August 14, 2000
MUNFA has requested conciliation because, after ten months of negotiations, only four of thirty-one articles have been agreed to and signed off. In addition the Administration has not offered responses to MUNFA's proposals on salaries, early retirement, pension reform and collegial processes for appointment of academic administrators. Moreover, we have been given no assurance that responses that would be suitable for serious negotiations will be forthcoming in the near future. The protracted sequence of events that has led the MUNFA Executive to request conciliation is outlined below.
1. ANTICIPATING NEGOTIATIONS:
In anticipation of the expiration of the current Collective Agreement on August 31, 1999, the MUNFA Executive established a Proposals Committee on August 26, 1998. The Proposals Committee began work on October 7, 1998, and it completed its work with the circulation of "Draft Proposals" approximately one year later. This draft was discussed at a MUNFA Membership Information Meeting on September 27, 1999. In April 1999, the MUNFA Executive appointed an eleven person Negotiating Committee.
Before formal negotiations began, however, on May 10, 1999, Dr. A.W. May, then President of Memorial University, called a meeting of members of the administration and representatives of MUNFA. Dr. May proposed that the administration and MUNFA agree on a comparison group to enable both parties to present a united position regarding salaries to the government and to the public. At a meeting held on September 3, 1999 with the new Vice-President (Academic), Dr. E. Simpson, MUNFA proposed that the comparison group be the Maclean's "Comprehensive Group" of universities. The administration agreed. The difference between the average faculty salary at Memorial and that of the Comprehensive Group is approximately 20%. The new President of Memorial University, Dr. A. Meisen, has also made no secret of his wish that Memorial's faculty and librarians receive substantial salary increases, in large part because of current difficulties in hiring and retaining Academic Staff Members. From MUNFA's point of view, these preliminary discussions with the shared focus on salary improvements seemed to be an auspicious beginning to negotiations.
2. DELAYING NEGOTIATIONS:
While MUNFA had hoped to begin negotiating during the summer of 1999, at the May 10th meeting between MUNFA and administration representatives Dr. Simpson suggested that, since the University Forum would not be completed until mid-October, it would make sense to postpone negotiations until that time. MUNFA expressed the opinion that the Forum might not be complete by mid-October 1999. Nevertheless, MUNFA and the administration compromised and agreed to delay the start of negotiations until October 4, 1999.
A Memorandum of Understanding formally binding both parties to begin negotiating on October 4, 1999 was signed by MUNFA on June 11, 1999 and by the administration on July 5, 1999. The Memorandum specified that the old Collective Agreement would remain in effect until such time as a new Collective Agreement was signed or there was a strike or lockout. The new administration is thus committed not to abrogate the Collective Agreement as the old administration had attempted to do at the start of bargaining for a third Collective Agreement in 1995.
In addition to a consideration of comparison groups and start-up dates, the meeting of May 10th with then President May discussed a MUNFA proposal that, in the interests of speeding up negotiations, only a handful of articles of the Collective Agreement be opened during this, the fourth round of negotiations. After all, MUNFA believes that we have a mature contract and it has been working well. MUNFA's position has always been that many of the difficulties experienced with the previous senior administration were caused by that administration's dislike of any arrangement that restrained its arbitrary use of power, and not by any inherent difficulties in the wording of the Collective Agreement. In a letter dated June 24, 1999, Dr. Simpson said that MUNFA's proposal to limit the number of articles discussed was before the Board of Regents, which would consider the issue at its August 13-14th meeting. At the meeting on September 3, 1999, the administration rejected MUNFA's suggestion for streamlining negotiations. The administration then took the view that both parties were free to open as many or as few of the articles in the Collective Agreement as they wished. The administration's rejection of MUNFA's proposal for limiting negotiations suggested the possibility (especially in light of the delay in starting negotiations) that the bargaining process would be more prolonged than MUNFA believed necessary.
3. PROPOSING SALARIES:
By mutual consent, proposed dollar amounts of salary increases were not exchanged at the time the other initial proposals were tabled on October 4, 1999, the day negotiations commenced. MUNFA presented its proposal for a scale increase to the administration on March 17, 2000. By the end of May, MUNFA was led to believe that a reply from the administration would be forthcoming by July 1, 2000. But July 1st came and went without a salary proposal, without an early retirement proposal and without a response to MUNFA's pension reform proposal from the administration. MUNFA was next told that it could expect a salary proposal from the administration by early August. Therefore negotiations were suspended until August 2nd when MUNFA expected to receive the administration's financial package comprising proposals on salary, early retirement and reorganization of the pension plan. At a meeting on August 1st, hastily called by the administration one day before the resumption of negotiations, the administration made it clear to a delegation of MUNFA negotiators that no response on these money issues would be forthcoming before August 15th at the earliest. From the tenor of this meeting, MUNFA's delegates concluded that a much longer delay would probably ensue.
In summary, nearly ten months had passed since the beginning of negotiations and nearly five months had passed since MUNFA tabled its salary-related proposals. With one delay after another, the administration remained uncommitted to a firm date for tabling their financial proposals. MUNFA's choices were clear: either MUNFA took steps to accelerate the negotiating process, or MUNFA acceded to negotiations that began to appear interminable.
MUNFA members have not received an increase in their salary scales since 1989. Although most MUNFA members have received modest annual step increments, our salaries lag far behind those of our colleagues at comparable universities in Canada. The administration speaks of faculty renewal yet does nothing to promote it, for instance by agreeing to an early retirement package. MUNFA members have repeatedly and strongly expressed displeasure at the organization of the MUN Pension Plan, and a suitable proposal for reform is embedded in MUNFA's proposals. As early as June 17, 1999, long before the parties ever exchanged proposals, Dr. Simpson said that the Board of Regents was aware of MUNFA's concern for pension reform and an early retirement package. He further stated that pension reform was a serious item for negotiating, probably in association with an early retirement package. Despite these early verbal indications of shared interest, the absence of administration proposals on these matters is very disturbing.
4. REQUESTING CONCILIATION:
MUNFA has been patient. Our early proposal to limit negotiation to a few articles was rejected. At the request of the administration, we delayed the start of negotiations until October 1999. We have received no response to our pension plan reform proposal which was handed to the administration on October 4, 1999. We have received no response to our early retirement proposal which was handed to the administration on December 8, 1999. We have received no response to our salary proposal which was handed to the administration on March 17, 2000. We were led to believe that MUNFA would receive a response by July 1st, but none was forthcoming. We received no response to MUNFA's proposals on August 2nd.
As time passed, the sense that the administration and MUNFA were on the same wavelength diminished. At the meeting of August 1st, the administration essentially said that we should trust them to provide a salary proposal and presumably some response on the other financial matters. Yet the administration has never given us any indication of what their thinking about these matters might be beyond their early verbal assurances.
The perception that negotiations are being derailed is confirmed by the absence of any signs of good faith from the administration. There is a quid pro quo in bargaining. If the administration says 'trust us', they should be prepared to give MUNFA something to show their good faith. This has not happened. In negotiations there are a number of intermediate steps that show that the negotiators are approaching agreement. On not one of the financial issues has there been any movement on the part of the administration towards MUNFA. Therefore there has been nothing to negotiate. The administration has kept all its options open, while repeatedly asking us to wait. The Negotiating Committee does not see the advantage to MUNFA members of continuing to wait under these conditions of uncertainty.
By requesting conciliation, MUNFA hopes that, with the aid of government conciliators, progress can be made more quickly than heretofore on the critical outstanding money issues as well as on outstanding contract language issues. Progress has been made on the contract language issues; progress, however, is not the same as agreement. MUNFA believes that once the outstanding financial matters have been settled, it will be easier for both parties to reach agreement on many of the outstanding contract language issues. It is to be hoped that conciliation will facilitate such agreement.
A word of caution: if progress at conciliation is insufficient to bring about agreement, MUNFA will be obliged to consider its options. More than a month ago, in Negotiating News #11, the MUNFA Negotiating Committee stated that "MUNFA members should now anticipate that the future course of negotiations will be difficult." Nothing that has happened since that July 4th document was circulated suggests to the Negotiating Committee that the future course of negotiations will be anything but difficult.
MUNFA Negotiating Committee:
All issues of Negotiating News are accessible at http://www.mun.ca/munfa/negnews.html