U of M posts contract offer to profs on web
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/09/2016 (2736 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
The University of Manitoba has taken contract negotiations with professors out into the open, posting an offer on its website that would increase wages by seven per cent over four years.
Junior faculty still qualifying for incremental raises would get 17.5 per cent over four years, in a deal retroactive to March 31 of this year.
It’s at least the second time that the U of M has publicly laid its cards on the table.
The university denied Friday that posting its contract offer on the university website constitutes bargaining in public — the U of M insisted it is being open and transparent.
The U of M Faculty Association president Prof. Mark Hudson said Friday that professors are disappointed by the university’s move. UMFA has scheduled a general membership meeting Tuesday evening, at which Hudson said the union may ask its 1,250 faculty members for authorization to conduct a strike vote within two weeks.
That would give the union the authority to call a strike if bargaining did not succeed.
“We don’t want to bargain in public — we’re disappointed the university has gone public with this,” said Hudson, who said UMFA had been unaware ahead of time that the university had planned to make any details of its contract offer public knowledge.
Hudson said late Friday that during bargaining earlier in the day, at UMFA’s request, the university agreed not to post a link laying out its entire offer until after Tuesday’s meeting. The university had planned to make that link available Friday.
The U of M deal is roughly the same as the 7.5 per cent increase over 54 months reluctantly accepted by the University of Winnipeg Faculty Association during the summer. Before voting on the deal, UWFA told its members that although the offer wasn’t great, the U of W had no more money to offer and a strike would be over quickly because the Pallister government would legislate them back to work.
Even U of M officials were acknowledging privately Friday that the university’s offer is better than the province’s new eight per cent deal over five years with its engineers — a contract that Finance Minister Cameron Friesen said was too rich, given the province’s financial situation.
While professors do not negotiate with the province, the university depends on the government for the majority of its operating budget.
Late Friday afternoon, Friesen’s office issued a statement through his press secretary : “Manitoba’s New Government has inherited significant fiscal challenges, and future negotiations will require fresh perspective to protect the services Manitobans depend on in a sustainable way moving forward. Labour relations must be reflective of Manitoba’s ability to pay; this will require the cooperation of all public sector employers and employees. We will be actively monitoring the situation against this broader expectation. Offsetting savings may have to also be explored in that context.”
In an interview with Free Press reporter Larry Kusch Thursday, Friesen said he had to honour the engineers’ deal, which had been negotiated with the previous government during the election campaign.
But, said Friesen, “It doesn’t mean, somehow, that now government is going to continue in that way, shape and form on a go-forward basis.”
“We’re expecting to lead the nation in terms of economic performance with a year-over-year growth of less than 2.5 per cent. And if you’re negotiating (wage increases) north of two per cent it makes it a huge challenge (fiscally) to go in the right direction,” he said.
The main points of the offer on the U of M website include improved benefits, provisions for a more collegial atmosphere and a greater say for professors in how promotions and tenure are determined.
The university’s offer can be seen at
http://news.umanitoba.ca/u-of-m-presents-comprehensive-offer-of-settlement-to-umfa/
nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca
History
Updated on Friday, September 30, 2016 1:45 PM CDT: Changes headline.
Updated on Friday, September 30, 2016 6:32 PM CDT: Updated