The essence of collective bargaining is the idea that workers are in a better position to negotiate improvements to their working conditions collectively than if they attempted to do so on their own. Protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, collective bargaining recognizes our right to work together to address issues in our workplace and to empower our union to bargain on our behalf.
Because employers recognize that their employees’ solidarity is their principle mechanism for making significant gains in collective bargaining, they often focus their attention on undermining this solidarity in order to avoid having to meaningfully address their employees’ workplace concerns. For instance, the UPEI Board of Governor’s has deployed a number of tactics to undermine our solidarity including:
- sending misleading and false information to FA members to create the impression that the employer’s proposals are reasonable while the FA’s proposals are unreasonable
- breaking FA proposals into individual clauses to make each clause appear as if it is an independent issue, thereby deliberately mischaracterizing the number of proposals still on the table
- suggesting that improvements for some FA members must necessarily come at the expense of other FA members
- sending letters to FA members on approved leaves of absence minutes before a potential strike vote indicating that they will lose their salary/benefits if they participate in any strike action
In addition to these strategies, the Board’s recent communication to the UPEI campus community:
- presented proposals directly to our members that had not previously been presented to the FA bargaining team
- presented significant, completely new proposals that had not been discussed in the previous 10-months of bargaining
- proposed non-binding memorandums of understanding (MOU) that ensure that key bargaining priorities are not addressed in the context of a credible threat of job action, while presenting them as “progress”
- suggested the Board is willing to introduce “new interim measures” that are already common practice
In the above cases, we believe the Board’s actions fall short of fulfilling its duty to bargain in good faith. The UPEIFA is consulting with legal counsel and is considering its legal options in this regard.
Moreover, despite our employer’s assertions that it is committed to pursuing every avenue to avoid a labour disruption, we have yet to receive a response to our request to schedule additional negotiation sessions.
Make no mistake, our employer is deploying these tactics because they recognize that our solidarity is our strength. The fact is that our only progress so far in negotiations has been made possible by our collective strength. In the days and weeks ahead, we anticipate that the Board will continue to do everything in its power to sow discord and doubt among FA members in an effort to prevent meaningful movement on your bargaining priorities. While we do not intend to respond to all of these communications, we feel it is important that FA members are prepared for what lies ahead.
We cannot lose sight of the fact that the concerns we have brought to the table are real, serious, and wide-reaching, and affect not only our working conditions, but also our students’ learning conditions. Now is the time to press forward, and make real and lasting progress at building a better UPEI.
Solidarity!
