Negotiations
Basic Agreement Bargaining: APSA and SFU negotiated the Basic Agreement on January 15-19 and February 1 and were in mediation from April 15-17. Chris Sullivan, the mediator, released mediated recommendations on May 16, which the APSA board of directors approved. SFU's Board of Governors and APSA members have both voted to approve the recommended changes, which will go into effect once both parties sign the document. Please learn more about the Basic Agreement Ratification here.
Not sure how the Basic Agreement affects you? Take a look at our infographic.
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 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.
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 soon have further substantive updates on this ongoing issue.
Grievances
APSA has one arbitration that is currently ongoing in September. 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 their financial challenges and presented their forecasted balanced budget for 2024-2025 in their 2024–25 Budget Book. SFU has released their actuals for the 2023-2024 fiscal year, which we are including 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.
On August 20, 2024, SFU President Joy Johnson announced that Martin Pochurko, Vice-President Finance and Administration, will be retiring from SFU effective February 7, 2025.