But the boss of the association representing the faculty is concerned that the animosity caused by the lockout has damaged relationships between his members and school administrators.
The previous deal between the university and the faculty members had expired June 30. With the absence of a deal — and no deal in sight — labour strife ensued, and on Aug. 20, the university locked out the almost 1,000 unionized faculty members, including professors, counsellors and librarians.
Dalhousie Faculty Association (DFA) president David Westwood called the university’s decision to lock out his members an “aggressive” and unnecessary “tactic.”
A “major concern,” he said, is the potential damage to the relationship between the two sides.
“A lot of our policing of the collective agreement requires working closely with people in human resources and in senior administration, and we rely on good working relationships to solve problems, and that is going to be difficult — there’s no question,” said Westwood. “The approach that was chosen — and we were told it was a strategy on the part of the [Dalhousie] board to use the lockout as a way to deal with what was perceived as an inevitable impasse — we knew all along this was what they wanted to do, and that it was going to hurt our members financially.”
Westwood said DFA faculty lost around eight per cent of their salary for this year due to the lockout.
Dalhousie communications officials did not comment on what Westwood had to say in this regard.
Of course, Dalhousie’s Schulich School of Law was impacted, as well, seeing 39 of its faculty locked out with all the others. Westwood said that while all university programs are challenging, those such as law would be hit especially hard by a work stoppage.
“Any program like law that has professional elements that people simply need to learn — like, you can’t skip criminal law, you can’t skip civil procedure — there is content that needs to be covered. So, whenever you lose time because of a lockout or strike, that’s a problem. And the way academic schedules work, there are hard constraints because of the terms of the need for final exams. There aren’t a lot of areas where you can compress if you need to compress.”
Possible solutions, he said, could include using some of the fall break to make up the time, or to move the winter exam schedule further toward the Christmas break.
On Sept. 16, a tentative agreement had been reached by the two sides. The next day, 95.7 per cent of the DFA’s membership voted in favour of ratifying the tentative deal. Not long after, Dalhousie’s board of governors voted to do the same.
With a deal now in place, the locked-out faculty was set to return to work Sept. 18.
Classes will begin on the 23rd.
According to information from the DFA, the new deal will mean annual salary increases of 3.25 per cent, 3.35 per cent and 3.5 per cent over the next three years.
Westwood said “those numbers are comparable to what other universities have settled for — without having to go through a labour disruption.”
The deal also means an increase of parental leave “top-up,” certain “limited-term” positions being turned into “tenure stream/career stream” positions, and salary adjustments for “early career faculty” jointing the university at a rank other than full professor.
At one point during talks, the DFA had proposed wage increases of 3.75 per cent, 4.75 per cent and 5.75 per cent over three years, while the university proposed a two per cent increase for each of those three years.
In the end, Westwood said, the DFA and its members made gains in some priority areas and not as much in others — namely, expanded child care on campus, which he said would have benefited his members, as well as students and other school employees.
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