What are Association grievances? These are UTFA’s complaints about the Administration’s breaches of the Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) that directly relate to the Association.
Why are there so many? Faculty and librarians at UofT are not well served by the MoA which leaves us with fewer and weaker workplace rights and protections than are found in agreements at other Canadian universities. In addition, a multi-year backlog of cases was caused, in part, by the Administration unilaterally refusing to schedule future arbitration dates until the Grievance Review Panel (GRP) was fully populated, even though there were more than enough panelists confirmed to hear grievances.
The following Association grievances are listed in reverse chronological order by the date of filing.
| Grievance | Overview of Issue(s) | Time of Filing | Update (as of November 2024 Council Meeting) |
| Workplace Investigations Concerns | UTFA is alleging serious and significant errors in procedural fairness, violations of natural justice, and unreasonable and inconsistent procedures and practices in the conduct of workplace investigations at the University of Toronto. The list of violations is long, but includes failures to conduct impartial investigations, address vexatious complaints, provide necessary information, and protect confidentiality. UTFA is grieving the University Administration’s failure to establish minimum protections to ensure reasonable, appropriate, and procedurally fair workplace investigations in compliance with the University’s legal obligations under the Ontario Human Rights Code and the Occupational Health and Safety Act, obligations under the Memorandum of Agreement with UTFA, and obligations under its own policies. | November 2024 | The grievance was filed November 21, 2024; as yet, no response has been received from the Administration. |
| Failure to Provide Written Reasons for the Rejection of Unit Workload Policies | UTFA is grieving a pattern of non-compliance with the Workload Policy and Procedures for Faculty and Librarians (WLPP) - specifically, the Administration's failure to provide to UTFA copies of rejected Unit Workload Policies, and the written reasons for rejecting those policies, for several units on all three campuses of the University of Toronto. | November 2024 | The grievance was filed November 7, 2024; as yet, no response has been received from the Administration. |
| Arbitrary exclusion of Teaching Stream faculty from full membership in the School of Graduate Studies | The Administration is excluding Teaching Stream faculty members from full membership in the School of Graduate Studies (SGS) based solely on the fact that they are in the Teaching Stream. UTFA is grieving that this exclusion is arbitrary and discriminatory. | November 2024 | The grievance was denied by the Administration and was thus referred to arbitration by UTFA in November 2024. |
| Violations of MoA Article 8 and Workload Policy and Procedures for Faculty and Librarians (WLPP) ("Workload UTM 1") | UTFA is grieving the Memorandum of Agreement and workload policy violations in an academic unit at UTM. The violations include the Administration's failure to provide a fair, reasonable, and equitable disribution of workload; failure to allocate teaching load based on the principle that comparable work will be weighed in the same matter; failure to provide the required written reasons for rejecting the proposed policy to the Committee and to UTFA; and rejection of the unit’s proposed policy in bad faith (including failing to substantively address the equitable claim for a lower teaching load). | October 2024 | The grievance was shared with the Administration on October 2, 2024 (though they would not accept it as filed until October 17). The Administration has recently rendered its Step 3 decision (which acknowledges some violations of policy), and UTFA is determining its next steps. |
| Invasive and Discriminatory Health and Well-being Medical Report Form ("Medical Form") | UTFA is grieving aspects of the medical report form that the Administration requires UTFA members to submit through the Health & Wellbeing office. Among other concerns, UTFA asserts that the form improperly seeks and encourages the disclosure of private medical information beyond what is reasonably required to assess a member’s disability-related needs or meet the Administration’s duty to accommodate, which is a violation of Article 9 (“No Discrimination”) of the Memorandum of Agreement, University Administration policies/institutional statements including the Statement on Human Rights and the Statement on Prohibited Discrimination and Discriminatory Harassment, and the Ontario Human Rights Code. | September 2024 | The grievance was denied by the Administration and was thus referred to arbitration by UTFA in October 2024. |
| Violations of MoA Article 8 and Workload Policy and Procedures for Faculty and Librarians (WLPP) ("Workload UTSG 1") | UTFA is grieving the Memorandum of Agreement and workload policy violations in a professional school unit on the St. George campus. The violations include the Administration's disbanding and establishment of Unit Workload Policy Committees through non-collegial processes; failure to provide the required written reasons for rejecting the proposed policy to the Committee and to UTFA; rejection of the proposed policy in bad faith; and failure to facilitate the Committee’s independent development and review of its proposed Unit Workload Policy. | August 2024 | The grievance was denied by the Administration and was thus referred to arbitration by UTFA in October 2024. |
| Failure to Provide Unit Workload Documents with Complete and Sufficient Data ("Workload Documents") | UTFA is grieving the Administration’s lack of compliance with Arbitrator Eli Gedalof’s September 6, 2023 interest arbitration award: specifically, the failure to provide Annual Workload Documents by the required June 30 deadline, and the fact that the data that was provided was unparticularized, incomplete, and often shared in an inaccessible format. | July 2024 | The grievance was denied by the Administration and was thus referred to arbitration by UTFA in August 2024. |
| Improperly Changed and Undisclosed PTR Processes ("PTR") | UTFA is grieving a number of PTR (Progress-Through-the-Ranks) issues: a Dean's unilateral changes to the PTR evaluation criteria and processes used to determine some UTFA members’ 2024 salary increases without appropriate collegial governance, the imposition of a resolution that excluded the members' UTFA representatives, and a failure to disclose to UTFA all necessary documents related to the processes and criteria used to determine the affected members’ PTR awards or those necessary for the negotiation of member salaries. | July 2024 | The grievance was denied by the Administration and was thus referred to arbitration by UTFA in September 2024. |
| Arbitrary and Discriminatory Exclusion of Teaching Stream Faculty from Eligibility to Serve as Chairs, Directors, and Other Senior Roles ("Teaching Stream Exclusion") | UTFA is grieving the Administration’s incorrect interpretation of the Policy and Procedures on Academic Appointments (PPAA) and the Administration’s reliance on that interpretation to justify denying the eligibility of Teaching Stream faculty for some administrative positions. UTFA alleges that the Administration breached Article 2 (“No Change in Basic Policies and Practices”) and Article 5 (“Academic Freedom and Responsibilities”) of the MoA. | March 2024 | The grievance was denied by the Administration and was thus referred to arbitration by UTFA in March 2024. |
| Widespread Violations of the Workload Policy and Procedures (WLPP) and Systemic Failure to Abide by its Core Principles ("Workload") | UTFA is grieving widespread violations of the WLPP across the University of Toronto. These violations include substantive ones (including inequitable distributions of teaching and service workloads within units, lack of transparency in work allocation) and procedural ones (including a failure to update Unit Workload Policies, a failure to provide policies and workload assignment letters to UTFA and its members, a failure to create a Tri-Campus Joint Committee, and a failure to abide by the collegial governance requjirements of the WLPP). | December 2023 | The grievance was denied by the Administration and was thus referred to arbitration by UTFA in February 2024. |
| Lack of Compliance with 2020 Asbestos Health and Safety Settlement Agreement ("Asbestos Non-Compliance") | UTFA is objecting to the Administration's failure to comply with the terms of a signed agreement related to an earlier Association Grievance related to a series of serious health and safety violations during large-scale asbestos abatement at the Faculty of Medicine. The parties returned to the original mediator to ensure that the Administration complies with the terms of the agreement and adheres to established best practices as they are required to do under their own Health and Safety policy. | November 2022 | After mediation failed in spring 2023, UTFA referred the issue to arbitration, which is scheduled to begin in January 2025. |
| Violations of Equal Academic Freedom Rights and Discrimination Protections of Teaching Stream Faculty and Librarians at the University of Toronto ("MRA") | UTFA is grieving that the Administration violated Article 5 ("Academic Freedom and Responsibilities") and Article 9 ("No Discrimination") of the Memorandum of Agreement when it improperly imposed additional criteria on Teaching Stream faculty and librarians in the MRA (My Research Applications & Agreements) online system and in related processes and documents, and subjected research funding applications and requests for research agreements from Teaching Stream faculty and librarians to additional and inappropriate scrutiny. | September 2022 | While a settlement was signed in April 2024 and the Administration agreed to implement the terms of the settlement by June 30, 2024, the Administration has not yet fully complied as of November 2024. |
| Implementation of Vaccination Policy Against UTFA members ("Vaccination Policy") | UTFA is seeking to protect our members' rights by ensuring the Administration consults with UTFA prior to any changes to Significant Terms and Conditions of Employment for faculty and librarians. In the case of the vaccination mandate, the Administration threatened unreasonable, new disciplinary penalties without first meeting with UTFA, and repeatedly refused to respond to UTFA's questions as the vaccine mandate was implemented and revised. | January 2022 | Given that the relevant policy has been suspended, UTFA has asked the Administration to agree to place the grievance in abeyance. The Administration denied UTFA's request and asked UTFA to withdraw the grievance. UTFA did not agree to withdraw the grievance on a without prejudice basis. |
| Pay Equity | As an employer, U of T is legally obliged to establish and maintain pay equity under Ontario's Pay Equity Act. ("Pay equity" requires an assessment of all jobs and an unbiased comparison of the work done in female-dominated job classes with the work done in male-dominated job classes, in order to determine equitable compensation. Employers cannot pay one employee group at a lower rate than another employee group on the basis of sex when they perform substantially the same kind of work AND if their work requires substantially the same skill, effort, and responsibility, performed under similar working conditions.) UTFA has been pressing the Administration to comply with its obligations to our members under the Pay Equity Act for many years (although our power to do so is somewhat constrained by our status as an uncertified faculty association). Via our two pay equity grievances (one for faculty and one for librarians), UTFA is seeking several orders to ensure that the Administration maintains pay equity and meaningfully participates in a joint process with our Association. UTFA needs the Administration to disclose key information related to its pay equity evaluations to ensure that the University lives up to its obligations under the Act. | August 2019 | The grievance was denied by the Administration. The parties attempted mediation in 2023, but UTFA received no meaningful response to its last proposal (sent December 2023). The parties are making a last attempt at mediation with dates scheduled in late 2025. |
| Salary Discrimination | UTFA is aiming to rectify significant, pervasive, systemic, and persistent salary discrimination experienced by our members based on their gender, race, Indigeneity, and membership in (sometimes intersecting) other equity-seeking groups. As a remedy, UTFA's Association grievance seeks retroactive salary for affected faculty and librarians and the creation of a permanent fund to address discrimination in salaries going forward. We also propose the creation of an UTFA-Administration joint committee focused on rooting out and preventing future discriminatory compensation practices. | August 2019 | The grievance was denied by the Administration and was thus referred to arbitration by UTFA. The Administration has not yet fully responded to a salary data production request from June 2024. UTFA is reviewing quantitative and qualitative expert analyses and preparing for future arbitration dates. |
| Unilateral Amendment of Divisional Guidelines on the Assessment of Effectiveness of Teaching ("Divisional Guidelines") | UTFA is protecting our members from the Administration's unilateral amendment of Divisional Guidelines on the Assessment of Teaching Effectiveness that inflate the criteria to be met during their academic reviews. The revisions constitute a departure from negotiated policy and significantly raise the bar for tenure/continuing status and promotion and improperly increase the standards of performance assessment for some faculty members by adding new and more demanding criteria to demonstrate ‘competence’ or ‘excellence’ in teaching. UTFA is working to bring the Divisional Guidelines in line with the applicable policies. | July 2019 | Given the costs related to the slow rate of progress in mediation (2022/2023), UTFA moved this grievance forward to arbitration. Hearing dates in 2025 are being discussed by the parties. |
| Administration of Student Evaluations of Teaching (SETs) /Student Course Evaluations ("SETs") | UTFA is maintaining that Student Evaluations of Teaching/Student Course Evaluations (SET/SCEs) are arbitrary and unreliable as a measure of teaching effectiveness and are discriminatory on the basis of the protected grounds under the Human Rights Code. Our members should not be compelled to use them. Faculty and Librarian members should retain ownership and control of any SET/SCEs, for example if they wish to use them for formative purposes to improve their teaching and or to better understand students' experiences. To the extent that SET/SCEs are relied on in the assessment of teaching for our members—whether for the purposes of annual PTR increments, tenure, continuing status, permanent status, or promotion— they unreasonably render the assessment arbitrary and discriminatory. | November 2020 | The grievance was denied by the Administration. The parties have agreed to one day of mediation and several days of arbitration hearings in 2025. |
| Health & Safety in the Context of the COVID-19 Crisis ("Health & Safety") | This grievance addresses ongoing threats to member Health and Safety, and specifically, the Administration’s responses to COVID-19, including its initial Fall 2020 re-opening plan, its failure to test building ventilation systems, its inadequate mask policy, and its opaque procedures in the event of a suspected case of COVID-19 on campus. UTFA’s advocacy is guided by our commitments to key principles: respect for science; the precautionary principle; and best practices in health and safety that exceed legislated minimum standards—as is required by U of T’s own Health and Safety Policy. | November 2020 | The grievance was denied by the Administration and was thus referred to arbitration by UTFA. |
| Faculty of Law Hiring Controversy/International Human Rights Program ("IHRP") | This grievance is about upholding the core principles of academic freedom, collegial governance, non-discrimination, and freedom from undue donor influence in hiring processes. UTFA grieved that the Administration's conduct in response to the search process for a new International Human Rights Program (IHRP) Director violated Articles 5 ("Academic Freedom and Resposibilities"), 7 ("Grievance Procedures"), and 9 ("No Discrimination") of the Memorandum of Agreement (MoA), and the University’s Statement of Institutional Purpose and Statement on Freedom of Speech. UTFA also grieved that the Administration failed to adequately respond to and remedy the serious concerns raised respecting the IHRP search process thus exacerbating the above violations of the MoA and University policy. | November 2020 | Given the costs associated with the slow rate of progress in mediation, UTFA came to the position that it would be more time efficient and financially prudent to proceed to arbitration. |