Bargaining update – the Central administration’s proposals

Dear members,

On January 31, 2018 the APUO and representatives of the Central administration exchanged all normative proposals for collective bargaining. As discussed in the presentation sent in our previous message, the Central administration and the APUO are waiting on a benefits study of comparator universities to table proposals on salary and benefits. Once both parties have submitted their proposals, these will be shared with APUO members.

The APUO’s normative proposals are available in full, divided by theme:

1. Ensure open, transparent and fair governance
2. Create fair and equitable working conditions
3. Improve quality of education
4. Improve CSAP, Librarians and Language Teachers’ working conditions
5. Establish efficient negotiations
6. Housekeeping

Members can read through the Central administration’s proposals in full here. This is a brief summary of their key proposed changes:

• Change language to allow the Central administration to increase teaching loads in academic units where the current teaching load is less than it was in 1992-94.
• Make it easier for Deans to withhold annual progress-through-the-ranks (PTR) salary increases.
• Erode established procedural justice mechanisms in order to make it easier to impose disciplinary measures on APUO members.
• Remove language that requires the Central administration to obtain the APUO’s consent before using new teaching evaluation instruments including the form and content of teaching evaluation questionnaires completed by students.
• Remove the obligation of the Senate to follow the collective agreement (CA) and due process if it chooses to evaluate programs and members.
• Allow the University Librarian to appoint a visiting librarian without consulting the Librarian Personnel Committee (LPC).
• Exclude all Vice-deans from the bargaining unit.

The APUO looks forward to discussing measures to improve equity and diversity amongst faculty and librarians at the University. Last spring, the University of Ottawa committed to improving equity and diversity in the research environment as part of the U15 (Groups of Canadian research universities).

Should you and your academic unit want additional information about this round of collective bargaining, the APUO executive would welcome an invitation to present and discuss these with you. Please send your requests to apuoco@uottawa.ca

In solidarity,

The APUO executive