The Employer notified YUFA today that they have requested a “no-board“ report from the Ontario Ministry of Labour. Following one meeting with the Conciliation Officer on July 9, this ends the period of conciliation which the Employer requested, in their words, in order to “assist the parties in reaching an agreement.” YUFA appreciates that the Conciliator has indicated that she is now available to serve as a mediator in further sessions in order to help the parties avoid a strike or lockout.

The Employer’s move to a no-board leaves YUFA no choice but to prepare for all possibilities in order to defend our collective agreement.

Normally a no-board report is issued within 3-5 working days, which begins a 17-day period after which, by law, a lockout or strike can take place.

During that period, the Executive will be asking the membership for a strike mandate, which requires 7 days’ notice. We will hold a General Membership Meeting to discuss this, followed by an electronic vote over several days. These steps are set out in the YUFA Constitution. A strong positive vote gives the Executive a mandate to initiate a strike, which creates more options and flexibility for the bargaining team. A positive vote does NOT mean a strike must or will begin immediately. In fact, once the Executive has that strike mandate, this almost always leads to greater success at the bargaining table.

On YUFA’s website there is further information about these steps and their implications. 

YUFA will be holding weekly drop-in zoom information sessions for members, on Wednesdays at noon, with Executive and Bargaining Team members present to answer members’ questions.

Unprecedented in the history of York University, the Employer is offering YUFA members no increase in salary for this year. The Employer’s proposal of a deplorable average of 1.93% over three years is far below recent settlements in the university sector and below the rate of inflation.

Posted on YUFA’s website are YUFA’s 2024 bargaining proposals as tabled with the Employer.  The Bargaining Update of July 5  provides context for our salary proposal of 4% per year.

In our bargaining sessions so far, the Employer has turned back YUFA’s proposals on improving disability accommodations. They have proposed that YUFA accept  many concessions, including:

• Weakening dispute resolution procedures.
• Increasing decanal veto power in the process of approving and establishing of unit workload standards and documents.
• A new option for the Employer to require faculty to share offices.
• Freezing Professional Expense Reimbursement (PER) amounts and limiting PER carry-forwards year-to-year.
• Freezing Computer renewal program (CRP) expense amounts at $1500 every 5  years rather than every 3 years as at present, and limiting carry-forwards to future years. 
• Freezing Internal research grant and conference travel funding and removing any carry-forward of unspent funds to future years.
• Limiting rights of teaching stream faculty to apply for transfer to the professorial stream.
• Increasing teaching loads for teaching stream faculty to 3.5.
• Limiting YUFA consultation rights on restructuring initiatives.

YUFA believes that good faith negotiations are the appropriate way to reach a fair settlement.  We will defend our Collective Agreement, and we stand strongly behind our Bargaining Team.