These guidelines represent policy adopted by the UWOFA Board of Directors; they represent what your Board is expecting of all Bargaining Unit members. The decision to honour or break a strike is the individual’s own. This is something that neither the Association nor the Administration can decide for you.

Q: What does it mean that UWOFA has set a strike deadline of November 9, 2018 at 12:01 a.m.? 

It means that unless our negotiating team reaches a tentative settlement by this date and time, or a settlement seems imminent, unionized faculty at Western will go on strike.

Q: What is the rush? 

We have been in negotiations since June, with over 25 bargaining sessions completed, and have been through both mediation and conciliation. We believe our actions have been measured; we have only arrived at this point because all other efforts have failed. Moreover, in a strike situation, timing is crucial to ensure that strike action is as effective as possible – and the more effective strike action is, the shorter strikes tend to be. Once confirmation was received that a No-Board Report was filed with the Labour Ministry on October 23, 2018, we were able to calculate that we would be in a legal strike position on November 9, 2018 at 12:01 a.m. UWOFA’s executive has since confirmed this date and time as our strike deadline.

Q: Have negotiations been suspended? 

No, UWOFA negotiators continue to work hard at the negotiating table to arrive at an acceptable collective agreement. Please stay tuned for an announcement from the UWOFA president on November 8 about whether we will be striking. We remain cautiously optimistic that we can reach an agreement without having to strike.

Q: Have UWOFA faculty ever set a strike deadline before? 

Yes, in 2010 UWOFA set a strike deadline of early November if sufficient progress was not reached in faculty negotiations. UWOFA and the university administration were in conciliation in October, and a tentative agreement was eventually reached a few hours before the strike deadline. In 2011, UWOFA’s librarians and archivists were out on strike for approximately 2 weeks before a settlement was reached.

Q: What concrete preparations has UWOFA made for a possible strike on November 9, 2018? 

* UWOFA has moved to its strike headquarters and we are now ready with pickets, transportation, finance and all other aspects of strike preparation. If you have yet to fill out this strike questionnaire, please click here to do so as soon as possible. If you have yet to sign up for picket duty, please go here or visit the “Strike Resources” portal at uwofa.ca for the link to do so.

* UWOFA will receive $1 million from the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) Defence Fund, and will use this money and our significant reserves to provide strike pay of $125 a day seven days a week, beginning on the fourth day of a strike, for all unionized faculty who withdraw their services and participate in strike duty. This pay is tax-free and without deductions. Please check the Strike Resources page for more information about strike pay.

Q: Where is the UWOFA Strike Headquarters? 

It is located at 611 Wonderland Road North, on the southeast corner of Oxford and Wonderland in the former Rexall building. There is ample parking.

Q: Will I still have access to my Western email if we go on strike? 

Yes.

Q: Will my benefits continue during the strike? 

Yes. UWOFA has confirmed with the employer that your benefits will continue to be paid during a strike.

Q: I am a part-time faculty Member. Will I also be on strike? 

UWOFA represents all full-time non-clinical faculty members, and all part-time non-clinical faculty members who have had full responsibility at least equivalent to that associated with teaching a half University degree credit course in each of two of the last three fiscal years. If you are currently working as a Member of the faculty bargaining unit represented by UWOFA, your last earnings statement will show union dues are being deducted.

* If you are a Member of the faculty bargaining unit, you are eligible to receive the same strike pay as full-time faculty members ($125 per day, seven days a week, beginning on the fourth day of a strike), provided that you withdraw your services and participate in strike duty.

* If you are not a Member of the faculty bargaining unit at this time, you would not be on strike, and therefore should continue to fulfill your contractual obligations and should also continue to receive compensation from the University for your work.

Q: I meet the definition of a part-time Member but am not currently teaching. This means that I am a Member with ‘Preferred Status’ under the current UWOFA contract. Will I also be on strike? 

You are eligible to receive the same strike pay as full and part-time faculty Members ($125 per day, seven days a week, beginning on the fourth day of a strike), provided that you withdraw your services and participate in strike duty. If you are not certain of your Preferred Status membership based on past teaching, please contact UWOFA to check.

Q: I am a part-time faculty member who teaches distance courses and I am not in London. How can I participate in the strike? 

If you are a member of the faculty bargaining unit, you should withdraw your services. Please contact UWOFA at uwofamembership@gmail.com to find out what kinds of strike duties can be performed by members who are not in the vicinity of London.

Q: I am a full-time faculty member, but I am currently on leave from the university. Will I be on strike? 

The strike protocol agreed to with the employer stipulates that the following groups will be considered non-participants in the strike and will continue to receive salary and benefits from the university.

* sabbaticants,

* people with modified alternative workloads,

* persons on approved sick leave, and pregnancy, parental or adoption leave;

* persons on pre-approved paid leave of absence (including compassionate leave), court leave, education leave, and exchange leave

If you have questions about your status please email uwofamembership@gmail.com for clarification.

Q: May I continue to do those parts of my job that don’t involve teaching, i.e., go to conferences I have already scheduled, conduct research, write manuscripts, vet applications, and so forth? 

As a striking worker, you are asked to withdraw your labour from the normal work of your bargaining unit; this includes any of the work described as Academic Responsibilities, as modified and reflected in your unit’s Workload description, and/or individual agreements you may have. If you report it on your APE, then it is work for which you are paid, and it is expected such work should not be performed during a work stoppage. The UWOFA Board has decided that attendance and presentations at conferences will not be considered strike breaking if one can demonstrate that those commitments were made before the strike date. Please email uwofamembership@gmail.com if you have any questions about your eligibility.

Q: I have responsibilities on campus such as lab experiments at a crucial phase, animals and plants that must be cared for, or special events that require my attendance. What should I do? 

Picket passes will be made available to individuals under these circumstances on a case-by-case basis. Contact uwofamembership@gmail.com with requests and questions.

Q: I have: a manuscript to finish/ a boatload of Tri-Council grants to review/ letters of recommendations to write… What am I supposed to do about all of that? 

Do what you can before the strike starts to minimize any lasting consequence of a strike action on others: write those letters of recommendation now; finish reviewing that MS; contact editors/grant administrators and explain what could be going on in the event of a strike. What you choose to do once a strike begins, however, is between you and your conscience.

Q: What about internal and external grant deadlines? 

The employer has agreed to extend deadlines for internal grant applications occurring during the period of a labour disruption to a publicized date beyond the end of any labour disruption action. They have also agreed to seek extensions to deadlines for external grant applications from external granting agencies should the deadline fall within a period of a labour disruption.

Q: My Dean/ Associate Dean/ Area Group Director/ Department Chair/ School Director has contacted me and asked/demanded that I cross the picket lines to attend a meeting/conduct classes. What should I do? 

Any such request is or could be seen as a violation of Ontario Labour Law, which holds that the Employer or its designates may not take any action that could be seen to force, threaten, or coerce an employee into abandoning a job action. If these requests are made verbally, ask for them to be made in writing. If you receive a summons from an Area Group Director, Program Director, Dean, or whomever to discuss “the Unit’s policy regarding a job action,” do not attend any such meeting without a colleague with you. If you get a knock on your office door, say you are unable to discuss the matter at this time. You are under no obligation whatsoever to help the Employer (your Dean, Area Director, Program Director, etc.) minimize the effect of the Association’s job action on the work of your unit. Contact the UWOFA Professional Officer at uwofa@uwo.ca immediately if you have concerns about this.

Q: How will UWOFA know if I’m doing these things anyway? 

It won’t. This is between you and your conscience. Your employer may wish to micromanage you; UWOFA does not want to do so.

Q: What if I get an email from a granting agency/ journal editor/ scholarly association during the strike? Can I even respond? 

Of course you can. But we recommend that you advise them that you are on strike, and, as a result, you will not do reviews or assessments during the period of the strike and will likely not be able to meet any deadline that falls within a period of work stoppage.

Q: My TAs and RAs are asking me if they should continue teaching or doing the research duties I assigned them. What should I tell them? 

GTAs are members of a separate bargaining unit with a collective agreement that does not have a reciprocity clause – they do not have leave to honour our strike. Neither you nor UWOFA are their employer. Unless their Employer arranges otherwise, your GTAs must continue to meet their contractual obligations to the extent they are able to when you are not there to supervise their work and there are no lectures being given. You should not provide new material for use in tutorials or tests to your GTA in anticipation of or use over the period of the strike.

With respect to RAs, they are typically paid from one of your research grants, again it is between you and your conscience whether you will allow this work to continue. That being said, your RA will not be on strike and rightfully would expect to be paid for the period.

Q: I have a student preparing to submit her dissertation in December for a late January exam. What should I do? 

It is the responsibility of the employer to ensure that it meets the university’s fiduciary obligations to the student. This means, in short, that it is the employer’s problem to do things like waive or pro-rate tuition fees in the event that a protracted work stoppage prevents students from completing degrees. SGPS has recently advised us that if thesis exams are postponed into the next term as a result of a strike, students will not be required to pay tuition for that term.

Q: I saw Professor Rockefeller cross the picket line this morning. Should I report them to somebody? Write them an angry email? 

UWOFA would deeply regret the actions taken by Professor Rockefeller as they are actively undermining what the strike is intended to achieve: a decent and fair settlement. If you feel comfortable engaging with Professor Rockefeller and telling them about UWOFA’s issues, please feel free. Of course, any such engagement must be done respectfully and civilly. UWOFA does not endorse reprisals of any kind against any member of the bargaining unit for any reason.

UWOFA has asked a provincially appointed conciliator to file a “No-Board” Report with the Ministry of Labour. Conciliator Greg Long received the request October 15 following seventeen days of negotiations since June. Your bargaining team requested the report after the employer rejected a number of proposals aimed at providing more job security for contract academic staff and improved compensation for all faculty members.

“We hope the ‘No-Board’ request will help spur progress at the negotiating table,” said UWOFA president Dan Belliveau. “Faculty teaching in contract positions deserve better. Their working conditions are the learning conditions for students, and that’s why our negotiating team remains committed to pursuing a fair and equitable settlement.”

A “No-Board” request does not mean that negotiations have ended or that they have reached an impasse. Negotiating dates are scheduled for October and the parties are arranging additional dates into November.

Members of the faculty bargaining unit voted 94% in favour of giving the negotiating team a strike mandate. UWOFA anticipates being in a legal strike position by the week of November 5.

Please click here for more information about the meaning of a No Board, and stay tuned for more information about the progress of negotiations in the days to come.

A provincially appointed conciliator, Greg Long, will join your negotiating team and the employer at the bargaining table beginning this Thursday, October 11. Additional conciliation dates have been scheduled for October 12 and 15.

The role of the conciliator is to confer with the parties and endeavour to reach a collective agreement. The conciliator has no authority to impose a settlement.

The appointment of a conciliator does not signal an unwillingness to negotiate, nor is it a declaration of an impasse. In recent years, conciliation has been a normal part of collective bargaining. It is a service provided by the Ontario Ministry of Labour at no cost and it is aimed at facilitating an agreement.

What’s next?

There are three paths to a collective agreement using conciliation services:

• The two parties could come to an agreement through conciliation.
• The parties could agree to continue with negotiations without third-party assistance after some conciliation sessions with the possibility of returning to conciliation at a later time.
• The conciliator could file a “no board” report if he determines that the two sides are unable to reach an agreement.

Seventeen days after the conciliator files a “no board” report with the Ministry, a lockout or strike is legally possible. Your negotiating team continues to work hard at the table to achieve a fair and equitable collective agreement and defend the university’s core mission of quality teaching and research.

What are the issues?

The university’s 2017 financial statements report a $139.9 million surplus for the past fiscal year. Western can easily afford to invest in the university’s core mission of teaching and research. And yet, on the frontlines, some contract faculty have lost their jobs, while many others still lack meaningful job security. In addition, the administration’s salary proposal for all faculty members fails to keep up with the rate of inflation. All of this is happening at a time when huge reserves make these choices unnecessary.

Compensation and benefits

As of 2016, based on the latest available UCASS data, Western sits at 11^th place in the province in terms of average full-time salary for its professors. In the current round of negotiations, the administration has offered a 1.25% scale increase for all faculty, part-time and full-time, in the first year and 1% in each of the remaining three years, for an average of 1.1% scale increases over four years. Given recent settlements at other universities (1.5% at Guelph, 1.7% at McMaster, 1.75% at Queen’s, and 2.6% at Waterloo), if the administration’s offer is accepted, Western’s salaries are certain to fall even further behind our comparators’ in the years ahead.

Job security for contract academic staff

The administration has rejected all of UWOFA’s proposals to improve job security for contract academic staff – our colleagues with limited-duties (LD) and limited-term (LT) appointments – including conversions from LD to LT, and from LT to a proposed new continuing teaching appointment (CTA) category.

Click here to read a previous Bargaining Bulletin on the issues.

The UWOFA membership has voted 94 per cent in favour of strike action to strengthen bargaining goals during faculty negotiations.

Thank you for your overwhelming support. Your strong expression of support for your negotiating team will empower them to work toward the best contract possible as we enter conciliation in October.

If conciliation is not successful, the Board of Directors is now authorized, based on the recommendation of your negotiating team, to call a strike when and if it is deemed necessary. An additional vote will not be held. Please refer to previous Bargaining Bulletins for a list of frequently asked questions about what a strike vote means and for more on the remaining issues.

Next steps

A positive strike vote does not mean there must be a strike. A provincially-appointed conciliator will join your negotiating team and the administration side at the table on October 11, 12, and 15. UWOFA remains hopeful a fair and equitable settlement can be reached through the conciliation process.

If the two sides are unable to reach an agreement, the conciliator could file a “no board” report with the Ontario Ministry of Labour, 17 days after which a lockout or strike is legally possible.

Your negotiating team continues to work hard on your behalf to reach a fair and equitable collective agreement and defend the university’s core mission of quality teaching and research.

Last week, UWOFA announced that a strike vote will be held for members of the faculty Bargaining Unit. Please see below for some frequently asked questions about the strike vote process. For more details about the process and, most importantly, the issues that remain on the table, please plan to attend a Bargaining Unit meeting on Thursday, September 20 at 9:30 a.m. in the Law Building, Room 52.

What is a strike vote?

A strike vote is a way for the membership to indicate their support for the work of the negotiating team and their stand on the issues.

What does a “yes” vote mean?

Voting “yes” expresses your support for the team and gives them more leverage at the table during conciliation because it provides the association with the ability to call a strike.

What does a “no” vote mean?

Voting “no” indicates your desire that the negotiating team accept what is already on offer from the administration.

Are we on strike after a “yes” strike vote?

No. A strong “yes” vote does not mean we automatically go on strike. Any decision to go out on strike has to be made by the UWOFA Board of Directors on the recommendation of the negotiating team, and will come only after all other options have been exhausted. The Board may also consider other kinds of labour action (rotating strikes, one-day strikes, work to rule) if/when there appears to be no other way to reach an agreement.

Can I vote online?

Only if you have already registered to vote online because you are away from campus or cannot for other reasons. Otherwise, as a show of solidarity, voting takes place in person at designated places and times around campus from September 20-21 and September 24-26.

Is there a second vote to go on strike?

No. A positive strike vote delegates authority to the Board to decide based on the recommendation of the negotiating team.

What issues remain unresolved?

Crucial issues that remain and will be addressed during conciliation are compensation and benefits for all faculty members, and job security for contract faculty. For more detail please read past Bargaining Bulletins.

What happens if conciliation fails?

If the conciliation process fails to produce a result, both sides can continue to bargain without the presence of a conciliator, or either side can ask that the conciliator file a “no board” report stating that they are at an impasse. A strike or lockout is legally possible 17 days after the report is filed, but it is important to remember that neither is required. The two sides can keep trying to reach a deal after a “no board” report has been filed.

Is UWOFA financially prepared?

Yes. UWOFA has approximately $4.9 million in reserve to pay our members in the event of a strike. In addition, the Canadian Association of University Teachers’ (CAUT) Defense Fund contributes $84 tax free per calendar day for each member after the first three days of a strike. UWOFA’s Board can decide to top up this amount.

As you know, UWOFA and the employer jointly filed a request to appoint a conciliation officer with the Ministry of Labour on Friday, August 30 in an attempt to bridge remaining differences at the table in negotiations for a new collective agreement for the faculty bargaining unit.

While some progress has been made since bargaining began in June, several issues remain that a conciliator can help move along. These issues include the employer’s offer of an extremely low scale increase of 1.25% in the first year and 1% in each of the remaining three years. This offer is below the rate of inflation, thus effectively amounting to a pay cut. It is also below the scale increases that our colleagues at Ontario comparator universities (Guelph, McMaster, Queen’s and Waterloo) will receive. The proposal on the table would cause Western faculty to lag even farther behind counterparts at comparator universities.

In addition, the employer has rejected all of UWOFA’s proposals to improve job security for contract academic staff – our colleagues with limited-duties and limited-term appointments – as well as almost all of UWOFA’s proposals to improve benefits, the pension plan, and other retirement provisions.

Your negotiating team is committed to reaching an equitable collective agreement that supports and defends the university’s core mission of offering high quality teaching and research comprehensively, across the university. As UWOFA has repeatedly demonstrated, the university is not suffering financially; in fact, the annual surplus for the fiscal year ended April 30, 2017 was almost $140 million. The administration’s low compensation offer is not necessary during a time of overall financial health.

Conciliation is simply the next step in the collective bargaining process, whereby a third party can help the two sides reach agreement. Your team will make every effort to reach a negotiated settlement via the conciliation process.

What is Conciliation?

The Ontario Ministry of Labour appoints a facilitator who may act as a mediator between the two parties in order to try to reach a settlement. It will likely take a few weeks before the conciliator joins the negotiation process. Your negotiating team believes that the request for conciliation will help focus discussions and support efforts to bring about an equitable settlement.

Negotiations with the administration to reach a new faculty collective agreement have continued to move forward since we last updated you in June. The process is paused now for a one-month summer break.

The tone between the two sides remains collegial. Both sides have presented all of their proposals, including initial compensation proposals, and agreement has been reached on a number of smaller articles. The last bargaining sessions took place on July 17 and 18, with mediator Greg Long present. Further meetings are scheduled for the week of August 20.

Your negotiating team is working hard to achieve the best deal possible for faculty. We will update you again later in August.

Discontinuing the use of student questionnaires on courses and teaching for personnel decisions such as promotion, tenure, annual review and hiring is one of UWOFA’s goals during this round of faculty collective bargaining.

When used as a means of providing formative feedback to teachers, student questionnaires can help teachers make improvements to their course and their teaching approach. They can also affirm that particular classroom strategies were successful and be a source of motivation for teachers to continue in successful approaches. There is little debate in the literature as to the benefit of student questionnaires for such feedback.

However, the use of student questionnaires for career-shaping decisions raises serious concerns about how faculty teaching is evaluated. Indeed, an arbitrator recently ruled that student questionnaires cannot be used to measure teaching effectiveness in promotion and tenure decisions at Ryerson University. William Kaplan ruled in favour of the Ryerson University Faculty Association and ordered its Faculty Collective Agreement be changed to reflect the decision, which included other measures. Moreover, the literature on faculty evaluation shows that there are problems with student questionnaires in terms of bias. A 2015 study found implicit bias in students of an online course who were asked to rate both a male and female instructor in different sections of the course (MacNell, Driscoll, and Hunt 2015). Both faculty members assumed two different gender identities: male and female. Students gave higher ratings to the male identity, regardless of the instructor’s actual gender.

“This study demonstrates that gender bias is an important deficiency of student ratings of teaching,” the authors note. “Therefore, the continued use of student ratings of teaching as a primary means of assessing the quality of an instructor’s teaching systematically disadvantages women in academia.”

Both male and female students show that bias, Moehring noted, “and indeed we know that implicit bias is not something within men that’s harboured against women – it’s something that we all have the potential to carry.” Each single evaluation may have a subtle bias to it, she added, but that subtle bias at every step along the way can compound across the course of a career. This is particularly troubling for contract faculty members who focus primarily on teaching.

The literature on faculty evaluation also clearly shows that no single data source can allow one to make a reasonable assessment of an individual’s teaching. Other data sources, such as self-reports or ratings by colleagues, are better able to assess aspects of teaching such as the course design, delivery methods, appropriateness of course materials, or grading standards. Without these additional sources, student questionnaires cannot provide a reasonable and accurate reflection of teacher effectiveness and student learning. A 2016 meta-analysis of student questionnaires unequivocally found that “students do not learn more from professors with higher student evaluation of teaching ratings” (Uttl, White, and Wong Gonzalez 2016). Those researchers suggest that universities whose primary focus is student learning should give minimal weight to student questionnaire ratings, but that universities may want to emphasize such ratings if their focus is on student perceptions or satisfaction.

For Moehring, the effectiveness of a professor’s investment in teaching should not be measured using a flawed or biased instrument as it undermines a core devotion of most professors.

“I care deeply about the teaching that I do,” Moehring said. “Like most professors, I invest significant time and effort into my courses in order to make complex material clear and engaging.”

Work Cited

MacNell, Lillian, Adam Driscoll, and Andrea N. Hunt. 2015. “What’s in a Name: Exposing Gender Bias in Student Ratings of Teaching.” Innovative Higher Education. Accessed June 12.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10755-014-9313-4.

Uttl, Bob, Carmela A. White, and Daniela Wong Gonzalez. 2016. “Meta-Analysis of Faculty’s Teaching Effectiveness: Student Evaluation of Teaching Ratings and Student Learning Are Not Related.” Studies in Educational Evaluation. Accessed September 21, 2016.
dos:10.1016/j.stueduc.2016.08.007.

Faculty collective bargaining began on Wednesday, June 6, with your UWOFA negotiating committee meeting with the Administration’s representatives for several hours to exchange initial proposals.

Ten days of meetings have been scheduled between now and July 18. This includes three days of pre-scheduled mediation in mid-July, in an effort to arrive at an agreement in a shorter time than in prior rounds of bargaining.

Your Negotiating Committee

Jeff Tennant, Chief Negotiator
French Studies

Johanna Weststar, Deputy Chief Negotiator
DAN Department of Management & Organizational Studies

Ann Bigelow
DAN Department of Management & Organizational Studies

Cindy Cossar-Jones
UWOFA Professional Officer

Kristin Hoffmann
Western Libraries

Jamie Johnston
English & Writing Studies

Steve Lupker
Psychology

Beth MacDougall-Shackleton
Biology

Warren Steele
Information & Media Studies