible for merit increments. Wage freezes thus disproportionately impact capped-out members, some of whom have seen a 4.1% reduction in real-dollar wages. One way for AU to address the erosive effects of inflation is to offer its workers a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) that matches inflation.

Year	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	Cumulative
AUFA	2.2	2.0	2.25	0	0	1.75	2.0	2.0	0	0	+12.8%

Probationary Delays

COVID-19 has disrupted many members’ working patterns. AUFA is interested to know if any new AUFA members would be interested in voluntary extensions to the probationary periods to account for this? Such an accommodation would need to be negotiated with AU. Please contact Dave Powell if you would like to discuss this possibility.

Working Alone Policy

The main campus Joint Health and Safety Committee will be reviewing AU’s working alone policy. This policy will be of greater importance as AU moves towards having the majority of its staff work from home offices. Input can be sent to AUFA OHS reps Rhiannon Rutherford or Bob Barnetson.

David Powell, AUFA president