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.

Categories
Bargaining News

Happy New Year

We would like to wish all faculty a happy new year!

The big news here is that Collective bargaining at ECU has begun! Not only is this a time to reflect on all the work we put into our various roles as members of the Faculty Association, it is also a time for action. Some important things we are focusing on in this round of bargaining are Right to Available Work, Compensation, and Teaching Load.

Join us at the monthly Faculty Association meeting to hear updates in person and let us know if you have questions.

Categories
Bargaining News

Negotiations Update

Dear Faculty Members,

After bargaining sessions on June 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 10, 11 and 12, we now have a tentative agreement for you to vote on. A summary and more details were emailed out to you.

We are holding a ratification information meeting at 11 am, June 30, in NB 245. Hope to see you there, and if you’re not available, please feel free to contact us with questions by email or telephone.

Thank you for your attention,

your Negotiations Committee

Rita Wong
Jane Slemon
David MacWilliam
Dennis Burke
Leah Squance

Categories
Bargaining News

What is Collegial Governance?

The following handout (building on CAUT’s work) offers some working definitions that may be helpful to consider:

Collegial Governance is defined in terms of the degree of autonomy members of a department or discipline can expect in participating in and determining every aspect and condition of their work: for example, meetings, workload, workload planning, academic planning, and so on.

The term turns on two elements:

“collegiality” which means the participation of faculty in governance structures.

Collegiality does not mean congeniality.

To be collegial, academic governance must:
(a) allow for the expression of a diversity of views and opinions,
(b) protect participants so that no individual is given inappropriate advantage (for example, due to power differentials) with respect to decisions, and
(c) ensure inclusiveness so that all who should be participating are provided the opportunity to do so.

Collegial governance depends on the participants being given, and being able to deliver, their share of the service workload.

“consultation” refers to the process whereby the person(s) consulting a person(s) is obligated to take into consideration the circumstances and interests of the person(s) being consulted, and, also, to ensure that these circumstances and interests are reflected in the determination made at the end of the process.

Consultation also refers to a formal meeting by which the consultation occurs around a specific agenda item(s) and whose procedure and outcome(s) are documented.

Categories
Bargaining News

Academic Governance 3.0

The Confederation of University Faculty Associations of BC (CUFA) has released an e-book called Academic Governance 3.0. It is worth a read for any faculty member seeking to think through the ways in which we come to make decisions as communities and learning organizations. When professor Cary Nelson recently spoke at SFU’s Institute for the Humanities, he identified shared governance, tenure and academic freedom as being crucial for the integrity and the future of post-secondary education.

Categories
Bargaining Regular Sessional

Contexts: Collective Agreements and Universities

Notwithstanding the gorgeous sunny weather this long weekend, it’s also one of the most intense times of the year for studio and academic faculty. After the crunch eventually subsides, it may be healthy to take a step back to reflect on how post-secondary education is evolving, as well as our responsibilities to protect the quality of education in this province. While we each have our individual strengths and challenges, we’re also in this arts, media & design education community together, and it’s through mindful coordination that we’ll achieve more.

If you’d like to compare the collective agreements of post-secondary institutions that are members of FPSE (Federation of Post-Secondary Educators), they can be found online at http://www.fpse.ca/agreements/collective.

Also, for more context and discussion, the latest issue of Canadian cultural studies journal Topia, entitled Out of the Ruins, the University to Come, can be found in our library: http://pi.library.yorku.ca/ojs/index.php/topia/issue/current.

Categories
Bargaining Regular

Academic Freedom

While we’ve had a number of discussions about academic freedom over the years, some faculty members are new to the discussion. As an introduction, here is a brief overview and definition by Cary Nelson:
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2010/12/21/nelson_on_academic_freedom

For a more detailed discussion, see his book No University Is An Island. While Nelson is writing in an American context, many of the trends and issues he identifies are relevant to the Canadian post-secondary community.