Faculty strike at Concordia enters second week

Last Thursday, 10 AUFA members joined in solidarity with striking faculty at Concordia University Edmonton (CUE), walking the picket line in blisteringly cold January weather. The CUE strike is unprecedented. It is the first post-secondary strike in Alberta’s history. This post provides some background and analysis on the strike, as well as identifying the implications for AUFA.

Background

Concordia is a private university located in Edmonton that focuses on providing high-quality, mostly undergraduate degrees. The university’s faculty association is small (~82 members) and includes faculty members, professional librarians, laboratory instructors, and field placement coordinators. Concordia also employs a large number of temporary sessional instructors who are not members of Concordia University Edmonton Faculty Association (CUEFA).

Concordia’s financial situation is strong. Its 2020/21 expenditures were $35.3 million and it generated an operating surplus of $11.5m (~33%). The previous year, its operating surplus was $7.8m. Most of the surpluses come from tuition revenue (enrollment and tuition are increasing). Overall, tuition and fees account for 64.3% of total university revenue.

At the end of fiscal year 2020/21, Concordia had $39.8m in the bank. Rather than reinvest some of that surplus to compensate chronically underpaid teaching staff, the university instead used $1.75m to buy the historic Magrath Mansion on Ada Blvd. University administration insists that the residence will serve as a campus, but it’s presently zoned as residential so it can’t be used that way. The building is also more than a century old, is architecturally unsuited for university use, and requires significant and ongoing financial resources just to maintain it.

Bargaining to Date

CUEFA has been bargaining for a new contract since early 2021. Concordia faculty have among the lowest salaries in Canada, and labour under among the heaviest teaching loads in Canada (~8 courses per year). Not surprisingly, then, fair and reasonable salary improvements, as well as a workload reduction remain top issues at bargaining.

The nexus between salary and workload is especially salient, since Concordia’s administration is demanding ever greater faculty research output in an effort to enhance the institution’s research reputation. Concordia’s goal is fine. But it can’t do that on the backs of relatively low-waged and overworked staff. The parties are also negotiating intellectual property provisions.

During bargaining, Concordia proposed new disciplinary language which appears to mean that university administrators could terminate faculty without just cause. No other faculty association in Canada has disciplinary language that gives the employer so much latitude, in part because workers know an employer will abuse such discretion. It’s also just plain unfair, and violates basic principles of any collegial workplace.

In November, CUEFA took a strike vote. Ninety-five percent of members voted and 90% of them voted in favour of a strike. Subsequently, the employer and the union were able to make some progress on faculty workload issues (but not for other members).

Concordia offered to withdraw its disciplinary proposal if CUEFA agrees to sign over its members’ intellectual property to the employer. This proposal suggests Concordia’s disciplinary language is simply an effort by the employer to generate some bargaining leverage. After the first week of the strike, Concordia withdrew this just-cause proposal.

One social media report suggests Concordia was offering:

2021/22: 0%

2022/23: 0%

2023/24: 0.5%

2024/25: 1.0%

2025/26: 1.5%

For context, inflation in Alberta in 2021 was 4.3%. Concordia declined CUEFA offers in mediation and the faculty began their strike on January 4.

Concordia not only has the capacity to pay its faculty a fair wage, but, as a private institution, it is not subject to the provincial government’s secret bargaining mandates that limit what other PSEs can agree to. Essentially, this strike is entirely the making of Concordia’s Board and president. This means that Concordia can resolve this strike at any time by returning to the bargaining table (which they have so far refused to do).

Strike Impact

One way to think about a strike is as an effort by workers to attach costs to an employer’s behaviour. If the costs are high enough, the employer will behave differently and, presumably, a mutually acceptable collective agreement will be negotiated. The CUEFA strike has (so far) generated the following costs for Concordia:

• Operational: All classes are cancelled, including those taught by non-CUEFA employees (see below).

• Financial: Concordia has deferred tuition deadlines and is at risk of losing an entire semester of tuition.

• Reputational: Concordia has received negative media stories and social media coverage that contrast its decision to buy a literal mansion with its decision to grind faculty wages. This bad press jeopardizes Concordia’s reputation as a good employer and a reliable provider of education.

It is unclear what Concordia’s strategy is beyond trying to starve out to CUEFA. University administrators may be hoping that CUEFA will call off its strike before Concordia loses the semester and a large portion of its revenue. It may also be that Concordia does not have much of a strategy; it was reportedly taken aback that faculty were prepared to strike.

Impact on Sessionals

A largely unreported aspect of the strike is that Concordia’s decision to cancel classes has left its large complement of non-unionized sessional instructors in the lurch. These instructors, highly qualified and dedicated all, are not being allowed to teach and are not being paid even though they are not on strike.

The sessionals have few options and none of them are good. They may be able to sue for wrongful dismissal, but that is expensive, slow, and likely means they will never work at Concordia again. Alternately, they can sit tight and hope for a quick resolution. Either way, they’re facing deeply unfair financial hardships.

Settlement Prospects

Bargaining resumed after the first week of the strike. Concordia reportedly dropped its demand to fire faculty for no reason at all on the first day of renewed bargaining. Issues remaining in dispute are workloads for CUEFA members other than professors, intellectual property, and salaries.

CUEFA is reporting that its wage demands could be met with approximately $350,000 in additional funding (or, if you prefer, approximately 0.18 mansions). Concordia forcing a strike and risking its reputation over 3% of its annual surplus demonstrates astoundingly bad judgment.

One impediment to a settlement may be government pressure on Concordia to not settle for more than the government’s PSE mandate (which presently appears to mirror the AUPE government settlement). Ego may also be an issue: such a settlement would be a big step-down by Concordia bosses, including its president (and mansion enthusiast) Tim Loreman.

Implications for AUFA

The CUEFA strike has a couple of lessons for AUFA:

• Pressure works, but incrementally. CUEFA made workload gains only after it took a strike vote. CUEFA forced Concordia to drop its discipline language only after striking. Essentially, each time CUEFA has upped the pressure, the employer has moved.

• You can’t bluff. You have to be prepared to carry out your threats. If you won’t strike, you are stuck accepting whatever rollbacks the employer wants to impose. And the employer won’t take you seriously next time if you get caught bluffing.

• Effective strikes are possible, even in a pandemic. CUEFA has fully disrupted Concordia’s operations and choked off Concordia’s main source of revenue.

• Solidarity helps. Flying and digital pickets help boost strikers’ morale and amplify their message. This intensifies the pressure on the employer to bargain. CUEFA has seen strong support from other unions, faculty associations, and students.

• Pressure takes time to work. It took a week of financial and reputational pressure for Concordia to drop its disciplinary demands. Having access to the CAUT strike fund allows CUEFA members the time to let the pressure work.

• Employers often seek outcomes that they don’t objectively need. Concordia is flush with cash and doesn’t need wage freezes. So why did it trigger a strike? Common reasons include the employer wanting to knock workers down a peg, undermine growing worker power, appease someone powerful, and to protect bosses’ egos. Employers can also blunder into strikes by under-estimating worker resolve.

• Employers don’t care about students (or other workers). Concordia’s decision to force a strike is harming students and sessionals. These predictable spillover effects are an unfortunate reality of work stoppages. It isn’t up to workers to prevent these harms—only the employer can do that.

• Nonetheless, students and workers are supportive of strikes. Most have more in common with the strikers than they do with the bosses. They understand the need for fair wages and working conditions. And they understand that striking is how workers achieve those goals.

AUFA will again be joining CUEFA on the picket line on Thursday afternoon, from 1-3. If you’d like to come out, please contact me at barnetso@athabascau.ca .

You can also send CUE president and mansion enthusiast Tim Loreman and email using this CAUT mailer. So far, Loreman has received nearly 1200 emails.

Bob Barnetson, Chair

Job Action Committee

Picketing and the Virtual Strike

AUFA’s Job Action Committee (JAC) is at present tabulating the results of its consultation on striking, strike activities, and strike pay. The short version is there was overwhelming member support, and the consultation generated many excellent ideas, some of which we are adopting. There will be a full report-back in early January. A townhall meeting and ratification vote on a slightly revised set of recommendations will take place in later January.

During the consultation, members asked a variety of questions. Some questions are answered in our Work Stoppage FAQ while others will be answered in the new year via a blog post. This post explains how JAC will organize picketing given AUFA’s distributed membership and the effective closure (temporarily or permanently) of all campuses.

The Logic of Strikes and Picketing

Workers withdraw their labour (i.e., strike) in order to apply financial pressure on their employer to come to a mutually acceptable agreement. Strikes generate pressure primarily by disrupting the employer’s ability to deliver service to their customers and, thus, make money.

JAC has completed a preliminary analysis of the impact of AUFA members ceasing their teaching, internal service, and professional duties. This analysis suggests a strike will significantly degrade AU’s ability to operate and, indeed, function at all. This, in turn, will cause students to defer new registrations, thereby imperilling 50% of AU’s revenue.

Further, any work stoppage will negatively affect AU’s reputation as a reliable and responsible provider of post-secondary education. The risk for the employer (that escalates over time) is that students may decide to take their tuition money elsewhere.

Workers picket to discourage customers, suppliers, and replacement workers from entering the worksite. Essentially, picketing is designed to intensify the operational disruption of a strike as well as attach reputational costs to the employer’s unwillingness to bargain. Intensifying the pressure on the employer is designed to shorten the length of the strike. Picketing often entails walking the sidewalk or blocking a plant gate, carrying signs, handing out leaflets, and the like.

Traditional picketing makes little sense at AU. Effectively, no work occurs on AU’s campuses and no students ever visit them. Further, many AUFA members do not live in close proximity to an AU location. Consequently, JAC is considering two main alternatives to the traditional picket: flying pickets and digital pickets.

Flying Pickets

A flying picket is essentially an in-person picket that moves around (instead of a static picket outside a workplace) and operates for relatively short periods of time. It can, but does not always, entail carrying picket sign. Some examples of flying pickets include:

• Campus visits: Going to a campus that sends many visiting students to AU, having one-on-one conversations with students about our issues and concerns, and asking them not to enroll at AU until the strike is over will apply reputational and financial pressure to AU.

• High-Traffic Pickets: Holding a traditional picket at a high-traffic location (e.g., important intersection at rush hour) to raise public awareness about AU’s behaviour.

• Door Knocking: Informing voters of how the government’s mandate (which presumably shapes AU’s financial offer) is affecting us may generate government pressure on AU to settle (e.g., by agreeing to non-financial improvements).

• Secondary Pickets: Picketing organizations with close ties to the AU or the government may generate pressure from these organizations on AU to settle.

• Pressuring Leaders: Picketing or leafleting at businesses operated by AU Board members or in the neighbourhoods of AU Board members and executives may pressure them to seek a settlement.

Flying pickets address the absence of a meaningful workplace to picket. At present, JAC plans to hold regular flying pickets in Athabasca, Calgary, and Edmonton. These locations are home to approximately 75% of our members and are where AUFA has the deepest bases of local organizers. Flying pickets are possible in other locations if there are enough AUFA members and local organizers available.

Digital Pickets

Approximately 25% of members do not live in or near Athabasca, Edmonton, or Calgary. To accommodate these members, as well as those members for whom flying pickets are not viable, JAC is also developing digital picketing strategies. A digital picket is an activity designed to apply pressure to AU to settle that can be performed regardless of one’s physical location. Some examples of digital picketing include:

• Shareables: The posting of shareables (e.g., memes, infographics) on social media applies reputational pressure to AU, particularly when coupled with a specific time-bound ask (e.g., during a strike, don’t register for AU courses or refrain from donating to AU). Shareables also allow non-AUFA members to amplify these tactics. Social media accounts, including anonymous ones, are readily available and easy to operate.

• Outreach: Targeted contacts (e.g., email, phone calls, letters) can be operationally disruptive as well as apply financial and reputational pressure to AU. Targets can include AU Board members, executives, donors, students, MLAs, and allied organizations.

• Education: Digitally delivered “teach-ins” are a way for AUFA members to interact with members of the public (as well as other AUFA members), build an understanding of why we’re striking, and recruit allies.

• Creative activities: Creative activities, whether self-directed or structured (e.g., limerick, haiku, photo, and song contests), offer an important way to build morale, engage with one another, and apply reputational pressure on AU.

In addition to flying and digital pickets, JAC and the AUFA executive will be working on other pressure tactics, including transfer-credit boycotts, advertising, and media coverage. Ideally, AUFA would like to have a suite of strike activities available that allow all members to meaningfully participate in winning better working conditions.

We hope this brief discussion of AUFA’s approach to strike activities is helpful. If you have any questions, you can contact me at barnetso@athabascau.ca.

Bob Barnetson, Chair

AUFA Job Action Committee

Your Turn

JAC would like to hear your feedback on the approaches outlined above as well as any ideas you have.

Strike prep: 500 days without a contract

Today marks the 500th day that AUFA members have been working without a contract. Indeed, we don’t even have a full opening offer from the employer yet. AU’s bad-faith bargaining is making it impossible to negotiate a new contract. Since the employer won’t bargain, AUFA’s Job Action Committee (JAC) has begun preparing for what seems like an inevitable strike.

A few weeks ago, JAC asked members to suggest tactics designed to pressure AU to agree to an acceptable contract settlement. A credible strike threat is necessary to get a fair deal at the table, and AUFA members should have some input into the tactics AUFA employs.

This blog outlines a high level overview of some of those member-suggested tactics. It also answers some of the questions AUFA members asked JAC. Over the coming weeks, JAC will discuss these tactics in some detail, as well as strategize when and how best to use them.

Suggested Tactics

The suggested tactics fall into three broad categories:

• Operational: When AUFA members withdraw their labour, AU processes that rely on AUFA members’ work will slow or stop.

• Financial: A strike (or its prospect) disincentivizes students to enrol in courses, thereby reducing institutional revenue.

• Reputational: Strike-related communications (before or during a strike) can do long-term damage to AU’s reputation as a good place to work or go to school.

AUFA members suggested four main operational tactics:

• a work slowdown or working to rule,

• refusing certain or additional work assignments,

• signing a “no scabbing” pledge with AUPE and CUPE, or

• fully withdrawing labour (i.e., a strike).

AUFA members suggested a number of ways to apply reputational pressure to AU. In these examples, please read “bosses” as meaning members of both AU’s executive and AU’s Board of Governors.

• contacting bosses and/or politicians (in person and electronically),

• bringing in a mediator to bargaining sessions (creating an observer effect),

• holding a non-confidence vote in AU’s bargaining team or the Board,

• conducting a media campaign highlighting AU’s bargaining position and behaviour,

• organizing information pickets (e.g., pickets, car convoys, leafleting) that target bosses and MLAs’ homes, offices, and businesses, as well as meetings of the Board of Governors,

• publicizing data related to bosses’ salaries and administrative bloat,

• informing and/or pressurizing the new president about how AU’s bargaining is affecting staff relations, and

• organizing a national campaign of censure over AU’s bargaining approach.

AUFA members suggested a number of ways to apply financial pressure to AU, including:

• organizing a student boycott for the duration of any work stoppage, and

• asking colleagues to refrain from recommending that students attend AU or accept transfer credits from AU until bargaining is settled.

A small number of members noted that a work stoppage would lead to students experiencing delays in completing their education. Other members identified the risk that reputational harm might persist after a new contract is settled.

Questions

Members asked a number of questions. JAC has endeavoured to answer them below.

Q: Will AU save money during a work stoppage?

A: AU’s expenses during a work stoppage will decline because it will not pay AUFA salaries or benefits. This means that, for a strike to be effective, the financial impact of a work stoppage on AU’s revenue must be sufficiently large to offset these savings.

Q: Will we lose our jobs if we strike?

A: Unlikely. Alberta’s Labour Relations Code bars employers from terminating staff for participating in a strike. Article 12 of our collective agreement does allow AU to lay off staff (with notice), but AU would only be permitted to do this if a) “the employer permanently discontinues some or all of its operations, or no longer employs employees to do certain work” or b) AU is able to show financial exigency.

It is of course possible that AU will trigger a reduction in tuition revenue by forcing AUFA to strike. But AU normally manages enrollment fluctuations by reducing CUPE members’ teaching loads, so the risk of layoffs resulting from a strike is very low.

Q: How will I afford to live during a work stoppage?

A: A few weeks ago, AUFA provided information about strike pay and benefits as well as strategies AUFA members may wish to use to prepare for the financial impact of a work stoppage.

Q: Will the reputational harm cause long-term damage to AU?

A: Maybe. AU’s approach to labour relations over the past few years (e.g., repeatedly seeking unnecessary rollbacks to our collective agreement, adopting an unnecessarily antagonistic approach to labour relations, trying to bust the union) has made AU a less attractive place to work. Forcing AUFA to strike would only reinforce this view. A strike would also make AU look like an unreliable provider of education. AU could avoid these outcomes by changing its behaviour, both at the bargaining table and in the workplace more generally.

Q: Why does AUFA use Lego graphics in its blog posts and information updates?

A: Lego is a low-cost way to create custom graphics that convey the gist of AUFA blog posts and information updates in a quick and accessible way. These graphics drive up readership of the blog in a way that clip-art posts or posts with no graphics do not. The graphics also attach costs to bad behaviour by AU’s executive (e.g., by lampooning them) which, over time, appears to reduce their willingness to continue behaving badly.

Q: What is the status of the unfair labour practice complaint AUFA filed?

A: AU has delayed the hearing of the unfair labour practice complaint (as well as AUFA’s application for an ESA exemption) by providing few dates when AU is available to attend Labour Board meetings and hearings as well as by continually asking AUFA for additional information.

Q: Why is AUFA talking about a strike while bargaining is still underway?

A: Planning a successful strike takes time, so we need to start now. Members also need time to prepare. Preparing publicly to strike gives AU time to recognize that the threat of a strike is real, to consider whether it wants to alter its behaviour to avoid one and, instead, to negotiate a new contract (which is the ultimate goal).

Q: Is it common to wait until the end of bargaining to negotiate wages?

A: Sometimes parties choose to negotiate language before tackling monetary issues (e.g., AU and AUPE Local 69 are doing this). This decision is often justified as being a way to gain momentum at the table before tackling harder issues like wages.

It is worth noting, however, that the supposed dichotomy between monetary and non-monetary issues is a false one. Almost every piece of contract language has monetary implications.

One of the consequences of settling language issues before talking money is that doing so reduces the number of bargaining chips available to AUFA (and AU, for that matter) to structure a final deal that is acceptable to both sides.

Given AU’s track record and its lawyer’s assertion that AU’s full proposal is so bad that AU expects AUFA to strike, AUFA’s bargaining team thinks it is advisable to see the entirety of AU’s opening proposal before agreeing on any changes.

Q: Why is AUFA focused on complaining about AU not providing a full offer instead of telling us about wins at the table?

A: AUFA’s bargaining team provides updates after each set of bargaining dates. There have been no wins at the table to report. This is, in part, because AU’s partial opening offer contains a large number of rollbacks for which there is no justification.

Further hampering bargaining is AU’s unwillingness to present a full opening offer (see question above). It is unfortunate that AUFA has to pressure AU into doing the bare legal minimum required to engage in good-faith bargaining. But that’s a function of how AU is approaching bargaining.

Bob Barnetson, Chair

AUFA Job Action Committee