Bargaining

Updates, including details of the 2014-19 agreement, are posted on our blog – catch up on the news here.

Update, August 25, 2014

The publication of the 2010-14 FSA-BCIT collective agreement has now been authorized by the Post-Secondary Employer’s Association. This edition incorporates changes agreed upon with the ratification of the negotiated settlement arrived at in early 2013. It does not address many minor issues we had hoped to clear up prior to publication. A limited number of copies of the agreement will be printed and made available in the coming weeks. In the meantime, an electronic version without the completed signature page can be downloaded.

Bargaining Round Began May 29, 2014

The first bargaining session for the renewal of the 2010-14 FSA collective agreement took place on May 29, 2014 with several more dates scheduled in June. At the general meeting in January, the FSA membership ratified the outline of a proposal package built around the theme of equity. A summation of the proposals will be available again after they are presented to management. Bargaining updates will be shared on our blog.

In April, the BCGEU Vocational Instructor units at the colleges (not at BCIT or Vancouver Island University) agreed to the first collective agreement in our sector in this round of bargaining. That agreement is a five year deal with wage increases totalling 5.5% but with no increase until April, 2015. Minor adjustments were made to extended health benefits and there was a slight increase in PD funding but few other changes.

Members of the FSA Bargaining Team are:

• Teresa Place, FSA President
• Terry Gordon, Financial Management
• Colin Jones, ITS
• Joe Newton, Tech Centre
• Silvia Raschke, Tech Centre
• Dave Shaw, Mechanical Engineering
• Kenzie Woodbridge, ITS
• Paul Reniers, FSA Executive Director and Chief Negotiator
• Sascha Swartz, FSA Labour Relations Administrative Analyst 

Results of Survey on Alternatives to the ‘Non-Teaching Faculty’ Label

The FSA ran two surveys of its Faculty members without regularly scheduled classroom contact on alternatives to the term ‘Non-Teaching Faculty’ used throughout the collective agreement. Changing this terminology is meant to recognize these members based on what they do rather than by what they don’t do. Although they have been referred to in the collective agreement as ‘non-teaching,€ for many of them teaching is a component of their jobs, even though they don’t typically have a regular weekly schedule. The implication that they are something less than other Faculty has also had practical implications. They are the only group of Regular Employees under the FSA contract with no access to some form of short-term development leave.

Counselors, Instructional Development Consultants, Librarians, Program Co-ordinators, Researchers, Student Services Co-ordinators and others were asked first to suggest alternative titles and then to rank the options. In reviewing the results, three alternatives have a high level of support among these members and will be brought to the bargaining table. They are:

• Referring to this group simply as Faculty and referring to instructional Faculty as Instructors
• Referring to this group as Professional Faculty and to Instructors as Instructional Faculty
• Referring to this group as Specialist Faculty

With the support of the membership, we are confident we will be able to resolve this long-standing issue in the coming round of bargaining.

Copies of the 2010-14 Collective Agreement

The process of preparing the last version of the collective agreement for printing has been painfully slow. Despite the long time between collective agreements, the employer declined to make most of the requested housekeeping changes in the proofing process. As result, when the new collective agreement is finally published, it will still contain inconsistent usage of terms, ambiguous references, and other minor issues we had hoped to clear up. In March, we made a proposal to the employer that just three errors in the collective agreement be corrected prior to printing. We have yet to hear back. We intend to finalize the printing of the 2010-14 agreement at the outset of negotiations for its renewal. If that occurs, printed copies of the current agreement will be available prior to the summer. In the meantime, please refer to the 2007-10 collective agreement and the 2010-14 settlement agreement.