Negotiations
Joint University/Association Committee: As part of completing the Basic Agreement Bargaining, the parties will now begin the process of meeting to discuss negotiating non-monetary items for the APSA membership. JUAC is in the process of selecting an external mediator to support this committee. The committee met last month and will meet this month before our Winter closure.
Joint Compensation Review Committee: APSA received an arbitrated award from Colin Taylor in the 2015 round of negotiations. The committee works together on market comparisons, salary, and other total compensation pieces as mandated by the award. We will soon have further substantive updates on this ongoing issue. This committee is waiting on an arbitration ruling before moving forward.
Grievances
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.
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.
SFU Budget
On April 16, the University sent a message to all staff on its financial challenges and presented its forecasted balanced budget for 2024-2025 in its 2024–25 Budget Book. SFU has released its actuals for the 2023-2024 fiscal year, which we include here.
Andrew Boden has written about the budget issues and the concerns surrounding the 2023-2024 SFU Budget.
We are aware that Student Services has posted three senior APEX positions. We have written to Student Services' leadership highlighting the poor optics of hiring these positions so soon after the job cuts of so many APSA positions in Student Services due to budget issues. We will continue to press this issue.
In discussions with SFU senior administration on December 2, 2024, we learned that the University remains very concerned about the Federal government's changes to the cap on study permits and their impact on SFU's international tuition revenue, among other revenue streams. The administration continues to lobby both the Federal government and the new NDP government in B.C. to mitigate the effects on SFU and the post-secondary sector in general. Modest cuts to budgets are expected in 2025-2026.
SFU Diversity and Demographic Data Survey
SFU has sent employees the Demographic and Diversity Data Survey to improve Inclusive Excellence at the University. This survey will help SFU better understand our community and meet its commitments to faculty, staff, and students. The University has also indicated to us that the survey data can be instrumental in securing certain types of funding.
The information collected will be reported only in aggregate form, and individual responses will not be shared. You can learn more about the survey by reading the Frequently Asked Questions: https://www.sfu.ca/edi/programs/demographic-data.html.