This is a weird weekend. We've just had our 'term break', which leaves us with just about 3 weeks left in the term. We have been online only since March, so all of this term. Working okay from my end, except basically I prerecord a lecture or give a lecture 6 days a week. But last week, I caught up on a lot.
In the mean time, we're waiting on the outcome of mediation tomorrow. You may recall that we (the University of Manitoba Faculty Association) went on strike for three weeks in 2016, in part because the administration withdrew a salary scale offer that had been on the table, among other weird bargaining practices. Part of the settlement to come back involved negotiation this year on salary scales only, ahead of next year when the whole contract comes up for renewal.
I forget the final settlement re salaries in 2016, but basically there wasn't one. The administration took the line that they had been ordered by the Province to hold salary increases to 0%. The 'Progressive' Conservative government in power here is pretty traditionally NA conservative, in the sense of believing in privatization of as many and as much public service as possible. This means they have adopted the strategy of defunding everything possible, to the point where it fails, and use that as the opportunity to sell it off.
Now to be fair, the PCs inherited significant debt following some significant mismanagement by the previous NDP governments. But the PCs decided in 2016 to try to balance the budget on the backs of public sector workers, including, indeed beginning with, UMFA. They proposed the Public Sector Sustainability Act (in 2017) to hold all public sector unions to 0% salary increases. This bill never passed into law, and was eventually found unconstitutional, as the PSSA would have directly interfered with collective bargaining, which was found to be protected as a form of freedom of expression and association.
The point is the Province illegally, or at least very inappropriately, interfered with collective bargaining by convincing the Administration that they were required to hold to 0% salary increases, prompting the Administration to withdraw their salary offer, relying on the eventual PSSA to back up their position. The court findings (still under appeal) ordered the administration to compensate UMFA and its members for losses incurred by the strike, as well as punitive damages and so on.
For reasons I haven't followed, this year's pre-renewal renewal of the salary issue, has basically been the administration proposing 0% increase, again, and not bargaining anything. Which seems to me, in the absence of a law requiring them not to bargain salaries, strikes me as bad faith negotiation. The Union has proposed binding arbitration (in which a disinterested third party listens to both proposals and picks one that is binding on both parties), which has/had been roundly rejected by the administration.
This is interesting for a couple of reasons. The main one being that it suggests the administration knows they're in an untenable position. Since they illegally, or at least very inappropriately, refused to negotiate salaries in 2016, and are doing so again, the chances that a reasonable third party would agree with them. This is in stark contrast to 2016, when the administration was the one pushing for binding arbitration. Binding arbitration tends to be conservative, in that no change is usually preferred over radical change. In binding arbitration, both parties present their best offers, and generally, the administration's offer will call for less increase in salaries and benefits, and generally be the more conservative. Arbitration over a whole contract is really dangerous for unions, because the arbitrator has to select one or the other offer. They can't take the salaries issue from one offer, and the benefits issue from another. Or whatever.
But this year, the administration has blocked binding arbitration. Since the only issue on the table is salaries...well, draw your own conclusions.
Which all boils down this weekend. Starting Friday, negotiations entered mediation. Mediation is when a disinterested third party helps move negotiations along. Listening to both parties' proposals and trying to help find a mutually amenable solution. In the last couple weeks, UMFA members voted overwhelmingly to permit the negotiating team to call for a strike vote. When there was no movement, they called the strike vote, and once again, the overwhelming majority chose to authorize a strike. These two moves appear to have gotten the administration to accept mediation.
Mediation began on Friday (yesterday) and ends tomorrow (Sunday). So sometime tomorrow, the mediator and the negotiation teams will announce either a) a settlement, in which case everything is copacetic, or b) no settlement, in which case we go on strike starting Monday, the day we're supposed to return to classes. I suppose there is a remote possiblity that there will be no settlement but there was enough movement to avoid the strike, but more probably if there is no settlement, we'll go on strike while negotiations continue.
So my stomach is not happy this weekend, since I have to emotionally prepare for classes and other academic stuff, as well as prepare to be on strike. Because the city is back on COVID-19 lockdown (not quite as drastic as the first lockdown in March, but since the second or third spike depending on who you believe. The positive test rate (for the province) has risen from 3% in August to over 12% now. Can't find number specific to the city, but the vast majority of cases comes from the Winnipeg region.
So a strike won't involve mass picket lines since a) nobody is really entering or leaving campus, and b) picket lines are not great places to try to maintain social distancing. The union has tried to explain 'strike activities' to us, but I don't really understand. I'm guessing someone will tell me tomorrow when to check in on Monday, and I will spend time on Monday calling or emailing MLAs, public officials, media outlets, and so on, and spreading stuff on social media, or whatever they tell me to do.
I support my union, not that I feel personally that I deserve a salary increase of any kind, but because as a group compared to comparable research universities in Canada, we are very poorly paid, which has clearly impacted both the kind and quality of programs we can offer students, and how we are able to recruit and retain colleagues. But really, we're the first post-PSSA union to re-enter salary negotiations, so we're kind of the test case for all the rest. Public employees run our public universities, our public schools, and our public hospitals, not to mention our police and fire departments, our garbage and recycling collectors, our road and maintenance workers. But in particular our nursing and hospital staffs in general, who are overrun on the frontlines of COVID-19 on top of all the usual stuff they deal with, both in terms of patient care and their general physical and mental health.
Not to mention the expired PPE masks that the province dumped on hospitals (again onto the backs of frontline public-sector employees) months ago, but that's a whole other scandal.
So our main hashtag this year is #UMFA2020. I assume there will be others announced in the coming days. Expect to see them a lot in my Twitter and Facebook feeds, those being the only social media platforms I use, and I plan to use them primarily for strike things, rather than my usual nonsense, which mostly have to do with food and sleep anyway.
Update: #JobActionNews Mediation has been extended through Sunday the 16th. Work as usual on Monday. The earliest a strike would begin is Tuesday the 17th. But it looks like someone thinks there has been some positive discussion in mediation. Taking a slow deep breath. #UMFA2020
Update: #JobActionNews Tentative agreement has been reached, and will be taken to the union members for a vote. Negotiators/board don't seem enthusiastic, and from what I've seen it's not much of a deal, but at least it's a deal. And given the current political climate (read: interference) I'm not sure how likely we are to get a better one. But that's for another day. Strike action delayed indefinitely, pending ratification vote. #UMFA2020
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