BUFA Statement on Grant Mitchell’s CBC Interview
and Dr. Poff’s Communiqué of November 1

Dr. Poff claims that BUFA is making “financial demands that stand in the way of a settlement.”

BUFA’s most recent salary position met the Employer’s commitment to limit the salary increase to 4.4% over the three year contract, though BUFA proposed that arbitration be invoked to determine if a further increase is viable for the third year of the contract.
 

Dr. Poff claims that “BUFA has steadfastly refused to recognize the provincial mandate.”

BUFA has repeatedly requested that the Employer produce written evidence of the alleged mandate, but they have not been able to do so. While the NDP government did issue wage restrictions for the provincial civil service and Crown Corporation workers, this does not apply to universities. University staff are not civil servants. Universities are not Crown Corporations. In fact, BUFA undertook to search independently for evidence of such a mandate for universities. After a lengthy search, during which numerous government departments and individuals were contacted, we received confirmation from the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Advanced Education and Literacy, and the Council on Post-Secondary Education (COPSE) that no such mandate exists. 
 

Dr. Poff claims that BUFA refused to meet with Lloyd Schreyer, “the Province’s representative responsible for compensation in universities.”

Lloyd Schreyer, a former management negotiator at the University of Manitoba, is currently Secretary of the Compensation Committee of Cabinet. He holds no responsibility for compensation in universities contrary to Dr. Poff’s assertion. He is responsible for Crown Corporations and the civil service, but he holds no mandate to impose (or even suggest) wage restrictions for universities. COPSE has repeatedly denied that Lloyd Schreyer has any influence on the council, and any statements he made about university wage settlements would exceed his authority and represent an infringement of the institutional autonomy of universities. According to the Mediator, Michael Werier, Mr. Schreyer had been in discussions with the Employer prior to the offer to hold a conference call with BUFA on 26 October. BUFA refused the offer to discuss the purported mandate with Mr Schreyer, requesting instead that Mr Schreyer submit his comments in writing. We have not received any response to this request, written or otherwise. In any event, as Kathy McIlroy, BUFA’s lawyer advised, BUFA is negotiating with BU, not with the provincial government.
 

Concerning the University’s Pension Plan, Dr. Poff claims that the University must “pay $3.12 million into the plan each year for 15 years.”

According to the requirements of pension legislation, the actuarial position of Brandon University’s pension plan must be evaluated every year when the solvency ratio falls below .9, and any required payments must be adjusted accordingly.  It is exceedingly unlikely that the required solvency payments will remain at their current levels.  BUFA’s last proposal offered salary arbitration for the third year of the contract in order to accommodate these uncertainties. The Employer refused this offer.

Furthermore, BUFA offered to end the strike if the Employer made a commitment to place any “solvency savings” (generated if the required solvency payment fell below 3.12 million dollars) into the pension plan. If, as the University has claimed, this money was intended by the Employer solely for pension purposes, they would have no reason to reject this commitment. In fact, they did.

Instead, Dr. Poff states that the Employer has proposed a “salary supplement,” should pension payment requirements fall below $3.12 million. This is inaccurate. On their proposal, if the payment falls below 3.12 million, the Employer would make a one-time payment to the Professional Development Allowance (PDA) available to BUFA members. PDA is a fund which members use to purchase books and equipment, attend conferences, travel for professional purposes, etc. Every tangible purchase from the allowance remains the property of the Employer.   By analogy, in any other industry, it would be like saying that you have been given a “salary increase” when the employer agrees to give you the use of a new filing cabinet or work gloves.

Dr. Poff claims that “no member of the University administration, including the bargaining team, has ever stated that the BU faculty are ‘inferior’.”

The actual, verbatim exchange (which took place at the  September 13 bargaining session) on this point was reproduced in BUFA Bargaining Bulletin #7. It reads as follows:

In commenting on these proposals, Dr. Grills stated that the current QXR language was reflective of Brandon University’s “institutional past,” while the Employer’s proposals are appropriate to the Employer’s vision of “Brandon University of the future.” He added that the goal of the Employer was to bring Brandon University up to the “national standards of comparable, peer institutions.”

BUFA then asked the Employer the following question: “Is it your view that the present complement of faculty at Brandon University is inferior to that of our peer institutions?” The Employer responded, “Yes.” This response was immediate, unqualified, and un-revisited during the remainder of this session. BUFA then asked what empirical evidence the Employer had to support this view, to which the Employer responded, “We’ll get back to you on that.”

Dr. Poff claims that “the University proposed changes to the collective agreement at the outset of bargaining, most of which were of a housekeeping nature.”

At the beginning of the bargaining process, the Employer introduced 80 pages of revisions to the current collective agreement. They opened every article except the Preamble. Even their 40 pages of so-called “housekeeping” issues proposed changes to the CA that went well beyond the shift to gender neutral language (which BUFA agreed to immediately). As a whole, the Employer proposed rewriting most of the criteria and procedures governing appointments, tenure, promotion and so on. After many hours over many sessions of working through these proposals at the table, it became apparent to BUFA that these proposals would do substantially more harm than good. BUFA ultimately succeeded in convincing the employer to withdraw almost all of them.
 

Dr. Poff claims that “now there are no outstanding University language issues.  The outstanding issues are BUFA’s.”

This statement is demonstrably false.  Language issues surrounding technologically mediated (e.g. web-based) courses are still being negotiated.  This is the Employer’s initiative, not BUFA’s.
 

In his CBC Radio interview, Grant Mitchell, lawyer and chief negotiator for the Employer, claims that BUFA has said ‘no, no, no’ to the Employer’s offer of Conciliation, Mediation, and Arbitration.  

BUFA willingly co-operated with conciliation, and BUFA, not the employer, requested mediation on Oct. 21. Moreover, BUFA’s last proposal offered salary arbitration in year three, an offer the Employer rejected.   

Mr. Mitchell continues to suggest BUFA should accept the same terms that were accepted by the University of Winnipeg and the University of Manitoba. He claims that the terms that he is offering are “based on the same funding, based on the same tuition figures, the same grant increases that the other universities got.”

This claim is false.  The Collective Agreements of the three Winnipeg-based Universities expired a year before BUFA’s collective agreement. These other faculty associations negotiated their contracts in a different economic and fiscal environment. In March 2011, after the Winnipeg universities had already reached their new agreements, the Manitoba government announced a 5% increase to the grants of all Manitoba universities in each of the next three years. 

Each university is unique: Other settlements reflect the differing needs and requirements of their respective institutions. Note that on other matters, such as total compensation and workload, the Employer does not make comparisons with the Universities of Winnipeg and Manitoba where professors typically teach less than those at BU and on average receive close to $10,000 more than professors at Brandon University.

BUFA Negotiating Team