On Monday, March 8, the Bargaining Team met with the Employer. We would like to thank members in the room for attending as observers, as per our open bargaining practice.
The Employer had two counters to our Nursing proposals (see the Union’s latest proposal package here):
- A definition for Clinical Course Directors (Proposal #22 and 23, U2 10.04.02);
- Eliminating the proof of Practice requirement (Proposal #25, U2 11.01.3)
- This proposal, while renaming the requirement as “current practice qualifications”, still requires our members to demonstrate an arbitrary 144 hours of service on top of their up-to-date qualifications confirmed by the College of Nurses of Ontario.
The Employer also rejected the following Nursing proposals:
- Training and Professional Development Overwork (Proposal #24, U2 10.05.8): The Employer considers training to be part of the existing contract duties rather than over-and-above already paid hours.
- Penalty for Late Offers of Appointment (Proposal #26, U2 11.13): The Employer sees this as compensation under Bill 124, and argues that timeliness of offers of appointment for practicum placements are outside the Employer’s control.
Further, the Employer argued the following in response to two of our proposals:
- Authorized Replacements (Proposal #29, U2 15.03.1): The Employer argues that language around authorized replacements does not apply to Clinical Course Directors in Nursing.
- Workload and Class Size (Proposals #30-31, U2 16.03.1 and U2 16.03.1 (a)): The Employer sees these as compensation under Bill 124.
In response, the Bargaining Team stated the following to the Employer:
- The Union disagrees with the Employer’s broad understanding of the scope of Bill 124; and that even if the Union was in agreement, that does not mean that a proposal cannot be discussed for being within the scope of Bill 124;
- The absence of authorized replacement language means that Clinical Course Directors are penalized for emergencies, and effectively prevented from accessing entitlements such as sick leave as per the Unit 2 Collective Agreement;
- The Union’s Nursing proposals address long-existing issues that have been exacerbated by the pandemic;
- Proposals around Nursing issues and Unit 3 job security are core priorities of CUPE 3903 for this round of bargaining, and that we are extremely disappointed to see the Employer’s reluctance to engage with them.
- At our next regular bargaining session (March 19), we will be offering a counter-proposal to address the ongoing misclassification of Graduate Assistants as Research Assistants.
Next Meetings
Members are encouraged to join us for our upcoming bargaining meetings with the Employer. Dates and exact times of all meetings can be found on our calendar here. Please register in advance. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with a link to join the meeting.
Members can also get in touch with the Bargaining Team for questions and comments.