June 17th bargaining update
Today at bargaining, UBC came back with counters to some of our proposals and a willingness to sign off on four proposals.
We signed off on:
In previous bargaining dates, we went back and forth with UBC regarding which leaves should be made available to exam invigilators at the Centre for Accessibility. We have now agreed that these members will be able to access all the leaves listed in Article B6 of the Collective Agreement, with the exception of leave for academic conferences and comprehensive exams. Both of these leaves do not appear to be as relevant for exam invigilators because their work is scheduled on a weekly basis.
Union Time Off for Component 2 Chair
We signed off on union time off for the Component 2 Chair for the equivalent of 12 days per year at the step 12 wage rate annually. This pays the Component 2 Chair for the time they take out of their workdays to serve the Component 1 membership and allows this work to continue sustainably.
In previous bargaining dates, we have fought for increased pay equity for undergraduate teaching assistants, particularly UTA 2 workers who are paid the lowest of all teaching assistants. Today, we signed off on a proposal to eliminate the UTA 2 position, collapsing both UTA 1 and UTA 2 into a single “UTA” position at the higher UTA 1 rate.
Education 3: AI and Technological Change
We signed off on a letter stating that a committee will be formed to discuss the implementation of AI in our workplaces.
We continue negotiations on the following issues:
GAA Wages:
We had some discussion with UBC about GAA wages and possible outcomes. We will continue to work towards a fair agreement for GAAs. We hope to be able to share a more detailed update after the next bargaining session.
Monetary 2: Health and Wellbeing
The University told us that our proposal on health care was impossible within the PSEC bargaining framework. We disagree. We will present a comprehensive breakdown of how it is possible at the next bargaining session.
Education 2: Workload and Class Sizes
After we re-emphasized this issue in our response to the University on Monday, UBC proposed a Letter of Agreement that would enable individual members to raise workload concerns through the Labour Management Committee through the Union, after they had already raised it with their direct supervisor. UBC is trying to solve a systemic funding issue with individualized complaints.
We know that increasing workloads and class sizes as well as reductions in TA hours are impacting many departments across UBC. The University’s response today does not address our concerns. Most notably,it does not provide any enforcement mechanism to ensure that the quality of education at the University is not degraded in the future. We plan to respond to the University in our next bargaining session on July 3.
Monetary 4: Ending Minimum Funding Clawback
In response to our ending minimum funding clawback proposal, UBC proposed a “Letter of Commitment” (i.e., not an enforceable piece of contract language). We don’t believe that this letter of commitment sufficiently protects CUPE 2278 members against funding clawbacks, and will respond to the University on July 3. When CUPE 2278 members get a union-negotiated wage increase or take on extra work so that they can afford the cost of living in Vancouver, they should not be met with decreases in other areas of their stipend.