NEGOTIATIONS UPDATE IT'S DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN! This year's contract negotiations were preceded by an interview with President Van Loon in the Ottawa Citizen on March 27 -- the same day that the President reported on the university's finances to a closed session of Senate. The Citizen reported Van Loon as stating, "We've been through the bottom of the curve and we're on the way up the other side. We think we're not just a little way ahead of the others. We think we're way ahead." The President's optimism reflects a thirty month pension fund contribution holiday ($5.5 million of new income for the employer), avoidance of an anticipated reduction in provincial funding, and the windfall of a ten per cent increase in tuition. For the three years covered by the contract that management has proposed, the employer's projections of total income are now more than $32 million higher than the figures management gave us in negotiations at this time last year. How is management handling this increase in revenue? Apparently, as revenues go up, compensation is to go down. At a time when other universities in Ontario have seen labour action because of disagreement between faculty and management over the amount that compensation should be increased, management at Carleton is proposing a significant decrease to salaries and benefits. The following is a summary of proposals put forward by the employer and CUASA. Management's opening proposals include: 1) a cap on salaries of Associate Professors. Currently, Carleton's full Professors are the lowest paid in the province. Associate Professors receive average salaries in comparison to those at other institutions. Management's proposals will ensure that Carleton's Associate Professors join full Professors at the bottom of the provincial salary scale. 2) a reduction to health plan benefits while simultaneously transferring more of the cost of the plans from the employer to CUASA's members. Proposals include capping private duty nursing, making academic staff pay 50% of all premiums for Extended Health Care and Dental Plans, and making the employee pay the full cost of Group Life Insurance. This would cost the members of our bargaining unit $650,000 a year -- almost $1,000 annually per member, or $3,000 over the life of the contract. 3) the right to suspend our members without pay and without any due process for disciplinary purposes . 4) a reduction of the salary scale for the first two years of a three year contract. In the final year, the employer offers a 1% increase to scale. In addition, the employer wants CUASA members to take 27 days of unpaid leave over the life of the contract (9 days per year). That's 3.465% of your salary per year, or a total clawback over a three year contract of almost 10.4% of your current salary. If you are a full Professor earning $89,176 per year, you will be making an involuntary "donation" to Carleton of about $9,300 in "Ricky Days". If you are a new member struggling to get by on a salary of $40,000 your "donation" will be about $4,200. 5) Career Development Increments are no longer to be given as part of an orderly progression through the ranks, but are to be awarded or denied on a "carrot and stick" basis. In addition, management's position requires that our members forego the payment of CDIs for six months. This will cost our members $540,000. While this averages out to $800 per member, remember that our highest paid faculty receive no CDI payment, while the lowest paid receive $1,990. They would be out of pocket by $945 each. The employer has asked us to give up the following in terms of compensation in each year of the contract: Cap on Associate Professors $150,000 Benefit reductions $650,000 CDI reductions $540,000 9 unpaid days of leave $1,600,000 Coupled with other reductions in our compensation and savings achieved through such measures as making faculty proctor their own exams, this means that the employer is calling upon CUASA to give up 3 million dollars each year. Multiply that by three to understand what is being taken from us in these proposals. If you are at the top of the pay scale, you are out of pocket by over $13,000. If you are at the bottom of the pay scale, you will lose almost $8,000. Now, reread President Van Loon's comments and the following paragraph at the beginning of this newsletter. CUASA has proposed the following: 1) an increase in salary scale amounting to the Consumer Price Index plus 1%. This returns to the form of calculation used in previous contracts. In addition, each member is to receive a one-time payment of $1,500. Inflation over the period from May 1994 to April 1997 amounted to 5.7%. During this period, academic staff at Carleton have had no scale increases. According to management's own figures in Data Book 1996-97, the median salaries of full-time teaching staff at Carleton have been reduced from $78,649 in 1992-93 to $77,514 in 1996-97 (a loss of 1.44%). The actual median salaries are lower than that, as management's figures include the salaries of Deans. The 1% and $1,500 increases would constitute a small but significant gesture by the employer towards compensating us for the loss of actual salary and erosion caused by inflation. The lump-sum component would raise salaries of junior staff by a correspondingly greater percentage. Both payments are modest in relation to settlements elsewhere in Ontario. 2) CDIs continue unchanged -- no CDI holiday for management, and preservation of the concept of orderly progression through the ranks. 3) no layoffs during the term of the contract. 4) increase the Professional Expense Allowance from $600 to $1,000 per annum. 5) entitle each sabbaticant to receive up to 5% of the average salary of the bargaining unit as a travel grant. Together with some minor benefit improvements, management estimates that CUASA's opening proposals can be costed at between $2 and $3 million dollars over a simple extension of the current contract. In our view, negotiations were proceeding in a promising manner. Opening positions are not inflexible demands. They are points from which the two teams work towards a common agreement, with each side moderating its demands in a process of compromise. CUASA and the employer began with positions that were much closer together than those held by both sides in early bargaining for many years. Consequently, it was a surprise when management announced during the bargaining session of April 16, 1997 that it wished to proceed directly to conciliation. At this point, both sides have simply presented their opening positions and no actual bargaining has taken place. To state that negotiations had broken down to the point where the services of a conciliator were required is simply not credible. Readers of the Communique will recall that management used this tactic during last year's bargaining. Repeating their assertion of last year, management insists that conciliation is necessary to get a quick contract settlement. CUASA notes that management was in no great haste to come to the table. More importantly, conciliation is the necessary prerequisite to a lockout. After a lockout, our current contract no longer exists, and management can attempt to impose its terms on CUASA. Pursuant to management's actions, CUASA has only one means of levelling the playing field. On 22 April, CUASA Council voted unanimously in favour of the following motion: That Council approve the holding of a strike ballot at the discretion of the Steering Committee. CUASA's bargaining team and Steering Committee view management's proposals on the determination of CDIs, suspension without pay and its disinclination to bargain as consistent with the attempts at other universities to abandon collegial governance for management-driven administration. The disastrous consequences of this policy have been made evident at institutions such as Memorial, Manitoba, Trent and York. We urge management to reflect on their actions and return in good faith to the bargaining table. Despite President Van Loon's statements to the press, the health of institutions like Carleton is not well served by such tactics.