An image of the printed version of the 2015-18 Collective Agreement and the 2015-18 Tenure & Promotion Documents

Dear colleagues,

As we move this summer into the serious work of negotiating a new Collective Agreement, members of the YUFA Executive Committee are pleased to share our aims with you, our membership.

'YUFA is all of us; York is all of us.'

YUFA is all of us; York is all of us.

Working with member feedback, we have put together a strong package of bargaining proposals to build a better university. They aim to deepen and expand commitments to Equity; ensure a more responsive, transparent, and open administration, in keeping with the spirit of the York University Act; restore open administrative searches; and recommit York to collegial governance.

Alongside these aims, we strive to better our working environment. Our ensemble of proposed improvements will make York a desirable place to work and a model of effective, socially committed scholarship and teaching. Good teaching makes a good university; we therefore seek commitments to a faculty complement adequate to the needs of our students. We seek to hire members of underrepresented groups. We seek job security and safe working conditions, good wages and benefits to better position York as a leading research and teaching institution over the coming years. We seek to catch up in areas where we have fallen behind, including benefits, pensions, medical coverage, support for colleagues with disabilities, and fair wage increases, to align York with comparable institutions in the field.

York University has long been committed to social justice, and YUFA will ensure that the practice of justice begins at home. We are working to reclaim community and collegiality. Through the process of Collective Bargaining, we will broaden, deepen, renew, and secure the just conditions that will restore the strength and resilience of our academic community. In this project, we stand shoulder-to-shoulder with colleagues across campus and with our students.

We invite the administration to join us in working to heal a fractured and hurting community. We favour restoration over recrimination. We reject divisive rhetoric and we reject the politics of hate.

All members of our community are entitled to a safe environment. York University has a legal requirement to maintain a safe workplace, where workers are free from harassment and discrimination. YUFA works every day—this is one of our most central missions—to ensure that the University honours these legal obligations.

YUFA members know that, should they be subject to harassment, bullying, or any form of discrimination, we will vigorously defend their right to a safe workplace. We trust that all members of the community enjoy the privileges of representation, should the University be negligent in ensuring their safety. We expect that any and all such complaints will be heard and handled with respectful dispatch.

We are committed to academic freedom. The threat of legal reprisals for forms of expression that might be contentiously characterized as disrespectful, intolerable, or even unlawful casts a pall over open, honest debate and may intrude upon academic freedoms. YUFA will do our part to defend the right of academic freedom on behalf of our members and on behalf of the integrity of York University.

'We envision York as a community of scholars, teachers, researchers, learners, and colleagues, united in our pedagogical and social commitments, secure in our work environment.'

We envision York as a community of scholars, teachers, researchers, learners, and colleagues, united in our pedagogical and social commitments, secure in our work environment.

You have spoken to us and we are listening. You have told us the kind of York you would like to see and shared what you believe to be the best tools to realize that vision. We are proud to serve as your elected representatives and will work hard to restore trust and collegiality at York.

Sincerely,
The Executive Committee
York University Faculty Association