Bargaining Update – Hours of Work
Hello everyone, and welcome back our FSA Bargaining Blog series.
Can you believe that BCIT has been around for 50 years! Well, if your office is in SW3, then your answer may be yes. However, it’s still quite something to look back at all of the people and the programs that have come and gone over the years.
For a cruise down memory lane you can head here.
And if you attended the 50th Anniversary Gala, you would have seen the tremendous alumni support that BCIT was able to generate. You could see the impact that BCIT has on B.C. through our students entering the economy. Which in the end is really our goal. Faculty, Research, Assistant Instructors, Librarians, Information Technology, Tech Staff, Student Services, we’re all here to help produce grads who are job ready.
Now the reason that I mention this is that having our 50th Anniversary in the back of your mind really puts the enormity of the bargaining process into perspective. Recognizing the incredible team of people that is needed to run BCIT and striving to find equitable solutions to the challenges BCIT faces is the primary goal of the FSA in bargaining.
This is why the Employers proposal for Hours of Work is such a critical challenge. The Employer and many members see extended hours as a solution to meeting the needs of an increasing number of students in limited facilities. Other members see extended hours of work as a threat to the teaching environment and their working conditions. For the FSA, any compromise of our hours of work has to include protections for members and reciprocal improvements in the collective agreement that reflect the value of longer hours of operations.
Each of these points presents some major challenges for the FSA and its goal of equity for its members. Although some individual arrangements have been made in some departments in the past, very few if any have had any reciprocal benefits to our members in acknowledgement of this large concession.
I encourage you to consider how they could have an effect on your department and your own role here. On Oct 22nd the FSA will be having a focus group with some of our members representing all sides of this issue. We hope that discussion will bring to light more information on the possible effects of implementing this type of change. And at the same time, what is it worth to our members if we accept this proposal.
To see the complete set of proposals login in to our Member Portal and visit the ‘Bargaining’ page.
Dave Shaw
FSA Director, Assistant Instructor, Mechanical Engineering
Dave_Shaw [at] bcit.ca