By BARGAINING UPDATE:
The KUCFA and King’s bargaining teams have met eight times and agreed to 19 language changes.
Here’s where things stand, in relation to our mandate:
- Academic Excellence: Inclusion of the Academic Librarians in Faculty unions is the Canadian norm because Academic Librarians and Faculty Members share the same professional concerns. Appropriate representation of the academic heart of the university – the library – supports the community as a whole, including especially our students. Despite this, our employer has proposed that KUCFA accept 12 concessions to represent librarians. We have agreed to those which are reasonable. Please join us in continuing to advance the argument that this simple change will benefit the entire King’s community, and should be embraced as an opportunity to enhance scholarly excellence and inclusion.
- Equitable Employment: We have achieved improvements pertaining to health and safety and equity in hiring and promotion and tenure. However, we are waiting for an employer response to other equity-related issues (e.g., leaves of absence), and a number of items in the King’s proposals have serious equity implications.
- Sustainable Employment: KUCFA presented our employer with strong evidence of a need for a sustainable workload (e.g., Members report working, on average, more than a reported Canadian average for university faculty and more than the legal maximum allowed by the Employment Standards Act). After several meetings on this topic, we have agreed to one change that will introduce a small amount of workload flexibility for both parties. We are continuing to negotiate to find solutions that are mutually satisfactory.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
- In the KUCFA General Member’s Meeting on May 1st, members stood together in solidarity in support our bargaining team’s ongoing mandate to protect all faculty, academic integrity and academic freedom. Our employer continues to push on concerning items pertaining to academic freedom and professional and ethical conduct.
- SAVE THE DATE for a zoom bargaining update on Wednesday June 5th at 2:30pm, details to come.
- Please show your solidarity with us by setting your zoom background to include our logo. Here’s how: https://www.kucfa.ca/?page_id=1173
To thrive, King’s needs to support our mandate:
Excellence, Equity, and Workload Sustainability.
Hence, our slogan, “KUCFA for KING’S”!