Please see the following six (6) announcements:
1. The next YUFA Members’ Zoom drop-in session is on Wednesday, September 18, from 12:00 noon to 1:00pm. The topic for the session is “Restructuring” and we especially encourage chairs and program directors to come, but all members are welcome. The Zoom link can be found in the YUFA-M message with the same subject line as this news post.
2. York University students and workers unions will l hold a rally on September 25 from 11:45 am to 1:00pm, with the theme of Reclaiming York for Students and Workers. The rally will begin in front of William Small Centre and conclude at the Kaneff Tower.
Last year hundreds of York community members attended a similar rally and we hope to have more this year. Please consider wearing your YUFA t-shirt if you have one (t-shirts will also be available for distribution at the rally).
Sign-making for this event will take place at the @CUPE3903 space in 143 Atkinson on Wednesday September 18 (12-2 pm) and Thursday Sept 19 (5-7 pm)!
Please join educational workers across #YorkU for rally prep!
3. The deadline to submit remediation work forms stemming from additional work incurred by YUFA members due to the CUPE 3903 strike is September 30, 2024. Please see here more details.
4. Many deans have been cancelling courses with lower-than-normal enrolment. Some deans have offered to decrease the Full Course Equivalent (FCE) associated with a specific course. For example, a graduate seminar course might be permitted to proceed with 4-7 students but at 0.25 FCE instead of the standard 0.5 FCE.
Please contact [email protected] if you have been informed – either explicitly or explicitly – that you must accept a lower FCE to teach a course to avoid the course being cancelled.
5. YUFA has received confirmation from the Employer that the salary adjustments to annual pay negotiated in the new Collective Agreement will be made in the October 2024 pay period. The retroactive payment for active YUFA employees is scheduled to be processed in the November pay period.
6. Recently three grievances that YUFA filed with the Employer were settled. YUFA is grateful for the work of YUFA staff in the successful resolution of these grievances.
The first grievance pertained to colleagues who accepted the Voluntary Separation Agreement offered in the March 18, 2022 Memorandum of Settlement for a renewal Collective Agreement. The grievance settlement provides a YUFA-administered fund to provide some level of remuneration to colleagues who continued to act as primary supervisor for actively funded masters and/or PhD students after their retirement date. YUFA will be communicating with members about this fund in the near future.
The second grievance concerned a series of six individual grievances around sabbatical credits at the time of appointment. Those impacted by this settlement have already been notified by YUFA.
The third grievance was regarding the health care spending account (HCSA) to which Postdoctoral Visitors (PDVs) have access. Previously the value of the HCSA was distributed in monthly installments, making it very difficult to make meaningful use of the benefit. Effective November 1, 2024, PDVs will receive the full allocation of the HCSA at the start of their contract. Existing PDVs will have the balance of the HCSA deposited November 1, 2024.