Negotiations
Compensation Negotiations Payouts: SFU LR has informed APSA staff about a technical issue with paying out the retro pay, which was supposed to be sent to APSA members in mid to late December. We will notify you as soon as we learn more!
Basic Agreement Bargaining: APSA and SFU are in the process of renegotiating the Basic Agreement. After a request by SFU to delay bargaining the Basic Agreement into the spring, we are working on new bargaining dates.
APSA has filed two grievances based on article 9.2 of our Basic Agreement. These grievances are for the professional development fund reimbursement payout for temporary members from our last round of bargaining and the University's aggregation of sick leave for concurrent illnesses. We are working to resolve these disputes with SFU.
Joint Compensation Review Committee: APSA received an arbitrated award in the 2015 round of negotiations from Colin Taylor. The committee is working together on items such as market comparisons, salary and other total compensation pieces as mandated by the award. We will have further substantive updates on this ongoing issue as soon as possible.
APSA advocates have several ongoing grievances and investigations on accommodations, return to work and hours of work. We can't give any details due to confidentiality issues. Please see this infographic on the Life of a Grievance to learn more about how the grievance process works.
Hiring Freeze
On December 4, all SFU employees received an email from Dilson Rassier outlining further budget cuts. SFU expects units to cut 5-8% in their budgets over the current and next fiscal year—negotiated increases to member's wages and benefits, however, are not affected. We're working vigorously to prevent member job loss and also learn more facts about the alleged state of SFU's financial health. We will update you as soon as we know more!
Pension
The University has given APSA, CUPE and PolyParty new administrative plan text to review, which appears to include only minor edits to the text and incorporates no substantive changes. The three employee groups are hoping to meet and plan how to address these changes, given the University's imposed deadline of November 17, 2023.
APSA and SFU LR are close to resolving an issue with members regarding the pension plan. The affected members will be updated on the next steps.
The recent Provost email about the budget issues includes a section here: "...and an unanticipated increase in pension expenses". After discussing it with the Pension chair, Jeff Bryer, this most likely is referring to the changes to the faculty pension plan and not the EJPC, which remains unchanged.