On Thursday, May 16, the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators (FPSE) passed the following motion with the full support of the entire membership at the FPSE AGM
This resolution echoes the motion that our own Faculty Association Membership passed in April.
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Whereas FPSE stands for academic freedom, freedom of expression, and freedom of assembly,
Whereas students at Thompson Rivers University successfully negotiated the University’s disclosure of and potential divestment from any and all companies complicit in the violence, occupation, and dispossession occurring in Gaza and the West Bank,
And whereas post-secondary students nationally and globally are experiencing arrest and vilification by their administrations for their involvement in peaceful protest and assembly,
Be it resolved that FPSE shall disclose and divest from any and all investments, direct and indirect, in companies that are complicit in the violence, occupation, and dispossession occurring in Gaza and the West Bank against the Palestinian people,
And be it further resolvedthat FPSE shall call upon member locals and their respective institutions to
• Disclose and divest from any and all investments, direct and indirect, in companies that are complicit in the violence, occupation, and dispossession occurring in Gaza and the West Bank against the Palestinian people; and
• Advocate for the support and protection of the academic freedom and freedom of expression for all post-secondary students, staff, and faculty who demonstrate against Israel’s military campaign of ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the complicity of Canadian institutions in Israel’s colonial violence.
Following our AGM on April 29, 2024, we are pleased to welcome our new and returning Executive Working Committee members for the 2024/2025 academic year.
President: Cameron Cartiere Vice President Regular Faculty: Lindsay McIntyre Vice President Non- Regular Faculty: Alex Hass Chief Stewards: Rita Wong and Nick Conbere Secretary: Patryk Stasieczek Treasurer: Sunny Nestler
Members at Large: Rubén Möller, Valérie D. Walker, Sue Shon, Sarah Shamash (all continuing) Gabe Wong (new), Pat Vera (new), Magnolia Pauker (new/returning)
A huge thank you to our outgoing serving members:
Ben Unterman (VP non-regular) Alla Gadassik (member at large)
Ben will continue to support the FA as our Bargaining Coordinator and will serve on the 2025 bargaining team. His attention to detail and his ability to collect, distill, and discuss sector relevant data was a tremendous benefit in our negotiations, earning him the title Resident Data Hound.
Alla will continue to support the faculty and university in other important capacities including the amazing work she did on the Qualified to Teach (QTT) systems that the administration is aiming to get into place for the 2025 hiring cycle.
Please contact ecuadfa@gmail.com if you want to learn more and get more involved in your Faculty Association.
On behalf of the Faculty Association, our President, Cameron Cartiere, presented the Palestine Solidarity Motion for the consideration of the University Administration and the Board of Governors. The motion was passed at the Faculty Association monthly meeting which followed directly after our AGM on April 29.
The motion was presented by a collective group of our faculty membership who spent many weeks researching and developing this motion. The motion was circulated in advance of the monthly FA meeting to allow time for careful consideration of the motion by the full membership.
Presentation of the motion was followed by a balanced and fulsome debate with individuals speaking for and against the motion, and with a neutral facilitator voicing the comments of those who may have felt unable to present their positions directly to the collective group.
This meeting was one of the highest attended Faculty Association meetings in the past few years. The motion was passed with 73% in favour. The remaining 27% were evenly split between abstains and against.
The motion in full (with links for additional information) can be found here.
For everyone’s information, Faculty associations and student unions that have recently signed on to solidarity boycotts, divestments and/or sanctions include: Wilfrid Laurier University FA, Université de Montréal FA, Windsor University FA, the Canadian Federation of Students, student unions at Emily Carr University, Concordia, SFU and more.
The following is an abridged summary of the Executive Working Committee Report.Please find the complete report here.
This year saw the completion of over 14 months of bargaining with the ratification of our new Collective Agreement (2022-2025). Together we are able to improve conditions that have not been possible in 20 years. Our key gains included:
Substantial salary gains (thanks in part to the larger unions who secured the mandate)
Workload reduction for studio faculty to 4/4 (75% of our membership)
Right to Qualified Work
Improvements for Lecturers (continuous contract status)
Other changes coming from the collective table include:
A new trimester model
Adjunct Opportunity Pathway
Decolonization & Indigenization audit of our collective agreement and associated university policies
Movement towards a Knowledge Keeper in Residence
Increases in some healthcare provisions
And improved language throughout the collective agreement for clarity and fairness
With such substantial changes in our collective agreement, the roll out has been taking time as HR and other departments endeavour to create and adapt to new systems. The roll out has included the development of a Seniority List as well as the development of a framework for creating the Qualified to Teach (QTT list) system that will help make hiring more of a transparent process. We have a number of committees still to fill including one for the Knowledge Keeper, the CA audit, and working conditions. We hope to fill these committees by the end of May so the work can begin.
It may feel like we just ratified our new agreement, but pre-bargaining committees and the faculty survey will roll out in Fall 2024, as bargaining is coming up again in March, 2025.
We are extremely grateful to our FPSE representatives Tim Armstrong (2022-23) and Weldon Cowan (2023-24) as well as Robin Wylie who was with us from the beginning and saw us through to a successful ratification. Robin is one of the bargaining coordinators (originally from Douglas College) and his breadth of knowledge and experience in the sector has been beyond helpful at the table and we greatly benefitted from his participation.
We had some other highlights this year, beyond the work of bargaining, including a campus visit from our new Minister of Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills, Minister Lisa Beare. She was accompanied by local MLA Joan Phillip (Mount Pleasant) on Friday March 22, 2024. We only had 15 minutes scheduled (they were on campus a total of 45 minutes), and the minister was visiting 4 institutions that day. Recognizing the limitations of this brief official visit format, Cameron’s focus was to highlight the amount of work the faculty produce and contribute outside of the academy, and to express to the minister that we needed her to be our champion in government and other ministers. Given her former post as the Minister of Tourism, Arts, and Culture, it was refreshing to not have to begin the conversation explaining the value of art and design in society. It was a very positive conversation, and both the minister and the MLA left with a desire to return to the campus for a longer visit in the future. The Minister’s chief of staff also left with a copy of Non-Regular!
We continue working to keep our financial house in order and the move of the FA defence fund to VanCity Credit Union has been a positive action. With that move has come ongoing financial training and info sessions with VanCity for members of the FA executive. Our treasurer, Sunny Nestler continues their amazing job, taking on the challenge of our FA finances and additional training from FPSE.
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.
Above: FA Garden Party in September; Below: FA Year-end Korean BBQ Potluck.
The FA Executive for 2023-2024 included:
President: Cameron Cartiere
Vice Presidents: Lindsay McIntyre and Ben Unterman
Members at Large: Rubén Möller, Valérie D. Walker, Hillary Webb, Sue Shon, Sarah Samash, Alla Gadassik
Co- Stewards: Rita Wong, Nick Conbere
Secretary: Patryk Stasieczek
Treasurer: Sunny Nestler
Thank you to member-at-large Magnolia Pauker who served in 2023.
The Joint Consultation Committee (JCC) continued to meet monthly. Its purpose is “to promote the cooperative resolution of workplace issues” (according to our Collective Agreement 5.03). The committee includes the FA President, the FA Vice-Presidents, a Steward, our FA coordinator, the Provost, the VP of HR, the Director of HR, and HR staff. The FA team continued to pursue issues from 2022-23 such as impacts of ambiguous university policies on faculty, scheduling and hiring, and fair representation on committees. The FA President also has a standing meeting with the ECU President every month to discuss university issues beyond the JCC.
Our stewards have still noted an ongoing increase in requests for accommodation by faculty and also complex and lengthy grievances, many of which resulting from University policies that are not clearly written and procedures that have escalated situations into multi-level grievance processes. This is relentless work and the approval, by the membership, of a second steward last year has gone a long way to lift the burden off the shoulders of our long-standing steward, Rita Wong. We are continually deeply grateful for the breadth of institutional knowledge that Rita brings to the role. Together, with Nick Conbere, our stewards are champions for the membership. Remember, you have support and if you find yourself in a position where you are asked to meet with HR or other areas of administration, you have the right to have steward support with you.
The FA Executive Working Committee, during our Faculty Retreat this February (not picture, Lindsay McIntyre and Sarah Samash).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
