Thank you to everyone who attended our Annual Meeting on October 24! These meetings serve three purposes:
- To accomplish some legally required business (sharing financial statements, announcing election results, that kind of thing),
- to provide updates on what we’ve done over the past year, and
- to connect with and hear from members!
This summary covers: Official business | President's report | Annual report highlights | Our new look | Draw winners | Q&A
To complement the updates that outgoing and incoming presidents Yessenia Guerrero and Lisa Habel shared during the meeting, we encourage you to check out:
Official business
Here’s what happened in the business portion of the annual meeting:
- The minutes of last year’s annual meeting were approved.
- UWSA’s treasurer Kosi Ike-Orji noted some highlights from our financial report and commented on the ways in which we’re putting money back into the membership:
- Responding to the high demand for staff enhancement grant by increasing the grant by $3,000 to fund projects fully.
- Budgeted an additional $2,000 to host informational and high-quality development workshops and opportunities and $1,000 to show gratitude and support to our volunteers.
- Doubling the sponsorship budget to contribute to projects and services we have with important partners across campus.
- HFK McRae & Wilson were appointed to conduct the review engagement on our finances for the fiscal year ending April 30, 2025.
- UWSA chair Gitanjali Shanbhag thanked outgoing directors Kelan Hirtle and Lillian Liao, and congratulated incoming president-elect Alyssa Kuron, new directors Gail Bender and Matthew Grant, and returning directors Kosi Ike-Orji and Ken Berry. Voter turnout was a record 41%.
President’s report
An excerpt from Yessenia’s final president’s report:
I can’t even begin to describe the amazing gift I have been given to be the 2023-2024 UWSA President. What an honor it’s been getting to know our campus community more intimately. I’m indebted to those who have supported me during my term, every kind word, every encouraging note. Thank you.
This month, I complete my term as the first visible minority (Latina, Mestiza) woman president of the Association. The importance of this milestone lies in the concept of representation. I hope to inspire others to go after their dreams and to be unapologetically themselves, even within systems or structures that don’t always embrace us.
This year has passed with many successes and I’m proud of the accomplishments that we have made. I’d like to think that under my term I helped to make UWSA more accessible to staff and our partners on campus. At the very least, I worked to bring awareness to our association, and at the very best, I’m happy to see so many staff actively involved and working together to create a better workplace.
Read Yessenia’s full report.
Annual report
Last year we announced three strategic priorities to guide us over the next three years: Advance Governance Excellence, Enhance Member Experience, and Outreach for our Future.
Here are just a few highlights from the report about what the UWSA Operations Team has been up to over the past year:
- We created an online toolkit and training material for directors and began a training program for the president-elect.
- We’ve done an initial assessment of where we stand on Excellence Canada certification requirements and submitted recommendations to the Board of Directors for better aligning our by-law with the MoA, the Ontario Not-for-Profit Corporations Act, and our values.
- Our Member Advisory Committee provided confidential guidance and support to more than 100 members this year.
- The Area Representatives Council has reps from 42% of departments, representing 44% of all UWSA members.
- Membership share is up 10.5 percentage points over this time last year (to 62%), with 2,029 members out of 3,284 eligible staff.
- We struck a Contract Staff Working Group to identify ways we can better serve staff in temporary appointments.
- We have increased our collaborations across campus, including with the Office of Indigenous Relations, the EDI-R Office, Organizational & Human Development, HR, FAUW, CUPE, and Sustainable Transportation.
Our new look
Based on our strategic plan and member feedback, we undertook our first brand update since 2009, enlisting Ranni Branding and Marketing to deliver a new, professionally designed visual identity. With its signature triangle shape hinting at both a megaphone and the celebration emoji—and literally breaking through the barrier of the letter A—our new logo represents our work amplifying staff voices, celebrating members, and helping staff grow and thrive. We also have a new colour palette and shapes. The new look represents our intention to be strong, celebratory, and forward thinking in all that we do.
Our "your voice starts here" tagline remains the same. We heard the concept of "a staff voice" come up a lot in conversations with members and in our member survey, and it really is the essence of what we do.
Prize draw
As always, we held a prize draw sponsored by belairdirect insurance. We have a partnership with belairdirect (formerly Johnson Insurance) that provides members with discounted rates and brings in some sponsorship money for the Association in return for promoting their services to members. All members who attended the meeting were entered to win one of three $100 VISA gift cards. Congratulations to Dean Perkins, Cody Miller-Sweeney, and Jessica Zimmerman whose names were drawn following the meeting!
Q&A
We were not able to answer every question we received during the meeting, but we’ve compiled questions and our responses here.
Is the UWSA privy to how the University is managing budget cut-backs?
To be clear, the University is a separate entity from the UWSA. We are not privy to confidential financial information, except what is divulged in the forum of the Provost's Advisory Committee on Staff Compensation. For information about the University budget, we encourage you to attend Board of Governors meetings, Senate meetings, and the town hall meetings like the one coming up in November to be aware of the University’s plans and strategies to combat its difficult position. It is our understanding that the University’s desire is to be transparent and collaborative with the campus community in resolving these issues.
Is there any movement on switching our pay to twice a month?
We advocated for and achieved a working group to evaluate options for pay frequency and are expecting a report from that working group to come to the Provost's Advisory Committee on Staff Compensation soon! We will advocate for a public report at that time. The group was instructed to consider a variety of options and perspectives.
Responses from members during the meeting:
- Not everyone supports moving to bi-weekly pay; this needs to be considered.
- Twice monthly pay won't help with 5-week months. If a move from monthly is desired, biweekly is better.
What is UWSA doing for contract staff who are often left out of its negotiations (e.g., re. pay raises)?
To be clear, the UWSA does not partake in negotiations. We work in harmony with the employer and engage in salary discussions that result in recommendations for the approval of the Provost.
Contract staff now make up 20% of our membership and we take seriously our responsibility to represent and protect these important but precarious workers. Contract staff are full members in the UWSA and eligible for all of our programming and services, but have historically been underrepresented in our membership and advocacy work. We know there is significant work to do on both increasing awareness of the UWSA among contract staff and understanding and serving the unique needs of these members.
To this end, we struck a working group of contract staff this summer that is preparing recommendations for how both the UWSA and the University can better serve and support staff in temporary appointments. Recommendations regarding University processes and policies will inform our advocacy efforts and will be shared with UW leadership. We are expecting this report in the next couple of months. We are also paying close attention to differences in member survey responses between contract and permanent staff.
Our salary discussions at PACSC affect the USG pay scale and therefore salaries for all staff positions. The University’s salary structure does not include contract staff in the annual increase system, but contract salaries are still based directly on the pay scale and new/renewed contracts should reflect any increases to the scale. Please note that the decision to not include contract staff in the annual increases lies with the employer.
Will drop-in sessions with the president also be offered virtually for staff working remotely?
Our meetings and workshops have remained largely virtual since 2020, but we are hearing through member polls that people are eager for more in-person events and conversation. For better or worse, most staff are now on campus some or all of the time and we want our venues for connecting with staff to reflect that. For accessibility reasons and to include our members working at all our campuses or remotely, we plan to continue with hybrid or virtual options for key member events, consultations, and meetings—including town halls and Area Representatives meetings—and you can connect with the president or other team members online at any time!
Now that you have social media, what is your marketing strategy to increase membership enrolment?
Our member survey showed us that most people join the UWSA for one (or more) of three reasons:
- they believe in belonging and/or contributing to the organization representing them in their workplace,
- they want to access discounts, or
- they want to be sure they have support if needed.*
We will continue to communicate with staff about the work that we do and the services available through a variety of channels, including social media. One of the most important ways we reach non-member staff is through you, our members, and especially our Area Representatives, and we encourage everyone to talk about our work and make sure that you have a representative from your department on Area Reps.
We have also increased our contributions to the Daily Bulletin, another valuable channel for reaching beyond our membership.
*See our Annual Report for the full breakdown.
How do we provide feedback on policies that are being updated?
You can send all your suggestions to the main UWSA email address (uwsa@uwaterloo.ca) or our online Suggestion Box, and they will be directed to folks working on these policies as appropriate. You are also welcome to set up a meeting with the UWSA president to share your feedback that way. The university also often conducts community consultation on policy drafts, which it has already done for Policy 33 (Ethical Behaviour).
Why we couldn't use free services of our members or have a contest to design the new logo?
While we are grateful to rely on a large team of volunteers for many initiatives, and did consider member involvement in this, we hired an external designer for this project for a few reasons. It was important to us to compensate someone for this specialized and time-consuming work; to bring in an outside, neutral perspective; and to avoid the messiness that can result from judging and potentially rejecting work done by volunteers.
We chose Ranni Branding and Marketing in particular based on their portfolio, recommendations, and affordable rate—plus a discount because of their Waterloo roots!
Questions and comments we will pass on to the University
We also received the following questions that we will pass on to the University. We recommend members submit questions about University finances to the budget town hall on November 18 by emailing budget@uwaterloo.ca.
- With the financial issues the university is currently facing, are our pensions protected?
- With regards to parking, there is an accessibility issue. For example the parking machine for EC5 building and other physical spaces is not close to the buildings, which creates an access barrier.
- I have heard of staff not being allowed to go on secondment due to the possibility of their regular position not receiving funding for back fill. Is this something that could be addressed with the Provost?
- There are numerous job losses since the budget cut announcement despite leadership saying "don't worry, jobs are safe/secure"....how do we repair this newfound sense of distrust?
- Will changes to parking lots come down in 2024 or be pushed into the new year?
