Analysis of Mount Royal University Settlement

The Mount Royal Faculty Association recently ratified a new contract with MRU’s Board of Governors. This blog post provides an overview of the MRU settlement. Overall, this settlement follows the autumn AUPE government services 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:

Jul 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, MRU 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 MRFA 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 MRFA salaries over time. For example, year-over-year inflation as of January 2022 was 5.1%. The MRFA settlement matches the COLA agreed to by AUPE for its government services bargaining unit. This appears to be the current secret financial mandate issued the government.

Extra Compensation

In addition to the COLA settlement, MRFA was able to negotiate some additional changes that have clear monetary implications.

  • Contract (i.e., short-term sessional) faculty saw changes to the structure of their grid effective May 2022. This change eliminates two categories (based on credentials). Contract faculty whose category was eliminated will “bump up” to a higher category and receive a 3.7% increase per instructional hour. All other contract faculty see a 0.7% increase. These increases are on top of the general COLA settlement.

  • MRFA made some gains at the table on benefits. Costs of the dental plan, which had been shared on a 50/50 (employer/worker) basis, and costs of the extended health plan, which had been shared on a 75/25 basis, now both move to 80/20 employer-worker split.

    This affects 93% of full-time faculty and 45% of contract faculty. The employer has also opened a window for more faculty to opt-in to the benefits plan.

It is difficult to ascertain the exact value of the changes in terms of overall faculty compensation due to (1) the variable number of contract faculty and (2) possible changes to benefit plan participation rates. MRFA suggests that overall impact is somewhere between 0.8% and 1.1%. That is top say, these gains amount to about an additional 1% of compensation on top of COLA.

Language

There were a significant number of language changes (about 57). Most of these have little relevance to AUFA members. You can read the full ratification package online here if you like.

Some changes that are of note include:

  • There are amendments to Articles 13.1.4 and 13.3.2 recognizing Indigenous knowledge in determining placements of new hires on the salary grid.

  • There is an entirely new Article (29) addressing Reconciliation goals.

  • Changes to Article 17 increase the number of full-year and part-year sabbatical leaves available to faculty. Unused sabbaticals roll-over to future years.

  • A joint workload committee has been struck to consider workload for faculty as well as promotion and tenure for less secure faculty. The outcome of this committee is not binding on either party, and as such, can be characterized as the mediator kicking these concerns down the road to a future round of bargaining in order to get a deal.

Analysis

The MRFA agreement provides a cost-of-living increase of between 2.75% and 3.25%. This mirrors the AUPE government deal (and the government mandate). This is the same deal that AU offered AUFA on Monday.

Additional compensation, in the form of benefit improvements and changes to the grids of precarious faculty, adds about an additional 1.0% of value. This additional compensation brings the MRFA agreement into the range of the United Nurses of Alberta settlement. It also broadly matches the Concordia University of Edmonton Faculty Association (CUEFA) settlement negotiated following its January strike.

MRFA also appears to have achieved some language improvements (as did CUEFA). Notably, the MRFA deal does not appear to contain any of the massive language rollbacks that AU is trying to push on AUFA members. These language improvements likely reflect that, in order to get MRFA to accept the government’s lousy wage-mandate, MRU had to agree to some of MRFA’s other proposals.

Jason Foster, Chair

AUFA Bargaining Team

Bob Barnetson, Chair

AUFA Job Action Committee

Tamara Jacksonaufa strike, Solidarity, solidarity, work stoppage, post-secondary, agreement