September Update

Happy new academic year! Since my last update in June, there's been quite a few developments to provide updates on:

  • The Basic Agreement (BA) vote has now concluded and was successfully ratified, with 98% of the 634 members who voted voting in favour. All that is left now is for the finalised document to be signed by the respective parties. It is really encouraging to see a pretty decent level of engagement amongst our membership on this — with over 100 attending the related information session too — so thank you to all of you who participated.
  • The Joint University/Association Committee (JUAC) is set to be rekindled after a 6-year hiatus thanks to the mediated settlement to our basic agreement negotiations. This committee is where, among other items, non-monetary AD-10 Policies are negotiated with the University. Currently, both parties are choosing their respective three-member teams who’ll begin to meet with a jointly agreed upon facilitator present (to ensure meetings are productive) for at least the next 13 months.
  • APSA provided input into the University’s new draft Public Interest Disclosure Act (PIDA) policies and procedures — our thanks to Alison Blair and her team for consulting with APSA on this.
  • For the summer semesterly executive meeting, APSA met with the Provost, VPPEI as well as representatives from Labour Relations and Human Resources, where this year’s layoffs amongst other items, were discussed.
  • Our 24-25 APSA budget was approved. A massive thank you to our Treasurer, Jasper Stoodley, our Executive Director, Andrew Boden, and the Finance Committee for their hard work on this.
  • The APSA board voted against collaborating with AAPS (our UBC counterpart) on a joint member survey seeking questions that can be asked to the various political parties in the run-up to the October provincial election on matters affecting the daily lives of public employees in the province and on legislation that impacts SFU as a public sector employer.
  • We’re delighted to have hired our new Member Services Officer, Aicha Etrew, who will start on September 23rd and whom we are very excited to welcome to the team. I’d also like to acknowledge and thank the hard work of our three other staff members — Tracey, Lakshmi, and Andrew — who have managed brilliantly despite being a colleague down over the summer.
  • August saw the return of the first APSA Member Appreciation Event (aka APSA Social) since the pandemic, with 156 members coming out to The Study on Burnaby Campus for food (we’ll order more next time), drinks, socialising, and swag (congratulations if you happened to nab one of the elusive and highly coveted APSA golf visors!). We hope we can hold more engagement events more regularly moving forward.
  • The Conversations with the board and staff will be happening again at all three campuses this semester. These gatherings have been really useful in hearing the priorities and concerns of members and are an excellent opportunity for APSA members, volunteers and staff to connect. See the segment in this week’s newsletter for dates, locations and times — we’ll also send reminders.
  • We are putting out a call for board director positions, and nominations close on September 27th.

If you have any comments or suggestions that you’d like me to share with the board, please feel free to e-mail the following role account: president@apsacentral.ca

Thank you,

Ben