AU wants to grind AUFA members’ research and study leaves

On January 21, after 10 months of frustratingly difficult bargaining, AU finally provided the second half of its opening offer to AUFA. This blog examines AU’s proposed rollbacks to our research and study leave (RSL) rights, colloquially called sabbaticals, that are set out in Article 15 of the collective agreement.

Cessation of Professional RSL

AU is proposing to eliminate entirely professionals’ RSL entitlements. Under this proposal, professional staff members with current RSL entitlements would retain their right to take an RSL(s), but only to the point of exhausting any existing leave entitlements. All current and future professionals would be barred from earning further RSL leave entitlements.

Presently, professionals earn two months of RSL leave per year of service and receive 80% of their regular salary while on RSL (as compared to 100% for academics). It’s worthwhile noting here that professionals can, in some instances, receive 100% of their salary, but only if they take a truncated RSL.

AU’s proposed elimination of RSL for professionals is short-sighted, and has serious negative implications, both for individual professionals and for AU more broadly.

For professionals, being able to spend one year in every seven doing some form of professional development, even at 80% of salary, is a benefit worth about 11.4% of a professional’s compensation. It also means professionals can maintain or improve their skills and credentials, and pursue their professional research agendas. All of these benefits lead to increased engagement, productivity, and fulfillment at their AU jobs. Plainly, that’s all to the good for AU as a whole and for individual professionals alike.

In theory, of course, eliminating professional RSL saves AU the cost of having to hire a replacement for professionals who go on RSL. In practice, however, AU rarely hires replacement staff for professionals on RSL, and their work is usually absorbed by other staff or deferred until they return. Ironically, eliminating professional RSLs actually entails higher salary costs for AU (i.e., AU no longer saves the 20% salary reduction professionals experience on RSL). AU also incurs costs associated with skills erosion, declining morale, and offering less attractive jobs.

AU has also proposed eliminating RSL for long-serving term employees. And although term employees rarely take RSL, AU has nevertheless pushed this rollback even further, proposing that term staff who are converted to permanent positions would not have their prior service counted towards their RSL leave entitlements.

Less pay, more rules for academic RSL

Under AU’s proposal, academic staff would retain their eligibility to earn RSL entitlements. But here too, rollbacks appear to be the order of the day. AU has proposed reducing the salary provided to academics from 100% of pay to 90%. Bizarrely, AU’s bargaining team characterized this rollback as a way to incentivize academics to secure more research grants.

This is preposterous.

For one thing, research grants usually bar faculty from using grant money to subsidize their salaries. AUFA members ought properly be concerned that AU’s bargaining team appears to lack a basic understanding of how research grants work. For another, it’s unclear why AU imagines that cutting RSL salaries by 10% would ‘incentivize’ anyone to actually take an RSL. The more likely outcome is fewer RSLs (hey, wait a sec…) and a consequent reduction in academic research outputs, putting in jeopardy AU’s reputation as an institution of serious research.

The proposal features other negative implications, too. A reduction in salary during a RSL taken within the last 60 months of an academic’s career would also typically reduce that member’s pension entitlement. This is because our pension entitlement is based, in part, on the value of our earned salary during our “best” 60 continuous months of earnings.

Moreover, AU has proposed multiple new rules that make RSLs less flexible and more onerous, including:

  • Longer gaps between RSLs: AU proposes academic staff would not normally be eligible to take a RSL until after 6 years of service, during which no RSL was taken. The present rule is 3 years. But, oddly, AU proposes giving itself discretion to grant early RSLs after 3 years of service.

  • Limited leave accrual: AU proposes allowing a maximum of 12 months of leave entitlements to be accrued. At present, there is no cap on the amount of leave that can be accrued, although RSLs are limited to 12 months in duration. Under the present system, any unexpended RSL leave eligibility can be used in a future RSL. Under AU’s proposal, if an RSL application is denied, a member with 12 months of leave entitlements would not accrue additional RSL entitlements while waiting to apply again.

  • Fixed duration: AU proposes all RSLs will be 12 months in duration. At present, members can opt for shorter RSLs. It is unclear how a fixed RSL length will be reconciled with the provisions for Special Research and Study Leave (i.e., extending an RSL by using unexpended vacation entitlements).

  • Reporting: AU proposes staff will be required to present their RSL outcomes to the university community within 3 months of returning from RSL. It is unclear what this reporting entails or its intended purpose.

  • Return to service: AU proposes AUFA members who take a RSL would be expected to return to their jobs for a period of time equal in duration to their RSL leave. Member who do not complete this return service requirement (e.g., they quit or die) would be required to repay the value of their salary proportionate to the unreturned period of service. This proposal would significantly affect members who have sequenced their RSLs to “retire out” (i.e., take an RSL, complete research projects, and then retire). Requiring a period of return service ignores that RSL entitlements are an earned form of compensation and should not be retroactively clawed back. For example, if we get new glasses and then quit a month later, AU doesn’t get to claw back the cost of the glasses.

  • Relocation fund: AU proposes applications for funding to cover the costs of temporary relocation during an RSL would remain adjudicated by a committee, but the membership of that committee would be entirely determined by the employer. The committee’s present membership is determined by the collective agreement.

Analysis

Overall, AU’s proposal entails a substantial rollback of AUFA members’ rights around RSLs. These rollbacks do not appear to solve any specific organizational problem, and they continue AU’s divisive and patently unproductive approach of targeting AUFA’s professional members for disproportionate rollbacks, including worse layoff and recall provisions, professional freedom, and professional appeals.

Picket Organizers Needed

The Job Action Committee is beginning the task of staffing three picket organizing committees (in Athabasca, Calgary and Edmonton) in the event that a strike is necessary. If you are interested in being involved in organizing and leading flying pickets in these locations, please contact Bob Barnetson (barnetso@athabascau.ca).

Bob Barnetson, Chair

Job Action Committee

Your Turn

AUFA’s bargaining team would like feedback from the membership about how to respond to these proposed rollbacks by the employer.

Michael Voaklanderbargaining, agreement, Solidarity, research and study leave, rollbacks