Dear Members,
The Faculty Association gave the Employer notice to bargain in late June. We are currently trying to schedule dates to begin bargaining a new Collective Agreement for the Tenured and Tenure-Track Faculty (TTTF) and a first CA for the newly certified Academic Associates.
We are also awaiting the decision of the Ontario Labour Relations Board regarding the consolidation (merger) of the bargaining units.
TTTFs and Teaching Faculty (TF) will have received a notice of salary increases for July 1, 2018. For TFs, this should have been a complete breakdown of their increases. For TTTFs, some parts (e.g., Across-The-Board increases) are subject to the upcoming negotiations, and we expect them to be applied retroactively as in the past. Academic Associates are currently covered by a statutory freeze until ratification of a new agreement, meaning there should be no changes to the terms and conditions of your contract without the agreement of the union – please let us know immediately if you have been asked to sign a contract that reduces any terms and conditions of your employment, or if your contract has not been continued.
With that in mind, as well as the other priorities identified in the bargaining mandate, we do hope to be able to proceed quickly with bargaining. The first task will be getting the Employer to the bargaining table soon. At this point they are claiming a variety of reasons why they cannot do so. While we appreciate that people are busy, they do need to understand and better illustrate that faculty at UOIT are a high priority.
I hope we can count on all of you for your support in bargaining and in getting them to the table soon.
Sincerely,
Mike
—
Mikael Eklund
Chief Negotiating Officer