Sunday, October 5, 2008

BUFA negotiators, Employer negotiators and their respective legal counsel met together and separately yesterday, beginning at 1:00 pm. These sessions lasted for the next twelve hours.

Initially, the Employer agreed with the BUFA position on Article 3.10 which states that the Employer "shall make reasonable efforts to provide appropriate office space to sessional members which should include a telephone and a computer." After this concession by the Employer, little progress was made.

In the next half hour, the BUFA position on Article 7.16 dealing with violations of the 12 credit hour overload and sessional limits were discussed, along with ways to deal with the search for the position of Campus Recreation Director. Initially we thought that agreement in principle had been reached, but subsequent discussion showed that the Employer was attempting to introduce language that was less than the status quo.

Then the topic changed to financial matters. Mr. Lamont stated that the BUFA position was far too ambitious from a cost point of view, and that the BUFA proposal cost twice that of the Employer's offer. Lamont asked us to make significant compromises to reach a figure that was closer to what they had on the table.

Once again, abdicating its responsibility to bargain, Lamont expressed the desire to proceed to binding arbitration on financial matters. BUFA again refused, insisting that we attempt to bargain to reach an agreement. In BUFA's view, arbitration is an abrogation of the responsibility to bargain.

Mr. Lamont was then asked "Are you saying that we have to reduce our costs as you calculated by more than half and that this is not negotiable?"

Mr. Lamont replied, "That is correct." He went on to state that "What you are asking for is extraordinary."

In the interests of keeping talks going, and on a without prejudice basis, the BUFA negotiators decided to try to assemble a position which would go half way to the Employer position. This involved trying to "find" approximately $1.6 million.

BUFA identified several areas which may be of lesser priority including the mandatory replacement of positions and most sabbaticants. BUFA also introduced a 55% reduction of tuition and fees for dependents of members as opposed to a full waiver. In addition, we challenged the costing of the Employer position on the costs of moving the ceilings up by one step per year, and the cost the Employer had included for fringe benefits.

BUFA returned with total savings to the Employer of $1,487,002.

Mr. Lamont suggested that BUFA drop the replacement of any sabbaticants and that the Employer would never consider waiving tuition and fees for dependents of BUFA members.

If BUFA dropped these from its proposal, the total savings would be (by BUFA's calculations) $1,690,238.

However, Mr. Lamont challenged BUFA's assertion that the Employer had overestimated the costs associated with raising the ceilings and associated with costs of fringe benefits on the salary increases.

He stated that "there was no value to our calculations" because we came up with lower numbers than the Employer. We explained that for raising the ceilings, that we had taken the lists of members and their salaries which had been supplied by Human Resources and counted the number of members at or near the ceiling of each rank, used the increment size for the appropriate rank, and added up the numbers. We offered to supply Mr. Lamont with the names of these members so that he could check our calculation. Eventually he accepted such a list form the BUFA lawyer and we hope that he will do this calculation and satisfy himself that the Employer has overestimated the cost by over $225,000.

We also asked how he had calculated the cost, since his costing was about twice that of BUFA's. He responded that he did not know, but that Deb Berkan had done the calculations. He did not know the details and stated that she was likely unavailable.

On the issue of the Employer estimate of the costs of the fringe benefits on the salary increases, Mr. Lamont seemed slightly more knowledgeable about how the calculation was done. Perhaps that was because of the presence of Mrs. Smith, the Director of Human Resources in the Employer's conference room. Mr. Lamont explained that the Employer added all increases related to salary and then took 15% to arrive at the cost of the increased fringe benefits on the salary increases. I.e. They added up the costs of changing the course credit for Field Experience supervision, parental leave, replacing sabbaticants, raising floors and ceilings, scale increases, service increments, the cost of moving the increment date to April 1 from July1, and the increase in sessional rates. Then once a grand total was achieved, they took 15% of that number and added it to the cost of the package.

There are several problems with this method. First, increasing salaries have no cost implications for Blue Cross or dental. It doesn't matter how much a member makes. The costs for these remain the same. We believe that the only benefits which are salary dependent are the Employer's pension contribution (nominally 7 ½ %) and life insurance premiums. Therefore BUFA used what we consider to be a generous 8% and calculated a savings of $268,371. In addition, since overload payments are not pensionable, even more savings should result.

Mr. Lamont, however, refused to accept BUFA's assessment, even though he could plainly not explain the validity of his 15% surcharge. (It is a number they have used for 15 years. Therefore it must be correct.)

If an extra member is hired, then the combination of dental, Blue Cross, life insurance, and pension may well cost an extra 15% for fringe benefits, but once a person is on the payroll, salary increases will not cause 15% increases in benefit costs.

Mr. Lamont concluded that, by his numbers, (which he still professed were the only valid ones), that the sides were still $2.3 million apart, and that BUFA would have to reconsider its proposal once again.

We asked if the Employer had anything in the way of a new financial offer for us, and they replied that they did not.

We thanked Mr. Lamont for wasting our time and retired to our conference room.

Through our legal counsel, we conveyed to the Employer's negotiators that we expected a new financial proposal from them by Sunday morning. After some further discussion, BUFA negotiators adjourned to get some sleep at about 1:00 am.

BUFA entered into this resumption of negotiations in good faith in an attempt to explore ways in which a Collective Agreement could be reached. We believe that we have done so. The Employer, however, is using the same tactics that we have seen all along. In fact, BUFA hasn't had a serious offer since Thursday September 25, 2008.

Talks are scheduled to reconvene at 11:00 am Sunday October 5, 2008.