Bargaining Bulletin September 11

Union Seeks More than $1 Billion in “Non-Monetary” Demands

This week, the College Employer Council (CEC) and CAAT-A Bargaining team resumed face-to-face bargaining.

Union Demands

The CAAT-A Bargaining team presented its non-monetary demands in July. Despite the non-monetary label, many demands would result in significant additional costs to the system, estimated to be approximately $1 Billion annually.

Yesterday, the CAAT-A Bargaining team tabled its monetary proposal at 4:30 pm, which will drastically increase this number. In addition, many of those proposed changes are complex and interrelated, and would represent fundamental changes to practices within the college system.

This week, the CEC responded to all the current Union proposals that we view as non-monetary. This included offering a rationale for demands we cannot accept, offering counter-proposals in areas of mutual interest, and accepting changes when we didn’t have any objections. Additionally, we’ve asked the CAAT-A bargaining team for their costing on both the non-monetary and monetary to help us better understand their position.

Flaherty Workload Taskforce Report

Recently, the Flaherty Workload Taskforce report was publicly released, and the raw survey data set was made available to the bargaining parties. As indicated in the Flaherty Workload Taskforce Report, there was insufficient time for the Workload Taskforce to fully analyze this research data set prior to the Chair issuing her report and recommendations (Flaherty Workload Taskforce page 46). It is our position that this raw survey data set includes valuable relevant information which can help us to better understand the nature of reported impacts to workload.  

Next Steps

The Flaherty Taskforce Report is a starting point for workload discussions at the bargaining table. Recommendations will be considered during this and future rounds of bargaining. The CEC looks forward to continuing to work with OPSEU SEFPO and the CAAT-A bargaining team to further review the raw data.

As we continue negotiations this month, a reminder that the Flaherty Workload Taskforce Report, all proposals and demands are published on the CEC website. Academic employees, management, students, and community members are encouraged to read both the CEC and Union proposals and get informed.