On Monday, AASUA’s negotiating team received a revised offer to settle the next collective agreement from the Employer’s negotiating team. As it was identified as the Employer’s final offer, after review and deliberation, your negotiating team made the hard choice to accept the Employer’s last proposals on all the items remaining at issue between the parties. As a result, the negotiating team has agreed that a tentative agreement between the parties (subject to the membership’s ratification) has been concluded. The negotiating team updated the AASUA Executive on this development, and the Executive agreed to put the tentative agreement to a vote of the membership for ratification.
While the tentative agreement does not achieve all our bargaining goals, your negotiating team noted significant movement from the Employer, with their revised offer providing sufficient funding to maintain eligible members’ existing health and dental benefit entitlements for the term of the next agreement.
However, the tentative agreement fails to achieve other key AASUA mandate priorities, including salary increases beyond the Government of Alberta imposed four years of 3% Across-the-Board (ATB) pattern for most public sector employees. Further, the tentative agreement does not improve job security for Academic Teaching Staff (ATS) on short-term contracts, and does not continue funding the Academic Supplementary Retirement Plan, resulting in the ASRP’s imminent demise. It also does not extend health and dental benefits to those who work substantial part-time hours.
Putting this tentative agreement before the members does not mean these goals are no longer important. Rather, after 18 months of bargaining, despite repeated efforts, your negotiating team has seen only steadfast refusal from the Employer on these issues and now believes they have achieved all that they are currently able to accomplish at the table with the Employer.
Now, the decision whether to accept the tentative agreement is up to the AASUA’s membership.
In this update:
In accordance with AASUA’s Bylaws, AASUA will soon hold an Information-only General Meeting to present the tentative agreement to members and answer questions. The upcoming bargaining town halls scheduled for Oct. 2 and Oct. 3 will be cancelled as AASUA finalizes the tentative agreement in its entirety for presentation to the membership.
The Information-only General Meeting will take place within the coming weeks, and registration will open for members once the meeting is scheduled. A ratification vote by the membership on the tentative agreement will be held shortly after the Information-only General Meeting.
In the meantime, AASUA Constituency Directors are scheduling their own meetings where members will hear a bargaining update and have the opportunity to ask questions about the tentative agreement. Please stay tuned for an invitation from your Constituency Director about your constituency’s upcoming meeting (some of you may have already received an invite to a previously-scheduled meeting).
The Employer accepted AASUA’s most recent Academic Benefits Plan counterproposal to increase the Employer’s per-capita funding by 3% in each of the remaining years of the term of the next collective agreement, as well as providing an immediate increase of $2000/member this year. This will result in an increase in funding for benefit-eligible members (that receive Professional Expense Reimbursement [PER]) from $14,473/member in 2024-25 to $17,010/member in 2025-26. [For members that don’t receive PER, their per-capita funding will increase in the same manner, less the $1400 PER allocation/member]. In subsequent years, the 3% increase will build on the $17,010. This formula will ensure the benefits plan is adequately funded for the life of the next Collective Agreement, guaranteeing full benefit entitlements are preserved for members over the coming years.
Despite this critical re-establishment of benefit plan funding, the tentative agreement does not include these key AASUA member priorities:
- Salary improvements beyond Across-the-Board salary increases of four years of 3% (retroactive to July 1, 2024), which is the mandated ceiling imposed by the Government of Alberta on most public sector employees. This result neither offsets the real wage losses caused by inflation seen by our members over the last few years, nor does it allow the University to regain competitiveness with respect to the average faculty salaries seen nationally. The Employer unwaveringly refused to consider additional steps to grids, or equitable and meaningful market adjustment proposals for our members.
- Conversion rights for Academic Teaching Staff on Term appointments to more secure T12 appointments (which may eventually lead to Career appointments). While the Employer retabled an earlier proposal for eventual conversion rights for ATS members with TR appointments to Career status appointments that could include an inactive period each year of up to four months, the AASUA bargaining team rejected the offer, preferring status quo until the next round of bargaining. The team made the decision to do so given the high probability that the Employer would abuse such a provision going forward – if agreed to – leading those on 8-month contracts into a perpetual position of disadvantage as inactive periods become entrenched in their Career Status appointments.
- A stable and consistent Academic Supplementary Retirement Plan (ASRP). With the acceptance of the Employer’s offer, this ongoing, supplementary benefit for those members whose earnings exceed the maximum pensionable earnings for UAPP will be eliminated within the next year, although any benefits accrued to-date will be retained.
- Extend the existing health and dental benefits to AASUA members working substantial part-time hours.
Other tentative agreements include:
- On ratification, the elimination of the lower of the two-tiered pay scale for Academic Teaching Staff. Introduced on June 30, 2024, any newly-hired ATS-member has a lower salary ceiling at the Associate and Full Lecturer ranks when compared to an ATS member hired prior to that date. This disparity will be eliminated in the next collective agreement.
- Parental leave top-ups to be extended to eligible Temporary Librarian, Administrative, and Professional Officers (TLAPO), Trust/Research Academic Staff (TRAS) [subject to the terms of the applicable funding source], and ATS members.
- The extension of the Professional Expense Reimbursement benefit to certain TRAS members.
- The transition to a biennial performance review cycle for eligible (permanent status) Faculty, Faculty Service Officers, ATS, Librarians, and Administrative Professional Officers.
- Professional leaves for ATS with Career status appointments
- Joint Working Groups to examine and report on:
- Workload issues for each Constituency Group
- Patentable Intellectual Property (Article 11 & Patent Policy)
- Promotions through the ranks for Librarians
For the purposes of informing the next round of collective bargaining in 2028.
AASUA is in the process of formalizing the tentative agreement in its entirety for presentation to the membership at the upcoming Information-only General Meeting (date and time to be scheduled and announced).
As the AASUA’s and the Board of Governors’ teams have now reached a tentative agreement, AASUA must withdraw our strike vote application at the Alberta Labour Relations Board so that the membership can vote on the tentative agreement. As a result, the strike vote scheduled for October 6–9 has been cancelled.
Your negotiating team is extremely appreciative of your patience during this recent and rapidly changing late stage of bargaining. On September 19, your team declared impasse after the Employer tabled vague “TBD” language with respect to the funding of our benefits plan. Since that time, we believe the membership’s quick mobilization towards a strike vote and your ongoing support for the bargaining team directly led to the Employer’s reconsideration of their former position on our benefits plan.
We know that members are anxious to assess for themselves how the tentative agreement succeeds and fails to meet the membership’s democratically-developed bargaining-priorities, and to weigh in on the outcome.
We will provide you with the tentative agreement as soon as it is finalized, for your review and consideration before you vote.
In solidarity,
Gordon Swaters
AASUA President