Contract & Benefits Committee Update

Written by Cory Bishop, this article originally appeared in the Winter 2016 edition of The Beacon

Your StFXAUT Contract and Benefits Committee is pleased to provide a brief update on where we are and where we are going with regard to the upcoming negotiations for the Fourth Collective Agreement. First, a warm thank you to all members who completed the Initial Consultation Survey.  Now that the data collection has been completed, we are mired in data and loving it.  Members who did not find the time or inclination to contribute to the survey are encouraged to engage with opportunities to share your input that are coming your way over the next several weeks.

We have nearly completed our analyses of the numerical responses from the survey and are working through the text responses, which, naturally, are less amenable to averages and trend lines.  At the regular meeting scheduled on the 23rd, we intend to present our findings to the membership and outline the next stages and steps leading up to, and including, the beginning of the negotiation process that stretches out before us. Our ultimate goal is to provide our as yet undetermined Negotiating Team with a robust and detailed set of data based upon which they will proceed to negotiate the next 3-4 years of our working conditions and compensation package.  By way of sneak preview, workload equity was identified widely as a very important issue.

After we present the results of our analysis of the survey, we hope you will join us for an upcoming town hall style meeting (date TBA) at which we can discuss openly the issues that matter most to us. We will then follow up with a second survey, the purpose of which is to refine and rank the importance of various issues that were previously identified as important.

On behalf of the Contract and Benefits Committee, we wish everyone a rewarding and productive semester, and look forward to receiving your input, in one form or another.