Countdown to Strong:
Issue leadership
in the bargaining process
How can negotiators generate leadership
on existing and emerging issues?
5 key relationships
Internal leadership,
bargaining team
External
organizations
Campus community
Bargaining unit
members
Employer
Tools for building a mandate
• Pre-bargaining membership surveys
• Group meetings: departmental, sub-groups of the
members, issue-based
• Analysis of grievances during current agreement
• Analysis of unresolved issues from last round
• Leadership on emerging issues by the executive
and bargaining team
• Flash surveys during bargaining
Goals for the day
For pressing and emerging issues that the
executive and bargaining team want to prioritize,
we will:
1. Re-examine our mandate building tools with an eye
to building (rather than measuring) support for
specific issues
2. Break down complex issues and plan incremental
progress over multiple rounds of bargaining
Workshop agenda
1) Introduction
2) Case study 1: LTD
a) Perennial issue without much headway
3) Case study 2: E-learning
a) Emerging issue with big ramifications
Populism vs environmental scan
• Populism: bottom up
– Members present demands
– Support is a given
– Past problems, present issues
– Immediate problems for large groups of members
• Examples :
– ATB, vision care, massage therapy, workload,
contract faculty seniority rights
Populism vs environmental scan
• Issue leadership: top down
–
–
–
–
Leadership completes broad-based environmental scan
Arises from specialized knowledge of issue
Future threats or opportunities
Critical impact but perhaps only on smaller group of
members
• Examples :
– salary anomalies, catastrophic benefits (LTD), Elearning
Building support
• Popular issues:
– Listen
– Measure support
– Push the open door wider
• Issue leadership:
– Speak/listen
– Build support
– Crack the door open
Campaigning for member support
• If you want to lead on an issue, you will need a
campaign aimed at members
Mobilize
Educate
Consolidate
support
Bargaining complex issues…
• Complex issues cannot be resolved in a single
round of bargaining
• Often, we bargain by developing our best case
outcome, and table it as our opening proposal
• Two frequent outcomes:
– Some small gains, often in response to what the
employer is prepared to do, but not necessarily the
ones we most want the most
– We withdraw our proposal late in bargaining, and make
no gains
…and failing
• Small gains mean at least we got something
– But they can be sub-optimal: often they are not a
building block we can expand on in the next round
• Withdrawing our proposal can be very damaging
to our key relationships:
– Convinces the employer that we aren’t serious about
the issue or don’t have the strength to achieve it
– Convinces our members that the bargaining table can’t
resolve our most important workplace issues
Setting SMART goals
• We need to break problems into smaller pieces,
and plan over multiple bargaining rounds, to reach
our ultimate goal
• Our goals have to be SMART
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Time-limited
Action leading to results
• In bargaining, the key metric is attainable
– Our bargaining expectations should only be as
ambitious as the willingness of the members to act
in support of them
• Build a bargaining mandate around achievable
outcomes, and you will be able to claim
success at the ratification meeting
– Members see that action leads to results
Achieving a break-through on an existing issue
CASE STUDY 1: LTD
Current state of LTD insurance
• Pricing
• Controlled by employer, big sums (from $500 to
$2,200 per year) and subsidizes other groups
• Plan design
• Controlled by employer, big variation across sector
and not faculty-specific
• Governance
• Controlled by employer, lacking transparency and
poor appeal process
Common theme
Controlled by employer
Who is accountable?
Faculty LTD plan strategy
• Pricing
– Provide best value for dollar on a sustainable basis
• Plan design
– Build province-wide program that addresses unique
needs of academics
• Governance
– Structures based on transparency and accountability
• Education and communication
– Develop program addressing faculty communication
needs and preferences
From an issue to a demand
• If a faculty-specific, independent, provincewide plan is a desired outcome, we have to
bargain for it
• FAs need to table language that gives them
control of which LTD plan faculty participate in
• We can begin with a single association and add
others over time
Issue leadership on LTD
Next steps:
– Get an Eckler analysis of your existing LTD plan
– Work before bargaining to educate and inform your
members
– Make LTD part of your bargaining prioritization
exercise
– Set multi-round goals that are SMART
OCUFA M of A on LTD
Key elements:
– Establish principle that FA decides which plan
faculty are in
– Includes necessary data
– Timeline for review of existing plan
– Commitment that employer will continue to deduct
premiums, coordinate back to work, be responsible
for existing claims
Reflections on our experience
• Does your current LTD plan meet the criteria
we described?
• If not, have you attempted to improve LTD in
bargaining?
– If so, were you successful in meeting the goals of a
good LTD plan?
– If not, what are actual and potential obstacles?
SMART goals on LTD
Some interim multi-year goals we might set:
– Establish a benefits governance structure for
existing plan
– Get annual faculty specific data as per the MoA list
– Bargain funding for an FA benefits consultant
– Develop a protocol for tendering the plan and a
role for the FA (and consultant) in the process
– Bargain for faculty-specific rates and coverage
Break-out groups
How can this committee
move this issue forward?
Bringing attention and urgency to an emerging issue
CASE STUDY 2: E-LEARNING
Introduction
• We have developed bargaining checklists on
three e-learning key issue areas:
1. The workload implications of teaching online
2. Ownership of online courses (individual IP)
3. The scope of bargaining unit work (collective
ownership of faculty work)
• They can serve as input into your development
of an issue leadership strategy for e-learning
Issue 1: Workload
•
•
•
•
Class size online is potentially unlimited
Prep time for online courses in not well defined
Online is 24/7, which affects work-life balance
Instructors and students need training and IT
support for online courses
• Universities are unclear on how online courses
are assigned
Workload checklist
Does your collective agreement:
 Have class size limits for online courses?
 Provide recognition of extra work of online delivery?
 Adjust for both course development and delivery?
 Provide for training and IT assistance?
 Provide adequate teaching and marking support?
 Allow you to limit student access (online office hours)?
 Protect members from being assigned online courses?
Issue 2: Intellectual Property
• CA’s say course content is faculty intellectual property
• Good intellectual property language is essential to
protecting members who teach online
• But even good language can be circumvented by
individual contracts without FA control and oversight
• Particularly vulnerable are contract staff who have less
job security
• Course use licenses should be made restrictive
Intellectual property checklist
Does your collective agreement:
 Provide contract faculty IP protection and job security?
 Give the faculty association the right to negotiate a
standard contract, receive notification of all contracts,
and/or sign off on all individual contracts?
 Contain language limiting future use of online
courses?
 Address the right of faculty to amend their online
courses?
Issue 3: Bargaining unit work
• Huge potential to undermine tenure-track hiring
• Non-compete provisions of Ontario Online worrisome
• Our CA’s are not designed to deal with import of
courses developed elsewhere (transfer credit)
• Different approaches needed based on who represents
contract staff; need to create and protect good jobs
• Employment of non-members clauses could help (e.g.
limits on numbers of courses taught outside unit(s))
Bargaining unit work checklist
Does your collective agreement:
 Ensure all faculty work falls within scope of a collective
agreement?
 Stop non-members from doing faculty work?
 Protect programs by limiting transfer of course credits
from outside the university?
 Protect departments by ensuring they must approve all
courses offered?
Survey Results
• E-learning should be high on bargaining
agenda; member education needed
• Morning: intellectual property most important
• Afternoon: protecting faculty work most
important
• Most critical bargaining goals:
– Development of standardized contract
– Strengthen scope of work/barg. unit clauses
Break-out groups
1. Select three bargaining priorities on elearning for the next two rounds of bargaining
2. Establish SMART goals for each round
– Where are the points in this plan that require
member (I) education, (II) support consolidation,
and (III) mobilization?