Dear Colleagues,
We are facing a critical moment in our relationship with our employer. It’s time to negotiate both the regular bargaining issues as well as our bargaining framework itself–and we want to make sure we are getting you helpful information and hearing your thoughts clearly. Therefore, we write to solicit your feedback about how UTFA’s Salary, Benefits, Pensions, and Workload (SBPW) Negotiating Team might best communicate with you. How do you prefer to be kept informed, and how would you like to express your needs and wants?
To begin, please read our June 19, 2023, Update on Bargaining/Arbitration, if you haven’t done so already. In that update, we describe how the UTFA Negotiating Team has been striving to achieve an agreement that recuperates three years of significant lost ground in our wages. Specifically, we are working to rectify the impacts of Bill 124, which has, unconstitutionally, capped our salary increases to 1% per year at a time when inflation, housing costs in the Greater Toronto Area, and faculty and librarian workloads have all been skyrocketing.
After reading the Update, please complete our 3-minute survey on UTFA bargaining communications. UTFA’s bargaining and communications teams will use the survey results to shape our future outreach plans as we head into the upcoming round of SBPW bargaining with the University Administration.
Sincerely,
Deborah Cowen
Incoming Chair, Membership Committee
Ariel Katz
Incoming Vice-President, Salary, Benefits, Pensions, and Workload
Terezia Zorić
UTFA President