AN OPEN LETTER TO THE BRANDON UNIVERSITY BOARD OF GOVERNORSDecember 7, 2008
I am writing to you because of your membership on the Board of Governors of Brandon University. The Brandon University Faculty Association wishes that Board become aware of its positions regarding several recent issues at the University. The first issue concerns the payment of the "back to work settlement" of $2000 to non- union employees (exempt staff) of Brandon University. The "Back to Work Protocol" signed with the Faculty Association stipulated that "Each full time BUFA member, exclusive of those who were on sabbatical or other paid leave and sessionals, shall be paid a settlement amount of 2000 Canadian dollars. Part time members shall receive a pro rata portion of $2000." Post-strike back to work settlements are common in the Canadian University scene. They recognize the fact that faculty will, even if the term is not extended, finish teaching their assigned courses. This will necessarily require doing additional work in the remainder of the term. Also, a back to work settlement payment serves to replace wages lost during the strike. For these reasons, those BUFA members on sabbatical or other types of leave, who were deemed to be non-combatants during the strike, and who did not indicate otherwise, did not receive the back to work settlement. This is completely reasonable in that they were paid normally during the strike, and technically never left work, and so were not going "back to work". The administration may have referred to the back to work settlement payment by some other fanciful name when it was proposed that it be given to non-union personnel, but its origin is in the "Back to Work Protocol" where it is referred to as a "settlement". Therefore it is a "back to work settlement" payment. (A copy of the Back to Work Protocol is attached.) BUFA would like to know what possible moral and fiscal arguments exist for giving a "back to work settlement" payment to non-union management employees who never left work in the first place, and were paid normally during the BUFA strike. In addition, we would like to know the total cost of doing so. The second issue is the recent decision of the Board of Governors to extend the changes to the pension plan recently negotiated by BUFA to all other members of the Plan. This action tells us that these changes were both necessary and affordable. It also raises the question of why a 17 day strike was necessary in order to achieve these changes for BUFA members. As we understand it, the University has well over 400 employees, about 220 of whom are full-time BUFA members. In order to fund the pension improvements for BUFA members, the University will be putting about an extra 5% of their salary, or about $800,000 per year (5 x $160,000) into the Plan on an ongoing basis. Extending the improvements to all other Plan members (both union and non union) will likely cost a relatively similar amount. During negotiations, BUFA received advice from an independent actuary that it was entirely possible to have different groups of members in the same pension plan who receive different benefits and for whom different contributions are made. i.e. BUFA was bargaining only for BUFA members. If the Board of Governors was fiscally able to very quickly extend BUFA's recently negotiated pension plan improvements to all Plan members (even those not currently in contract negotiations), why was not a portion of that money available during contract negotiations with BUFA? If it had been, BUFA believes that the strike could have been averted. The third issue concerns the intention of the administration to elect an exemption from special solvency deficiency payments into the Brandon University Pension Plan. BUFA is opposed to such an election for many reasons, some of which are elucidated in the two attached Question and Answer documents. Please read them carefully. Also attached is a copy of a letter of opposition which was sent to members of the senior administration and the then Chair of the Board of Governors, Jake Janzen, in October of 2007. Obviously, the Board and the administration should have been aware of BUFA's concerns for quite some time. BUFA would also like to remind Board Members of Article F.7.4(a) which states "No changes or amendments shall be made to the Brandon University Pension Plan or the Trust Agreement for that Plan without the prior approval of BUFA." A grievance has been filed and you will have received an electronic copy. (An extra copy is attached for your convenience.) The amount of any solvency deficiency is unknown at this time, and will remain so until a valuation is completed. The recent negotiated improvements to the Plan are supposed to be the trigger for the valuation process, but the registration of the changes with the Superintendent of Pensions has, as of this writing, to our knowledge, not taken place. We understand that the Pension Trustees, at their last meeting on November 19, 2008 were, themselves, concerned about the delay in registering the changes, and asked that it be done as soon as possible. There is concern that the improvements be officially recognized before a plan valuation is done lest the valuation reveal a solvency ratio of less than 0.9. Such may render the changes impossible under the University Pension Plans Exemption Regulation if a solvency election has been taken in the meantime. In addition, any future improvements such as raising the maximum pension to the legal level and keeping it there may become impossible in the future. The longer these additional changes are delayed, the more expensive they become. BUFA understands that the administration's desire to take the solvency exemption election is based on a fear that such payments may place the University in a dire financial state. If such a fear exists, why were the decisions taken to extend the back to work payments and the pension improvements to non BUFA personnel in the absence of any bargaining processes? It must also be remembered that a solvency exemption does not excuse the Employer from funding any "going-concern" deficiencies, so a solvency exemption is not a panacea for all pension plan ills. We believe that if senior administrators are/were worried about the effect of solvency payments on the financial well-being of the University, they should have approached BUFA instead of unilaterally starting the exemption process. The Employer's intentions relating to solvency deficiency were not mentioned by the Board of Governors negotiating team during collective bargaining, yet as soon as negotiations were completed, steps were very quickly taken to initiate the process. The Board should be aware of other provisions in the BUFA Collective Agreement which deal with financial exigency, and the need to reduce salary costs. Of course, they require "rigorous economies in all other segments of the budget" and "all other means of alleviating the difficulty" to have been undertaken. (We won't repeat the discussion of the fiscal decisions mentioned above and we won't get into a discussion of the logic behind funding relocation expenses for an employee who is leaving rather than arriving.) Subsequent action prescribed by the Collective Agreement involves the release of all budgetary information used in arriving at the decision, and negotiations between the Union and the Employer. By putting in motion the solvency exemption process, is the Board of Governors signaling that financial exigency exists or may well come to pass in the near future? If so, BUFA would like to hear from you. We have raised a number of questions in this letter and we await your responses and any additional comments that you would care to make. BJF:mb |
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