The USFA is the certified bargaining agent for full-time academic employees at the University of Saskatchewan. It is responsible for negotiating terms and conditions of employment for USFA members, including salary, benefits, and collegial processes.
Our current Collective Agreement expired on June 30, 2023. The Agreement remains in effect until a new one is ratified.
Meet your Negotiating Committee.
Our last negotiations update was provided through a verbal report at the Fall General Meeting. Another verbal report will be provided at the upcoming Spring General Meetings on May 1st. We have had 16 bargaining sessions with employer representatives, and we have seven more sessions scheduled before June. We are keen to conclude in this … [Read the full update here]
With the term of the Collective Agreement ending June 2023, negotiations have been top of mind for
the USFA. Preparations over the year included:
We asked for feedback from the working groups, during meetings with groups of members, and through questionnaires about issues you wanted brought to the negotiations table. What we heard resulted in the following negotiations priorities: recruitment and retention of Indigenous faculty; inclusion, diversity, equity, and access; workload; working conditions of Instructors and Lecturers; and compensation including salary review.
Negotiations began in June and resumed after a summer hiatus. Stay tuned for future updates.
Indigenous Faculty Recruitment and Retention
An important part of our mandate is to develop proposals in support of recruitment and retention of Indigenous faculty. To that end, the first questionnaire distributed to members for this round of negotiations was to Indigenous members. The highest ranked item was language that would provide the right to have an Indigenous faculty member to advise search committees when Indigenous faculty are interviewed. We followed this up in a second questionnaire to all members, the majority of whom also strongly supported this principle. Our proposal at the table expanded such that, upon request, anyone conducting Indigenous Research, Scholarly, and Artistic Work (RSAW) may have a person knowledgeable of the incumbent’s expertise/contributions assigned to advise the search committee.
We also asked Indigenous faculty if they would prioritize having an Indigenous faculty member on collegial committees upon request. Here again, the questionnaire sent to Indigenous members showed strong support in favour of such a proposal, and the majority of the membership overall was also supportive. Our proposal at the table similarly expanded such that, upon request, anyone conducting Indigenous RSAW may have a person knowledgeable of the member’s expertise / contributions assigned to advise collegial committees.
There was strong support for new language to acknowledge and value equivalent Indigenous knowledge in collegial processes. As a result, our proposals at the table include a definition of Indigenous RSAW, teaching, and professional practice derived from and expanding on the definition of Indigenous research used now by CIHR and SSHRC.
Compensation and benefits
Members most strongly supported a salary increase linked to the rise in the consumer price index. In ranking benefits priorities, members identified dental coverage as the highest priority, followed by prescription drug coverage. A strong majority of members also indicated that an increase in the yearly Accountable Professional Expense Fund allotment was a very high priority.
In terms of special increases, members strongly supported the statement that the bases for award of
special increase are appropriate. They indicated a strong preference against a ceiling for special increases over the course of an employee’s career and also against a ceiling for the number of special increases an employee can receive over a three- to five-year period. By far the strongest support of USFA members in terms of salary review was the principle that the case of an employee who has marginally missed being awarded a special increase over several years should be prioritized.