Pre-Bargaining Update – May 19

May 19, 2021

Pre-Bargaining Update – May 19

As mentioned in our previous update, we served a counteroffer to the Employer’s proposed Memorandum of Agreement as part of discussions for the next collective agreement. We received a response from the Employer last week, and since then your CUASA Negotiating Team has been meeting regularly to determine our next steps.

We are pleased that the University has indicated a willingness to accept some of CUASA’s proposed items, and the counter we received was worth consideration from CUASA’s team.

We sought further clarification from the Employer on some of the proposals in their most recent counter, and our team has been hard at work on the Union’s response.

As we’ve previously mentioned, these pre-bargaining discussions have been a means of trying to expedite this round of collective bargaining. That said, this is a time-sensitive phase, which we have extended primarily due to the pandemic situation.

CUASA’s Negotiating Team will be providing the Employer with its counter tomorrow. The next steps for the team will be to review the University’s response and make the determination of whether we should continue pre-bargaining negotiations or if we should proceed immediately to regular bargaining.

As always, updates will be passed onto the membership as they become available.