Bargaining Update #10 & 11
The AMUSE bargaining team met with McGill again on September 29th and October 5th. These sessions continued discussions around member information in our monthly lists, disciplinary and administrative measures, due process, and an exploratory discussion about probationary periods.
September 29th:
We started with some progress on Article 9 (General Provisions), largely talking about the info McGill provides to the Union about our members.
The Employer confirmed that they were able to provide information on whether a member is a McGill student or if a position is Work Study. Because this information is stored differently within their systems, they still need to work out what they will look like, but we successfully secured this data to better understand our members and identify workplace issues.
However, they are still not willing to provide info on gender. Your bargaining team continues to insist on the importance of this information, for understanding the makeup of our membership and for our responsibilities around issues like pay equity and equality!
We also continued pushing for a separate list of terminated Employees. Currently, we cannot identify this in our lists, and this is not a sustainable way for us to ensure your rights are protected and monitor worker contracts. McGill has provided this information in the past, so we maintained that a clear terminated employee list should be included going forward.
A significant portion of the session was spent discussing Articles 14 and 15, which cover disciplinary measures, investigations, administrative measures and dismissals, something very impactful to AMUSE members in the present and future.
We are pushing for clearer and more consistent procedures around disciplinary measures. Different hiring units (like SHHS and Athletics, as an example) can have different practices, and AMUSE members can sometimes work for several different units at the same time. We want the collective agreement to make sure that when disciplinary measures happen, the communication is clear, and union members are not left caught up in the decentralization.
We spent some time discussing “suspensions pending investigation”, which should be PAID, and that is your right. But this is complicated for the nature of AMUSE work, because casual workers often don’t receive their schedules well in advance. A member could technically be “suspended with pay”, but if their future shifts have not yet been formally scheduled, they receive no pay during their suspension, which is punitive in nature, and we find this to be unacceptable. We decided to leave the discussion for when we get to articles that are monetary.
In Article 15 discussions, we maintained that we want communication regarding administrative dismissals, a standard notice that most unions receive, including ones at McGill. The Employer maintained that they need flexibility to manage employees and were not prepared to accept our proposals.
October 5th:
We returned to Articles 14 and 15 after revising them based on some of McGill’s concerns, in hopes to find a common ground. Despite those changes, the Employer told us they believe we have hit a wall on several parts of these articles, and suggested we park them for the time being.
The AMUSE bargaining team raised concerns with this.
Throughout bargaining, we have brought forward workplace problems that you, our fellow union members, have raised to us, as well as problems created by HR’s decentralized structure. We have been told that these issues need to be addressed locally, through individual departments and hiring units, rather than addressed through changes within our collective agreement. We disagree with reducing recurring problems affecting members to localized issues.
The collective agreement is exactly where consistent procedures and protections belong. Good relationships with local HR units, and central HR units can help, but they are not a substitute for enforceable rights. Managers change. HR Representatives change, even the Union Leadership changes. Members shouldn’t receive different standards depending on where they happen to work while sharing the same Employer.
AMUSE recognizes that the Employer has management rights. However, being a unionized workforce, means that those rights have a system of accountability via procedures and protections in our collective agreement.
We have decided to park these articles, to move on with others, but these issues are not resolved.
We moved into an exploratory discussion on Article 18, regarding probationary periods.
This discussion was more productive, and both sides agreed on one major point: that the current probation system is difficult to track, and does not work very well for the huge variety of schedules that AMUSE members have. Under the current language, employees pass probation after either working 120 hours in an academic term or working in three academic terms over five consecutive academic terms.
The Employer acknowledged that the current system is difficult to administer and that some casual employees are not being properly tracked. This is also something AMUSE has seen from the member side of things. Members do not know they have passed probation unless they are specifically told.
We discussed different ways to balance these concerns, and no final formula was agreed to, but we agree the system must be reworked.
We finished the session by introducing Article 20 - The Posting and Granting of Assignments. Our proposals focus on clearer job postings, timelines and hiring procedures, The Employer plans to get back to us at our next bargaining session on October 27th!
Do you want to attend one of these sessions as a member of AMUSE?
Do you have info you want to share on your experiences with probation, discipline or job postings?
Send us an email to outreach@amusepsac.org!
