Faculty strike at U of L after negotiations break down
By Lethbridge Herald on February 10, 2022.
Herald file photo by Al Beeber
Picketers carry signs along University Drive during the University of Lethbridge Faculty Association strike in February.Al Beeber – Lethbridge Herald
The University of Lethbridge Faculty Association is on strike. Pickets went up after the 11 a.m. Thursday deadline for a resolution came without any breakthroughs in negotiations between the union and the university.
Faculty association president Dan O’Donnell said “it’s a sad day” for the university as passing motorists honked their horns.
Negotiations continued through Thursday morning after the ULFA gave 72-hour strike notice on Monday morning. The two sides had met through their bargaining teams throughout the week and O’Donnell had expressed earlier the union’s hopes that a strike could be averted.
But it wasn’t to be.
A failure to come to agreement on management rights as well as salaries were among the issues which prompted the strike after two years of negotiations, O’Donnell said Thursday.
The university announced on its bargaining page Thursday that negotiations had broken off because of the strike.
“The University met with ULFA as recently as this morning in an attempt to find resolution,” said the university.
“The association’s choice to take job action follows several bargaining sessions during which the University presented various settlement offers that included pay raises and protection of benefits and academic freedom. The University remains committed to negotiating a fair collective agreement with the University of Lethbridge Faculty Association (ULFA).”
The university said during the strike that students won’t be able to attend courses, have assignments or examinations or engage in any faculty-supported activities unless supervising faculty members are excluded through an essential service designation.
“We’re asking for stuff like we both contribute to the benefits plan but they completely oversee it and won’t tell us anything about it, said O’Donnell.
“They told us that was completely incompatible with the way they work around here which is true. They tell us what they’ve invested in and we have no idea if this is the best deal. We just don’t know anything,” he said before a press conference on University Drive.
Financial compensation is also is an issue with the faculty earning between eight and 17 per cent less than counterparts elsewhere, he said.
“The members of the University of Lethbridge Faculty Association are researchers and teachers first and foremost, that’s what they love to do,” O’Donnell told a contingent of media near the main entrance to the university, adding when students graduate they remember their teachers, not their provost.
“We’ve been trying for two years to reach an agreement. Ninety-four per cent of our members voted for our mandate that basically just asked for respect from the management at the university and to address long-standing losses that we’ve seen in terms of income. Unfortunately from the management side, they’ve seen this as being all about management rights. In fact the last thing they said to us as we left the table was ‘we can’t budge on management rights and it’s going to be a long strike’,” said O’Donnell.
“We simply do not understand the burn it down in order to save it approach that management seem to be taking. We really do hope that they’ll consider the position, think about the students and really work with us to come to the kind of settlement that most other universities are able to do. It just seems very unfortunate for this first strike we’re having that there’s just no space to find that agreement we all need,” he added.
The association’s roughly 500 members are being asked to picket three times a week for three-hour shifts during the duration of the strike, O’Donnell said.
A strong contingent of picketers lined University Drive early Thursday afternoon near several entrances to the school.
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20-19
Could the faculty be more selfish and tone deaf? Private businesses and workers are being shut down. Public employees, including teachers, are staffing up with no pay cuts and actually getting raises that are retroactive in most cases! And it is not that they can really teach as they won’t allow students in their own school! Media reports confirm they fear getting sick despite being vaxed to the max! But I guess this “vax” is different, it has no real positive effect. Just like them?
Could you be more ignorant of the facts? U of L faculty have experienced reductions in salary due to inflation, accepting a salary rollback (the only one in the province to do so), and no increases for almost a decade, no retroactive raises, loss of faculty and increased workloads. Far behind our comparators. How much worse do you want our city’s university to become? Oh, and the pandemic, the public health measures, and mandates were not the faculty member’s doing either. Get a grip on reality.
“Media reports confirm they fear getting sick despite being vaxed to the max!” Which media reports are those? Love to read ’em/watch ’em/listen to ’em! Can you send me the links? Thanks.