BARGAINING UPDATE # 5 & 6
May 26
The AMUSE bargaining team met in person with McGill again, with two days in a row scheduled. We started off with a caucus with our respective groups, since the last time we had met in person was the last day of March.
The Employer tabled a response to Articles 1,4,5 - These articles encompass what being a unionized workforce entails, and what our relationship to the Employer is.
We tabled our counter proposal for the open bargaining protocol, the document outlining what open bargaining will look like for AMUSE members wanting to attend bargaining sessions. We also tabled our counter proposals for Article 9 (General Provisions) to the Employer. While we had a month-long pause in between our last session, the AMUSE bargaining team spent a lot of time during that period forming these counter proposals.
In addition to that, we proposed getting more sessions of bargaining into the calendar. Members might have already noticed that bargaining can be a lengthier process, and so our priority is to get this done well, and promptly. Our additional dates are: July 6, July 23, September 30 - REMEMBER! If you want to attend any of these, you can! Reach out to us at outreach@amusepsac.org
During the session, one item we continue to get stuck on is the content of our memberlists. As a reminder, these are the lists we receive monthly that lets union leadership know who AMUSE’s current members are, and certain information about them that helps us ensure that we are fulfilling our duty to represent you and the rights surrounding your employment.
The items we are stuck on for our lists are gender, student status (whether members are students or not) and whether a position is work-study. The Employer insists on not providing it to us because of confidentiality. We want members to know that AMUSE is bound by the same personal data privacy laws as the Employer is. We want to be completely transparent about why it’s important. We want to properly assess pay equity for our members. You can read more about Quebec’s Pay Equity Act HERE, and an employer’s responsibility. At the moment, McGill holds all this data on our members and is doing a pay equity assessment with it - this is not data that we have in a transparent way. In addition to that, we want to be proactive about equity issues. The other pieces of data are important as well to understand the demographic that makes up AMUSE membership. It is not a secret that casual and precarious workers are facing enormous amounts of struggle in today’s economy. The more we can understand our membership, the better we, who are also AMUSE members, can defend you. The Employer called for their own caucus just before noon until the end of the day.
Union lingo that might be new to you:
Caucus: A temporary “break” that either the bargaining team, or Employer’s team can call for to confer in private. It is typically called to discuss a proposal the other party has made.
Pay Equity: Fundamentally, it means “equal pay for equal work”. The Pay Equity Act is intended to hold employers accountable to provide an equal compensation for the job performed, and address gender discrimination in the workforce.
Counter Proposal: When an initial demand is made in the process of collective bargaining, it is called a “proposal”. When the other party, union or employer, responds to that proposal, it’s called a “counter-proposal”.
May 27
We met again on Wednesday, the 27th to return to the discussion of the previous day.
After accepting a minor adjustment from the union's side, we agreed and signed a new Article 1, 4 and 5 featuring language about fostering and maintaining good labour relations and open dialogue, explicitly written requirement that the employer has to follow the law, that the employer will exercise its managerial rights reasonably, in good faith, and in a non-discriminatory manner, and redefining the union and its members' role within the university's mission and mandate.
Something that has come up multiple times in bargaining, is that a collective agreement is not just for HR and union leadership to read and interpret. The CA is also for members, first and foremost, but it also needs to be in clear language that any party who is subject to its provisions can understand. As you likely know, McGill has an enormous amount of managers, supervisors, and people with decision-making power over AMUSE members. They also come from many other places than Quebec, with different labour law and workers’ rights. We need clear language in our CA because we share these articles with those people when we are explaining to them the rights of AMUSE members.
McGill tabled their counter offer to Article 9 - General Provisions. They remain adamant to not allow the union to have info on gender (for pay equity assessments), student/non-student status, and work study status. This is allegedly due to privacy concerns, despite the union citing the data privacy laws for public and private institutions, and that this is directly related to our duty to represent members.
In good news, we did secure a new section, “total hours worked”, within our monthly memberlists. This allows AMUSE to verify more in-depth how many hours members are working, and can help us address more issues of precarity, or major changes in a workplace. Being proactive about labour disputes is our goal, as well! They disagreed about allowing external advisors access to campus to meet with employees, because of their interpretation of it. Our longtime staffer, Tricia, is included in this article, based on our interpretation. They continue to refuse revision on language about putting up union posters in workplaces. They also do not want to guarantee us an office space on downtown campus, although they state they don’t envision a situation where we would not have one available, they want to retain the right to move us with 3 months notice and to retain the flexibility of their campus real estate. They refuse to include explicit language against retaliation, stating it’s implied. However, implied or not, we are pushing to have this clear language in our CA going forward.
The union introduced new language for Article 36 (Technological Change). AMUSE would like to see the inclusion of organizational change - what is that? It means significant change on how your work is organized, assigned, or managed and directly impacts the working conditions of your employment. This can include restructuring, decentralizing, contracting out work, new work processes that significantly change your job, etc. We want the inclusion of organisational change as something that the employer has a responsibility towards casual employees for, along with specific language targeting use and inclusion of AI in the workplace due to its fundamentally different nature to other "technological changes" and widespread concerns of privacy, bias, discrimination, hallucinations, etc. in its use in a decision making process.
After a lengthy caucus, the employer's counter to these demands in Article 36 included:
0 language about AI, as they disagree about its impact and that any concerns are or can be addressed by Employer policy.
They conceded to providing notification about technological change.
They refused to add organisational change as the employer "does not want to hinder the flexibility they have with the AMUSE C.A"
These conversations are ongoing, and the bargaining team would like AMUSE members to know that you deserve stability, security, and protection in the face of the changing workforces of the world. This is our ultimate goal, and we will achieve it. Have you experienced any types of these changes in your workplace? Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us via grievances@amusepsac.org, even if you’re unsure but want clarity, this is what we’re here for, and we can continue to bring all your concerns to the bargaining table.
