SFU Budget
On April 16, the University sent a message to all staff on their financial challenges and presented their forecasted balanced budget for 2024-2025 in their 2024–25 Budget Book.
SFU has published their third quarter financials in the Financial Committee for the BoG, which we are including here. Of note, SFU must file for deficit approval to the Ministry of Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills by the end of the second quarter. At a recent meeting with senior administration, SFU noted that it had applied for deficit approval from the Ministry, and APSA now has a copy of the Ministry's letter confirming this.
Negotiations
Basic Agreement Bargaining: APSA and SFU were in negotiations for the Basic Agreement on January 15-19 and February 1 and in mediation from April 15-17. As both parties are still at an impasse, Chris Sullivan, the mediator, will be releasing mediated recommendations in the coming weeks. Please learn more here.
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. APSA also recently filed a grievance regarding SFU's treatment of a member returning from a lengthy long-term disability leave.
Joint Compensation Review Committee: APSA received an arbitrated award from Colin Taylor in the 2015 round of negotiations. The committee works 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 soon.
APSA advocates have several ongoing grievances and investigations on accommodations, return to work, hours of work and a few position eliminations. 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 are unaffected. We're working vigorously to prevent member job loss and learn more about the alleged state of SFU's financial health.
On January 31, 2024, the University held a town hall where they announced further cuts and the continuation of a hiring freeze. You can find the recording on the SFU HR website.
On March 6, the University wrote an update to the Spring budget, which included involuntary layoffs for administrative staff and a potential voluntary separation program.
On April 5, APSA made the decision not to sign a Memorandum of Agreement for the voluntary separation program. On balance, the offer from SFU wasn't favourable for our membership. CUPE also didn't sign on to the voluntary separation program.
On April 29, the University wrote us to ". . . provide Notice of Position Elimination pursuant to our obligations under the Basic Agreement and the relevant AD-10 policies." This notice was for involuntary position eliminations.
University Protests in the News
APSA would like to acknowledge the ongoing University protests at UBC and other campuses. Many of you may be deeply affected by these, and we want to remind you that as per our Policy 10.14, there is absolutely no place for discrimination in the workplace, and if any member feels they are being discriminated against, it is important they contact the APSA team to address this. We will also again remind you about your access to the SFU Employment Family Assistance Program (EFAP) if members need to talk to someone during these difficult times.