November 2, 2015 Volume 45, Number 5

KEEPING CONTROL OF OUR PENSION PLAN

As you may know, CUASA and other campus unions are part of a single pension plan. The plan is
overseen by a joint committee, with representation from the employer, the participating unions and the non-unionized employees.

Currently, we all benefit from provisions in the CUPE collective agreements which limit the ability of the pension committee (and by extension the employer) to make changes to the pension plan without the agreement of the effected unions. CUASA does not have this kind of language, and the employer is aiming to remove it from the collective agreements of all CUPE locals, starting with CUPE 910.

In its negotiations with CUPE 910, which represents the skilled trade workers who maintain Carleton’s facilities, the employer partially removed one of the safeguards protecting our plan.

Although employees hold the majority of the seats on the pension committee, removing any of these safeguards will make us more vulnerable to the employer pushing changes through the pension
committee. The employer will need only need to convince the union reps on the committee to agree, and there will be no requirement to also convince the elected leadership of each local that the changes are in their members’ best interests.

As each of the unions who are part of our pension plan enter negotiations, we all have a stake in
preventing the employer from stripping away a provision that protects all of us.

For more information about the fight to protect our pension plan, contact [email protected].

PENSION PLAN MORTALITY TABLE UPDATE

Members of the pension plan will have recently received a letter from the pension committee regarding an update to the pension plan mortality table. Although the change only impacts the money purchase version of your pension, it still has the potential to have a significant impact on your retirement.

Members should review the letter from the pension committee carefully and should contact the
pension staff in Human Resources with any questions.

COLLECTIVE AGREEMENT SPOTLIGHT: “AFTER HOURS CONTACT”

We would also like to remind our members of one of the new provisions in the workload articles of our new collective agreement. According to Articles 13.2 (g) and 13.4 (a, viii):

There shall be no expectation that faculty or instructor employees will respond to email or phone calls from students between the hours of 5:00 PM and 8:30 AM or on weekends.

CALL FOR PAPERS: OCUFA STATUS OF WOMEN COMMITTEE

The message below is sent on behalf of Helene Cummins, OCUFA Status of Women Committee Chair:

Click here for a call for papers for a conference to be held at the University of Waterloo from June 14-16, 2016. This interdisciplinary conference will focus on the role that the Post-Secondary Education sector can play in ending the erasure of women’s lives and experiences.

The OCUFA Status of Women Committee would like to encourage wide participation in the conference.

Any questions about the conference can be directed to OCUFA Status of Women Committee member, Diana Parry.

REMINDER: VACANT CUASA POSITIONS

CUASA is currently recruiting a Chair, Grievance Policy and Administration, a Chair, Equity and an
Instructor Representative on our Steering Committee.

In addition, the following departments have vacant positions for representatives on CUASA Council:

• Architecture/Industrial Design
• Biology
• Chemistry
• College of Humanities/Greek & Roman Studies/Religion
• Computer Science (2)
• Earth Sciences
• Electronics/Civil and Environmental Engineering
• History
• Instructor Rank Members (3)
• International Affairs/EURUS
• Journalism and Communications
• Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (2)
• Physics
• Psychology (2)
• SLaLS
• Sprott School of Business (2)
• Sociology and Anthropology
• Studies in Art and Culture
• Systems and Computer Engineering (2)

LAST MINUTE COURSE CANCELLATIONS

In our previous issue we had a section on course cancellations, this is an important issue which you should be aware of. For more information on this please see the last issue.