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News

 FPSE Statement on the War in Gaza

As a FPSE member, the ECUADFA is represented in the following FPSE statement on the War in Gaza, shared on December 4, 2023:

The Federation of Post-Secondary Educators of British Columbia (FPSE) is deeply saddened by the events of the past few weeks, and we demand a ceasefire. The escalating conflict across the Middle East region in Israel, Palestine, and Gaza is having deep impacts within our community and the world. We unequivocally condemn the attacks against innocent civilians. Our students, faculty, and staff, many with ties to the region, may be experiencing fear, sorrow, anger, and feelings of unsafety. Our classrooms should be a place of compassion and peace where painful subjects can be discussed with respect and insight. We need to assure our colleagues and students that we are committed to ensuring a safe and inclusive community for all and that we denounce all acts of violence, hate, and discrimination.

Categories
Bargaining

Ratification of Tentative Agreement

On the October 30, 2023, the Emily Carr Faculty Association voted to ratify the tentative agreement, forming our new collective agreement.

With a resounding 95.8% YES vote, we now move forward with , a more manageable workload in line with the sector, more job stability for our non-regular faculty, and increased wages (again, thanks in part to the bigger unions who went out early and raised the bar for all of us in terms of the Provincial mandate), along with a broad range of other improvements for our community.

We want to thank the entire membership for your engagement, support, comments and questions, patience, and faith in the process. No Collective Agreement is perfect, but this new one moves the dial forward in ways that we have not managed to achieve in decades. With less that 17 months to go before we are back at the table, know that we have not forgotten the work that still needs to be done and will we continue to represent the membership fully.

With HR, we are currently in the process of proof-reading the new Collective Agreement. The new collective Agreement will be ready for disprution (print and digital) in the new year.

Categories
Bargaining

ECUADFA Reaches a Tentative Agreement!

Our Faculty Association has reached a Tentative Agreement with our Employer. We present this to you following thirteen months of detailed, collaborative work. We believe this package has something to support all our members, from our most vulnerable and precarious to our most senior and stable faculty.

While there is always room for improvement, this package offers more substantial improvements than we have seen for the past twenty years. This is due to the clear faculty mandate from the beginning, the ongoing engagement of our membership, and the dedication of our Bargaining Team in managing the negotiations and working collaboratively with FPSE to come to a collective understanding with the University.

Tentative Agreement Highlights

We would like to highlight significant improvements located therein:

  • A salary raise for everyone: through the Provincial Mandate in an effort to keep up with the effects of inflation.
  • Successfully bringing studio faculty teaching load in line with sectoral norms, moving from a 5/5 to a 4/4 load: and striking a joint committee to improve and support academic faculty teaching load in light of the larger sizes and workload of academic classes.
  • Introducing a Right to Qualified Work system that will implement seniority and eventually replace Right of First Refusal: offering more clarity for precarious faculty about how courses are offered.
  • Strengthening our commitments to Decolonization and Indigenization: through a joint committee to carry out a colonial audit of the Collective Agreement and relevant University policies, and through a Letter of Understanding proposing a committee to help establish a Knowledge Keeper in Residence.
  • A clear path towards stability for precarious faculty by regularizing Lecturers: which would improve the working conditions for roughly two dozen faculty members on whom the University heavily relies.
  • A mentorship opportunity as an Adjunct Professor: position redefined as a limited-term, 3-year, professional and academic development pathway.
  • Improved language around Academic Freedom: understanding that this benefits our working conditions as a whole when these principles are shared, understood and practiced widely.
  • A redefinition of the academic year as a trimester system: this shift will allow regular faculty to select their two teaching terms and one non-teaching term. Over time, this requires the hiring and stabilizing of more faculty in order to make this transition.
  • Clarifying the process that occurs if faculty are accused of harassment or bullying: improving the procedural fairness and transparency of communication throughout this process.
  • Improving the pay for graduate student teaching fellowships: a non-regular stipend equivalent of 2 credits per section.
  • Improvements to mental health support and optical care in the Benefits program. 
  • Improvements to leaves of absence for domestic or sexual violence.
  • And more!
Information Sessions

Information Sessions for our membership will be held via Zoom (look for zoom link in your email). Information Sessions are to educate our membership on the contents contained within, to elaborate on changes & updates, and to clarify definitions.

Faculty need only attend one of the three sessions scheduled below. Should you have the capacity to attend more, we encourage regularity so that we can best facilitate points of clarification to our members.

  • Monday, October 23: 11:30AM – 12:30PM
  • Tuesday, October 24: 11:30AM – 12:30PM
  • Thursday, October 26: 11:30AM – 12:30PM
Ratification Process

A Ratification Vote is scheduled for Monday, October 30, 2023 between Noon and 11:59PM. The online voting system employed is Simply Voting, carried forward from previous rounds.

Invitations to Simply Voting will be delivered to your @ecuad.ca email address. If you do not receive an invitation to your University email ahead of the vote, please use that address to reach out to ecuadfa@gmail.com as soon as possible.

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Uncategorized

Your FA Executive Working Committee: Fall 2023

Following our AGM on April 24, 2023, we are pleased to welcome our new and returning Executive Working Committee members for the 2023/2024 academic year.

President: Cameron Cartiere
Vice-Presidents: Lindsay McIntyre + Ben Unterman
Secretary: Patryk Tom
Treasurer: Sunny Nestler
Stewards: Rita Wong + Nick Conbere
Members at Large: Alla Gadassik, Rubén Möller, Sue Shon, Valérie D. Walker, + Hillary Webb

Many thanks to Magnolia Parker, Gilly Mah, and Vanessa Kam for your service last year. We still have one vacancy for a Member at Large position. Please contact ecuadfa@gmail.com if you want to learn more and get more involved in your Faculty Association.

Categories
News

Executive Working Committee Report 2023

The following is an abridged summary of the Executive Working Committee Report. Please find the complete report here.

We began this year, once again, in full preparation mode for bargaining. In the summer of 2022, Ben Unterman devoted extensive time in gathering much needed data on workload, spending ratios, and other key work condition patterns across our sector. That data has proved extremely valuable at the negotiation table. We remain focused on the mandate of priorities as voted on by the membership last year, including workload and job stability (list attached at the end of this report). We prepared 20 robust proposals to submit at the bargaining table. These proposals not only clearly outlined the changes needed, but also provided where possible, the steps for implementation, and clear rationale as to the benefits of these changes, not just to faculty, but also to the larger university community. 

We began bargaining on August 31 – the first in our federation (Federation of Post-Secondary Educators) to begin. Our FPSE representative is Tim Armstrong. He has been at the table with our faculty association before and he is our liaison with FPSE legal support, working with our stewards on grievances so he knows our situation well. Being first out of the gate at FPSE also meant that we were able to request additional bargaining support, and we have had one of the two bargaining coordinators that FPSE contracted this bargaining round. These coordinators have been working with the 20 unions in FPSE to analyse their collective agreements and compare all of the agreements. This is a huge advantage. Robin Wylie is one of the coordinators (originally from Douglas College) and his breadth of knowledge and experience in the sector has been beyond helpful at the table. He has not been able to be at every session, but he has been at most and we have benefitted from his participation.

We have had 15 bargaining sessions since August and we will be walking into session 16 immediately following our 2023 Faculty Association AGM. It has been a long, long haul, with many additional days dedicated to bargaining prep, ongoing training, continued research as we develop counter proposals to administration’s proposals (of which there were three) and counter proposals to their counter proposals to our 20 initial submissions. It is a detailed process and we have done everything possible to provide the language needed for the administration to communicate our proposals to the provincial government. We are also updating our job action policy.  Thank you to all the faculty who’ve dropped in to observe a bargaining session; your presence helps, and we encourage faculty to drop in when they can, to learn more about how the bargaining process works.

We continued working to keep our financial house in order and implemented the membership-approved motion to move the FA defence fund to VanCity. With that move has come additional financial training and info sessions with VanCity for members of the FA executive. Our secretary and treasurer, Sunny Nestler has done an amazing job, taking on the challenge of our FA finances with additional training from FPSE. 

We held several Faculty Affairs discussions with topics including a three-term academic calendar (proposal from the University), definition of anti-semitism and academic freedom, the faculty exhibition, faculty organizing, climate action task force, and how to better sabbatical allocations.

Ahead of all the committee reports and summaries, we wanted to thank all of the faculty who served on the wide range of committees that are required to support our collegial governance. We are hugely grateful for your time, thoughtful consideration, tireless dedication and support. Your work is essential to our membership and to the University community. We also want to thank all of the faculty and staff who continue to show up – show up to meetings, to workshops, to training sessions, to hallway conversations that lead to new ideas and solutions that make a difference to our working lives. You have shown up in countless Zoom rooms, in person, and via email. You have shown up for each other. Thank you. 

We would like to thank and acknowledge Art Perry and Arni Haraldsson, who will be retiring from Emily Carr this year. Thank you for your many years of service to this community, and for reminding us how important it is to connect with and celebrate each other.

The FA Executive for 2022-2023 included: 

President: Cameron Cartiere 

Vice Presidents: Lindsay McIntyre and Ben Unterman 

Members at Large: Rubén Möller, Valérie D. Walker, Hillary Webb, Sue Shon, Magnolia Pauker 

Co- Stewards: Rita Wong, Nick Conbere 

Secretary and Treasurer: Sunny Nestler 

Thank you to members at large who served in 2022: Gilly Mah and Vanessa Kam

Categories
Uncategorized

Your Spring 2023 Executive Team

Welcome, all to the Spring term! Our current Executive Team is as follows:

President – Cameron Cartiere

Co-Vice Presidents – Ben Unterman (Non-Regular) and Lindsay McIntyre (Regular)

Treasurer and Secretary – Sunny Nestler

Stewards – Rita Wong and Nick Conbere

Members at Large – Rubén Möller, Valérie D. Walker, Gilly Mah, Magnolia Pauker and Sue Shon

Coordinator – Jean Chisholm

Many thanks to everyone for their time and service. Please feel free to reach out to anyone on the team with questions, comments, or suggestions.

Categories
News

Executive Working Committee Report 2022

The following is an abridged summary of the Executive Working Committee Report. Please find the complete report here.

This year we spent a significant amount of time on bargaining preparations including the faculty bargaining questionnaire, consolidating bargaining points, extensively reviewing the ECUFA Collective Agreement, meetings with our FPSE bargaining consultants, poured over numerous collective agreements of other FPSE locals and other universities including OCAD, NSCAD, and ACAD, and participating in training courses offered by CAUT. These courses included: Organizing 101, Bargaining, and Organizing 201. We drafted the protocol agreement that sets the terms of how we will be negotiating with the University and submitted that draft to HR. As many are aware, the bargaining process is a long road with many steps, but the journey has begun. We want to thank all the faculty members who served on the various pre-bargaining committees with administration that helped pave the way for our negotiations in the Fall. 

We also worked on some financial upkeep (motions to move to VanCity, increase dues, increase stewards). The last COVID variance we negotiated expired in Dec 2021, but some of it applies till August 2022. Remember to access Curriculum Benefits Fund and Decolonization and Indigenization Fund by August. 

We held Faculty Affairs discussions on the following topics: precious working conditions, bullying and harassment, bargaining, effect of changing university policies on faculty rights and responsibilities.

We would like to thank and acknowledge Elizabeth Mackenzie, who after 22 years of teaching, is not re-applying to teach at Emily Carr. Because of the precarious nature of this work, we know that retirement or leaving Emily Carr looks and feels different for our non-regular faculty, and can often go unnoticed. Thank you Elizabeth for your many years of service to this community, and for reminding us how important it is to connect with and celebrate each other.

We also want to acknowledge the sudden passing of our colleague, Thomas Groppi. Many of us are still in shock from the news. As Rita Wong noted in her email to the faculty about Thomas, “His candour, sense of humour, generosity of spirit, and dedication to the community was well known to so many of us, and he will be deeply missed.” The Faculty Association sent condolences and a donation to the BC Children’s Hospital in memory of Thomas. 

Ahead of all the committee reports and summaries, we wanted to thank all of the faculty who served on the wide range of committees that are required to support our collegial governance. We are hugely grateful for your time, thoughtful consideration, tireless dedication and support. Your work is essential to our membership and to the University community. We also want to thank all of the faculty and staff who continue to show up – show up to meetings, to workshops, to training sessions, to hallway conversations that lead to new ideas and solutions that make a difference to our working lives. You have shown up in countless Zoom rooms, in person, and via email. You have shown up for each other. Thank you.

The FA Executive for 2021-2022 included:

Presidents: Rita Wong (Fall 2021), Cameron Cartiere (Spring 2022)

Vice Presidents: Ben Unterman and Lindsay McIntyre

Members at Large: Rubén Möller, Valérie D. Walker, Gilly Mah, Keith Langergraber, Magnolia Pauker 

Co-Chief Stewards: Rita Wong (Fall 2021), Ana Diab (Spring 2022)

Treasurer: Maria Lantin Secretary: Sunny Nestler

Categories
News

New FA President

Following the bi-election during the General Meeting held remotely on Oct 25, 2021, Cameron Cartiere was elected to be the new FA President, starting Spring 2022. It is with much gratitude that we welcome Cameron to the executive, congratulations Cameron!

The current FA Executive is as follows:

President – Rita Wong (Fall 2021), Cameron Cartiere (Spring 2022)

Co-Vice Presidents – Joe O’Brien and Lindsay McIntyre

Treasurer – Maria Lantin

Secretary – Sunny Nestler

Co-Chief Stewards – Rita Wong (Fall 2021), Ana Diab (Spring 2022)

Members at Large – Rubén Möller, Valérie D. Walker, Gilly Mah, Keith Langergraber, Magnolia Pauker

Categories
News

New FA Executive Team

Following the Annual General Meeting held remotely on April 19, 2021, the new Executive Committee and Members at Large roles have been assigned.

Co-Presidents – Rita Wong (Fall 2021), Justin Langlois/Diyan Achjadi (Spring 2022)

Co-Vice Presidents – Joe O’Brien and Lindsay McIntyre

Treasurer – Maria Lantin

Secretary – Sunny Nestler

Co-Chief Stewards – Rita Wong (Fall 2021), Ana Diab (Spring 2022)

Members at Large – Rubén Möller, Valérie D. Walker, Gilly Mah, Keith Langergraber, Magnolia Pauker

Jay White, Alex Has, Henry Tsang, Arni Haraldsson, Gina Adams have stepped down from the Executive team – many thanks and gratitude for your service.

Categories
News Regular Resources Sessional Solidarity

Decolonization and Indigenization Fund

It’s ready! We are pleased to announce the new Yearly Decolonization and Indigenizarion Fund! This joint Initiative of the Faculty Association and Emily Carr administration makes use of the Provincial Government’s Service Improvement Allocation for the intended benefit of all regular and non-regular faculty. Funds are available up to $250 per faculty member each fiscal year, and will be allocated to applications that fulfill the requirements on a first-come first-served basis. We have aimed to make this fund as accessible as possible. Please feel free to provide us with feedback on the process so that we can make improvements on it in the years to come.

Decolonization and Indigenization Fund

Proposals must demonstrate tangible benefits to students and must support decolonization and Indigenization within the university community.
Proposals that meet this requirement shall be granted. $250 per year for each faculty member (Non-Regular or Regular) is available.