Today marked the first Area Rep meeting since last June. Thank you to all who attended; well over 90 of you took the time to tune in on Teams!
President Folland shared an update with those in attendance:
President’s Report to Area Reps
2020-09-10
Overview
Welcome back to the Fall 2020 Term! This will be the start a new school year like we’ve never seen before. A lot of effort is being made from so many of our community to welcome students back and provide them a positive experience. But it certainly has its challenges. While some staff are eager to get back into the workplace, others are very concerned. Balancing the needs of the workplace and the needs of employees is very tricky.
Equity, Diversity, Inclusivity / Anti-Racism
Given recent local, national and international focus on the concerns of systemic racism, even though this is an ongoing concern, myself and the Board, collectively and individually, are working to get ourselves more informed on these issues. This has included participating in a number of courses and workshops addressing anti-racism, unconscious bias and related topics. As a Board, we are looking at ways we can improve our own diversity and promote equity and inclusivity within our Board and our community at large. These are ongoing, active discussions at our Board meetings. We have also met with concerned members of our staff, the Black Faculty Collective, the Director of Equity, members of the President’s Anti-Racism Taskforce and others to get their perspectives. We are considered what we can do to better support anti-racism initiatives on campus and support any of our members facing such issues. We welcome any input from our community – staff, faculty and students.
Upcoming UWSA Elections
We will soon be putting out the call for our upcoming election. We will be looking to fill 3 Director positions and the President-Elect. We encourage everyone to consider themselves for one of these roles. The Board believes that there is strength in diversity, so consider adding your voice to our Board! Help continue the work to make UW a great, supportive place to work.
Look for the call for nominations. If you would like more information, please attend one of our two information sessions:
1) Friday September 18, 12-1
2) Thursday September 24, 12-1
Return to Work / Work from Home issues
As mentioned in my opening paragraph, this is a major concern for many staff. We are fielding many requests from staff asking about the issues surrounding the Return to Work process. At our Staff Relations Committee meeting later today, we will be reviewing a Work from Home request form. Even with Work from Home, there are the concerns of parents of school-aged children or those helping elderly parents that are an on-going issue.
Supporting the hiring of Co-op Students
I spoke to Ross Johnson, Executive Director for Co-operative Education. He let me know that while they are getting jobs for many co-op students, there down significantly from other years. I suggested that perhaps we could ask our staff members to help get out the word to “Hire a Co-op”. The federal government is provding up to 75% of the cost of hiring a co-op so this a great time for businesses to get access to world-class students. If you want to spread the word, please share the How to Hire a Co-op Student page with family, or on your LinkedIn accounts.
This particular link includes information to let them know that “the UWSA sent you”.
The UW “Thank You” Days
Many staff contacted us about the “Thank you” days that other universities were giving to their staff around the Canada Day and August long weekends. We raised this several times with University Administration. At first it didn’t seem like it was going to happen, but they did agree to do it, as you saw. A big note of appreciation goes out to the Associate Provost Human Resources, Marilyn Thompson, who championed for this to happen.
Advocacy
We continue to be very busy supporting staff through a variety of concerns, including terminations. Of course, we cannot get into the details, but we want our staff to realize that we do a lot of work helping staff at all stages of their career, including concerns with probation, performance management, reorganizations and, as mentioned, terminations. Gail, in particular, has had a very busy summer handling multiple issues. Your Staff Association is working hard on your behalf and for your colleagues,
Salary Negotiations
Next May will be the beginning of a new salary agreement. We are beginning the process now of negotiating that agreement. We will likely be constrained by current legislative rules, but we will be exploring what other issues we can address as part of the upcoming agreement. We welcome any input along those lines. One issue, for instance, we were exploring was that of our pay cycle, so we did a survey to gauge people’s interest in making changes from our monthly pay cycle.
Benefits Review
Right now we have a Holistic Benefits Review Working Group reviewing options for changes to our benefits plan. We have been involved with all of the employee groups (UWSA, FAUW, CUPE) as well as retirees, to look at what changes could be made and how they might benefit our members.
Governance
An on-going topic for the Board is to review how we are structured and operate as a Board. While this may not be a matter of much interest to many of our members, it can help us to ensure that we operate effectively and with clarity of purpose. We are considering some changes to how we are structured and are consulting outside expertise for their feedback and insight. We will share more details as we get closer to a full proposal.
Memorandum of Agreement
Also ongoing is our discussions for a revised Memorandum of Agreement with the University. While we feel we were fairly close to an agreement, Covid slowed us down. We are back at it, however, and feel fairly close to finalizing it. Once we have an agreement in principle, we will be sharing it with all of our staff and holding information sessions to discuss it further.
