FAUW is happy to announce that we have reached a three-year salary settlement with the University administration, effective May 1, 2021.
This round of negotiations posed some unique challenges: meeting via video conferencing, the added stressors of the pandemic, and the unusual constraints of Bill 124, which restricts the University’s total spending on compensation to a 1% increase each year for three years.
Despite these challenges, we’ve achieved a well-rounded settlement with significant improvements for our members, including our first eye-care and compassionate care benefits, and a significant expansion to bereavement leave, especially for the (hopefully very rare) cases when a member's spouse or child dies.
One of our objectives was to improve working conditions for lecturers and the settlement includes a change to the Memorandum of Agreement to allow lecturers teaching all three terms in a year to carry forward two weeks of vacation each year that will not expire until their next non-teaching term. FAUW president Dan Brown notes that “we’ve begun making significant gains in improving the working conditions of lecturers in the last few years, and this is just one more step in an ongoing effort that will continue with our work on policies 76 and 77 this year.”
The settlement also includes a promise to start collecting equity data on faculty (a project that is already underway) by the end of 2021, including with respect to race and Indigenous identity, and a promise to do a salary anomaly assessment after that data has been collected with retroactive salary adjustments if needed.
We are particularly pleased with these compassionate care and equity items and would like to thank the many FAUW members who have informed, encouraged, and supported our efforts on these fronts, both within and beyond formal negotiations.
Kathy Hogarth, special advisor to FAUW on racism and anti-racism, remarks that “the move to collect equity data is a significant step on the part of the university that is long overdue. While seemingly small, this act sets in motion a series of other positive steps attending to the equity needs of our members.” Jay Dolmage, chair of FAUW’s Equity Committee, adds that “it is encouraging to see the University commit to employment equity beyond gender. Waterloo will join peer institutions in identifying and resolving additional systemic inequities in University salary data on the basis of (and not limited to) race, ethnicity, and Indigeneity."
Dolmage also notes that “establishing Waterloo's compassionate care and bereavement policies could also have a positive impact on equity. For example, women disproportionately take on caregiving responsibilities and experience the consequent impacts to advancement, productivity and, over the course of time, compensation. Caregiving and bereavement are also clearly connected to mental health and wellness. Changes to policy may help to alleviate some of these negative impacts."
“We are extremely grateful to our negotiating team,” says Dan Brown. “They should be very proud of what they’ve achieved, especially given the negotiating conditions. Congratulations, Bryan, Linda, and Mary!”