The Bargaining Team (BT) for Units 1, 2, and 3 met for the fifth time on Tuesday May 16.
Agenda
1) Joint Health and Safety Committee Discussion of Bargaining Proposals and Priorities
2) Update from 3903 Executive on Unfair Labour Practice
3) Upcoming Meetings
Joint Health and Safety Committee Discussion of Bargaining Proposals and Priorities
Background
The joint health and safety committee is a joint committee with the employer responsible for ensuring the safety of our workplaces across both the Glendon and Keele campuses. It composed of 6 representatives from the union and representatives from the employer. Each union has its own health and safety representatives that meet regularly with the employer to do inspections and discuss safety concerns.
Ongoing Issues
- 3903 members on the committee are not getting paid on time, a lot of the time
- The employer is terrible with communication
- There is no feedback on work inspections
- When there are inspections, cooperation from the building manager is lacking
- There is a lack of member training. For example, 2 members are supposed to be certified but last year, the employer only provided training to one member.
- Issues of health and safety are often issues of accessibility and the employer does not take these issues seriously
- Some of these things we can hopefully put in our collective agreement and the things that are already in the CA, we can further strengthen through new language that holds the employer accountable.
Bargaining Priorities
The joint health and safety committee would like the BT to focus on language that creates a formal structure or series of guidelines that regulates the employer’s interaction with the committee. There needs to be structural guidelines including timelines around the issues of training, health and safety complaints, inspections, and pay which are enforced by collective agreement language to hold the employer accountable to the work being done by the committee. There was also a discussion regarding strategies for how to hold York accountable to maintaining a safe working and learning environment for all students and employees beyond just the membership of 3903.
Update from 3903 Executive on Unfair Labour Practice (ULP)
The executive of 3903 provided the bargaining team an update on the unfair labour practice complaint, and the exec and BT discussed how the ULP will fit into bargaining
Upcoming Meetings
The bargaining team will be meeting on May 30th for our anti-oppression training with our local’s equity officer.
The BT and the executive committee will be scheduling our first official joint meeting for the week of June 5th
Reminder that all bargaining team meetings are open to the general membership and more effort will be made to publicize these meetings on the events section of the website.