After the first Bargaining Meeting: From left to right: Sebastien (FNEEQ-CSN advisor), Alex (Observer, Biology TA), Jason (Elected Bargaining Committee Member, Geography TA), Ria (Elected Bargaining Committee Member, Philosophy TA), Lily (Observer, English TA), Colin (CREW Interim Bargaining Officer, Film Studies TA), Stephen (Elected Bargaining Committee Member, Design and Computation Arts TA), Zach (Observer, History RA)
Bargaining Newsletter #1 :
Concordia works because WE do.
After months of hard work and organizing, we are now negotiating with Concordia to win a better deal for TAs and RAs!
Session #1: Monday April 22nd, 2024
After a rousing send-off rally with some speeches, flags, and coffee, the CREW Bargaining Committee (BC) met with the University’s bargaining team for the first time to begin negotiations for our new Collective Agreement (CA)! This meeting mostly laid the foundations for future sessions: we made introductions, discussed logistics, and plotted a preliminary schedule for the next few months. We stated our intent to significantly revise our CA to bring it up to CSN standards. We also presented the list of demands adopted by the General Assembly and introduced the concept of open bargaining (where any member has the right to attend and observe negotiation sessions) with three non-BC members in the room.
Early in the meeting, Concordia began signaling an austerity position. They cited their “ongoing financial crisis,” foreshadowing that topics such as pay raises would likely be “challenging.” CREW fundamentally rejects this premise. If Concordia is in long-term financial trouble, this is hardly attributable to TAs and RAs, who have no direct authority over University administration and governance; why should we pay for it? Concordia works because WE do, and we need a deal that reflects the value of our work.
We concluded the meeting by agreeing to exchange documents regarding logistics and administrative protocols for bargaining, and to meet weekly until the end of June to make some substantive progress before summer.
Session #2: Tuesday April 30th, 2024
For our second session, we continued our practice of open bargaining with five observers in attendance and won a commitment from Concordia to proceed with hybrid open bargaining. The session mainly focused on a bargaining protocol document proposed by the employer regarding scheduling, file sharing, communications, and the structure of how negotiations would proceed.
We agreed with much of the spirit of this document, but found – in accordance with the general principle of most CSN unions – that signing it would contradict our mandate and be contrary to CSN's own best practices. Instead, we proposed a modified set of procedures, most of which were agreed upon relatively quickly. However, Concordia proposed several significant limitations on open bargaining, namely: capping the number of observers in the room and not allowing observers to attend online, as well as prohibiting non-BC members from speaking at the table. This was not something we were willing or able to accept.
After two hours of discussion and two caucuses (where each team speaks privately about the topic or proposal at hand) we were able to assure the employer that open bargaining would not be disruptive, but would in fact benefit negotiations. Both parties ultimately agreed to proceed without these limitations. With this common understanding established, we also confirmed the dates of our next sessions to make some real progress before summer.
We both agreed to start with a less-contentious topic: Union Rights and Security (which covers, among other things, member data and the union agreement on FRIS). More generally, we plan to negotiate non-monetary demands first, and monetary demands thereafter, likely in the fall.
You fought for open bargaining, now come and see it in action! We are very excited to get to work on our CA, and can’t wait for you to join us in the room. Let's go get the deal we need!
Sign up to attend negotiation sessions using the links below!
In solidarity,
The Bargaining Action Team