Bargaining Bulletin #10

June 7, 2011

To: HEADS UP – Vancouver and Okanagan campuses
From: Lisa Castle, AVP, Human Resources
Cc: HR Advisors & Associates
Re: Bargaining Bulletin #10 – Collective Bargaining 2010/11: Update

The purpose of this memorandum is to provide you with an update on developments in collective bargaining at UBC. An overview of collective bargaining (including information on the bargaining units) is available at http://www.hr.ubc.ca/collective-bargaining/.

Since I last updated you in March, we have been at the bargaining table with the unions for five of the outstanding agreements, of which three expired over a year ago, and the remaining two are approaching the one-year mark. We have not yet commenced bargaining with IUOE Local 882.

For BCGEU at UBC’s Okanagan campus, we had two productive sessions in mid-May and another last week. Two more dates are scheduled this month to discuss the remainder of the non-monetary items.

BCGEU bargaining at UBC’s Vancouver campus continued with a date in each of April and May. These discussions are concentrated on hours of work, and the parties met again yesterday and today.

We met once with CUPE 2278 (Component 1) in April and discussed substantive issues arising from the student and employment relationships. We are attempting to find more dates this month.

CUPE 2278 (Component 2) returned to the bargaining table for one day in May, and we are hoping to schedule more dates shortly.

We had one bargaining session with CUPE 116 in early May and are returning to the table on June 16 and 17. The Union expects to have all of its non-monetary items tabled by the end of those two days. We understand that we will then not resume bargaining until the fall.

Bargaining did not proceed with CUPE 2950 in April as the Union was not available during that month. We did meet on May 4th, but the session was short as the Union advised the University’s bargaining team that in their view issues had been discussed, and they wished to take a break until the fall. Although we have offered multiple dates over the summer, the Union has declined to meet unless the University would be prepared to bargain outside of the Provincial Government’s 2010 bargaining mandate. The University cannot do so, and of course AAPS and the Faculty Association have both settled their agreements consistent with that mandate.

The CUPE locals have been in discussions for some time with representatives of other CUPE locals in the colleges and institutes sector, and more recently K-12. You may know that CUPE agreements across all three sectors have expired, and CUPE has indicated that they will be moving to closer coordination of their bargaining in the fall. Of course, they are also anticipating a provincial election during that time, and the BC Teachers Federation is taking a strike vote this month as they engage a number of issues at the bargaining table, including the Provincial Government’s bargaining mandate. All of which is to say: we’ll wait to see what happens in the fall.

Thank you for your interest. We will continue to provide updates as the process unfolds.

Have a great summer.

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