Bargaining Bulletin #37

Oct. 1, 2012

To: Heads Up – Vancouver and Okanagan
From: Lisa Castle, VP, Human Resources
Cc: HR Advisors & Associates
Re: Bargaining Bulletin #37 – Collective Bargaining 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/.

Late this morning CUPE 116 asked the mediator assigned by the BC Labour Relations Board to report out, and once he had done so then served 72 hours strike notice upon the University. The earliest the Union will be in a position to engage in strike activity is 11:30 am this Thursday, October 4. In order to preserve their strike vote, the Union must engage in some form of strike activity by just after 9:00 a.m. on Sunday, October 7.

UBC Human Resources will be providing information this afternoon on strike activity and preparations.

Upon receiving the strike notice from CUPE 116, it became clear why we have not been able to schedule dates to resume mediation in the last two weeks. The Union has expressed its frustration, and indicated in their own bulletin that the University had “expressed disinterest” in making progression on job security, benefit improvements and cost of living protection. That is not correct: the University has tabled a monetary proposal and a substantive proposal to address pension and other benefit matters.

In the last week, three settlements under the Provincial Government’s Cooperative Gains mandate have been announced. The settlements with the unions representing medical residents (PAR-BC), the nurses (BCNU) and the Government’s own employees (BCGEU) are now moving into the ratification process. We were heartened by these settlements as they demonstrated movement in bargaining in the public sector, and provided for modest compensation increases in accordance with the Provincial Government’s Cooperative Gains mandate after two years of zeroes.

We resume negotiations with CUPE 2950 Wednesday on the matter of the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts. We look forward to scheduling more dates with CUPE 2950 quickly.

We have pursued dates with CUPE 2278 and have confirmed the mediator’s and the University bargaining team’s availability for October 10 and 12. We are waiting to hear from the Union. They had previously indicated they were available for the first half of October, and so we hope to return to mediation with them next week.

As we have said repeatedly, we are committed to negotiating collective agreements with the CUPE locals within the bargaining mandates set by the Provincial Government. We will respond to this job action by CUPE 116, and resume negotiations when the Union is ready: we are greatly interested in finding our way through the outstanding issues to a settlement.

Thank you for your interest. We expect that we will be providing information more frequently in the coming weeks.

View this bulletin as PDF.