Dear Members,
I would like to provide a Bargaining Update to let you know the most recent news on the state of Collective Bargaining between AASUA and the Employer.
The December 6th Bargaining Update gave a high-level summary of the reasons AASUA rejected the Employer’s November 25th Offer of Settlement. The manner in which the Employer notified AASUA Members of this Offer was illegal. AASUA has filed an unfair labour practice complaint against the Board of Governors of the University of Alberta alleging violations of sections 60(3), section 148(1)(a) (i), and (148(1)(a)ii) of the Labour Relations Code. A formal hearing will be held at a later date. As soon as a decision is made by the Labour Relations Board, this decision will be communicated to AASUA Members.
In addition to rejecting the Employer’s November 25th offer, AASUA also notified the Employer that we wanted to complete the negotiation without delay of an Essential Services Agreement, required by the Labour Code should we be unable to achieve agreement at the bargaining table and subsequent steps such as demanding that formal mediation occur or subsequently calling for a strike vote to take place. AASUA also informed the Employer that we wanted to immediately begin negotiating a Work Stoppage Protocol Agreement, which would delineate strike protocols in the unfortunate event that job action becomes necessary. Finally, AASUA made it clear to the Employer that we wanted formal joint bargaining sessions to resume in the early new year so that AASUA could present its compensation proposals to the Employer.
On December 8th, the Employer notified AASUA that its November 25th offer was completely withdrawn and the Employer’s compensation proposals would revert back to its initial compensation proposals with the sole exception of demanding retroactivity on the across-the-board (ATB) 3% salary cut. The Employer did however agree to finalize the negotiation of the Essential Services Agreement and begin negotiation of the Work Stoppage Protocol Agreement. I am very pleased to report that as of December 15, 2021, AASUA and the Employer have come to agreement on an Essential Services Agreement. This Essential Services Agreement has now been filed with the Alberta Labour Relations Board.
On December 8th, the Employer also proposed two joint bargaining sessions in the new year with the first on January 27, 2022 and the second on February 17, 2022. AASUA is of the view that collective bargaining needs to resume much sooner than that. I am happy to report that three 3-hour joint bargaining sessions are now scheduled for January 14, January 21, and January 27, respectively, with the first two of these meetings dedicated to bargaining AASUA’s compensation proposals. The AASUA Bargaining Team is fervently of the hope that agreement can be achieved at the bargaining table. But if agreement cannot be reached at the bargaining table, it is our view that it is better to find that out sooner rather than later in Winter Term 2022.
In my opinion, the Employer’s complete withdrawal of its November 25th compensation proposals as even the grounds for further bargaining and its reversion to its original compensation proposals (save the retroactivity on the salary cuts) was not only petulant, it is wholly out of step with what is happening in collective bargaining at other post-secondaries in Alberta as a consequences of revised government mandates that were issued in October 2021. Many Members will be aware that the Government Services unit in the Alberta Union of Public Employees recently ratified, with a 96% in-favour ratification vote, a 4-year collective agreement that includes, among other items, no salary and/or benefits cuts or language rollbacks, and includes a modest 1.5% ATB in the 3rd year and a 1.25% – 1.75% ATB effectively in the 4th year. AASUA is aware that an “AUPE-like” offer has been made by the Employer at least four other post-secondary institutions in Alberta.
The compensation proposals AASUA will advance in January are based on sound logic, comparability with our U15 peer group, consistent with the oft-stated position of the Board on academic compensation, consistent with being a top-5 U15 institution, which the Board continually plasters all over its webpages, even consistent with the contents of the UCP-ordered McKinnon Report, and well within the ability of the Employer to pay. These proposals will make it perfectly clear that AASUA has put water into its wine so to speak in order to achieve a principled negotiated agreement.
I would like to share with you two pieces of data that animates AASUA’s bargaining proposals. Historically, academic salary compensation has been bargained at the University of Alberta with the objective of ensuring that average faculty salaries at the University of Alberta are in the top 25th percentile of the U15 medical/doctoral universities in Canada. The McKinnon Report suggested that, broadly speaking, public sector wages in Alberta should align with public sector salaries in, for example, Ontario and BC. It is, therefore, of obvious interest to ask how do average faculty salaries at the University of Alberta compare against average faculty salaries averaged over all the U15 universities in Ontario and BC.
In the figure immediately shown below, I present graphs of the average faculty salary based on all the U15 universities in Ontario and BC (the red line) and the average faculty salary at the University of Alberta (UA, the black line) over the ten-year period 2010-11 to 2020-21. (I have the data all the way back to 2001 but the last ten years is sufficient to make the point.) These graphs are produced directly from the Statistics Canada’s University and College Academic Staff System – Full Time Staff (UCASS) dataset for all Full, Associate and Assistant Professors with and without senior administrative responsibilities, but excluding Medical/Dental salaries, and includes the most recent 2020-21 dataset. (Note: The University of Toronto has yet to be included in the Statistics Canada 2020-21 dataset. As the University of Toronto (UT) perennially has the highest average faculty salary in Canada by a significant margin, when the UT data is included, the red line will be moved significantly upward in the figure for the year 2020-21.) I remark that the Statistics Canada dataset is data the universities supply directly themselves. There is no third-party manipulation of the data.
Examining the above figure, we see that from 2010-11 until 2015-16 average faculty salaries at the University of Alberta were at or above the U15 average (they were in the top 25th percentile of the U15 – the historically agreed upon target). Since 2016-17, average faculty salaries at the University of Alberta are below the U15 average and the gap is increasing steadily over time. As of 2020-21, the average faculty salary at the University of Alberta is below all other average faculty salaries associated with all the other individual U15 universities in Ontario and BC. For the average faculty salary at the University of Alberta to equal the U15 average faculty salary in 2020-21 would require an approximately 8.1% increase in the average faculty salary at the University of Alberta in 2020-21. Each year that we at the University of Alberta receive a 0% ATB this gap increases by about 2%. Thus, assuming a 0% ATB in 2020-21 and again in 2021-22, it would take approximately a 12.1% ATB effective July 1, 2022 for average faculty salaries at the University of Alberta to be approximately equal to the U15 average faculty salary in 2022-23.
Now let’s compare the above average faculty salary figure with the corresponding data showing the percentage allocation within the Operating Budget to “Academic Salaries” as described in the Canadian Association of University Business Officers’ (CAUBO) report entitled Financial Information of Universities and Colleges over the period from 2010-11 to 2019-20 (CAUBO has not yet released its 2020-21 report.) Again, I remark that the CAUBO data is data the universities supply directly themselves. There is no third-party manipulation of the data.
In the figure shown immediately below there are four graphs shown. The black line is the graph showing the percent of total operating budget expenditures corresponding to “academic salaries” at the University of Alberta. The red line is the graph showing the percent of total operating budget expenditures corresponding to “academic salaries” averaged over all Alberta post-secondaries that report to CAUBO. The purple line is the graph showing the percent of total operating budget expenditures corresponding to “academic salaries” averaged over all U15 universities in Ontario and BC. Finally, the green line is the graph showing the percent of total operating budget expenditures corresponding to “academic salaries” averaged over all Canadian post-secondaries that report to CAUBO.
Let’s focus on the provincial Alberta comparison first. The first thing to observe is that over the period 2010-11 until about 2015-16, the University of Alberta allocated approximately the same fraction of its operating budget to academic salaries as the average percentage allocation associated with the other CAUBO reporting post-secondaries in Alberta. But since about 2016-17, the University of Alberta allocates a smaller fraction of its operating budget to academic salaries as compared the average percentage allocation in Alberta and this gap is widening over time. If the University of Alberta had allocated the same fraction of its operating budget to academic salaries as the average Alberta percentage allocation, then in 2019-20 the University of Alberta would have allocated an approximately additional $29.2M in operating budget dollars toward “academic salaries.” I estimate that this additional allocation would have resulted, approximately, in about a 9% increase in average faculty salaries in 2019-20. This increased operating budget allocation would have resulted in average faculty salaries at the University of Alberta being competitive with average faculty salaries in the U15 universities in Ontario and BC. Indeed, comparing this figure with the first figure suggests that when the University of Alberta allocates approximately the same percentage of its operating budget to academic salaries as the average Alberta percentage allocation, average faculty salaries at the University of Alberta are competitive with average faculty salaries across the U15 universities in Ontario and BC. Over the 4-year period 2016-17 until 2019-20 cumulatively there would have been an approximately additional $76.1M allocated from the operating budget to academic salaries at the University of Alberta if its operating budget percentage allocation equalled the average Alberta percentage allocation.
Comparing the operating budget allocation to academic salaries at the University of Alberta (the black line) with the average allocation associated with all the other U15 universities in Ontario and BC (the purple line), the numbers become even starker. Roughly, over the ten-year period 2010-11 until 2019-20, the U15 universities in Ontario and BC allocate on average about 28.5 percent of their operating budgets to academic salaries, which is 4.5% higher than the average 22% allocation at the University of Alberta over the same period. Indeed, if in 2019-20 alone the University of Alberta had allocated the same fraction of its operating budget to academic salaries as the BC-Ontario U15 average percentage allocation, an approximately additional $87.3M would have been allocated in operating budget dollars on academic salaries. Cumulatively, since 2010-11, that sums to approximately $575.5M if the University of Alberta allocated the same fraction of its operating budget toward academic salaries as the average percentage allocation associated with the U15 universities in Ontario and BC over the same period of time.
As for comparing against the overall Canadian average (the green line), suffice it to say simply that if the University of Alberta had allocated in 2019-20 alone the same fraction of its operating budget as the overall Canadian average percentage allocation, an additional $99.9M would have been expended from its operating budget toward academic salaries in 2019-20 alone. Cumulatively, since 2010-11, that sums to approximately $664.9M if the University of Alberta allocated the same fraction of its operating budget toward academic salaries as the average percentage allocation overall in Canada over the same period of time.
Budgets are about priorities. What the underlying narrative here is suggesting, in my opinion, is that notwithstanding the hubris and the rhetoric, our Employer is not committed to making the required, modest and comparable budgetary choices that would easily enable it to pay competitive academic salaries. It is not about “inability to pay,” it is about “unwillingness to pay” academic salaries commensurate with our academic excellence and standing within the U15.
Finally, please allow me to wish all of you, on behalf of the AASUA Bargaining Team, Happy Holidays and a healthy, happy and productive New Year.
Gordon Swaters
AASUA Lead Negotiator