Throughout the day on Sunday, January 14, 2024, your bargaining committee met to discuss a number of proposals. Although we had planned to meet in person, we were relieved to shift the meeting online to avoid the cold weather.
Fall 2023 Survey
We began our discussions by debriefing the results of the NASA bargaining survey, in which a majority of NASA members participated. The purpose of the survey was to identify the degree of support you all have for potential bargaining issues. This helps your bargaining committee to know what we should be prioritizing in proposals and negotiations. Unsurprisingly, compensation and job security continue to be the top priorities for NASA members, with nearly 94% of respondents agreeing that our wages should meet current inflation and catch up with past inflation, over 92% agreeing that IA IIs should not be displacing NASA members work, workload is clearly an issue for NASA members – with an average over 85% support for all workload priorities, and 95% agreeing that we should increase the proportion of Continuous faculty members. Your Bargaining Committee sees this as a clear mandate while also recognizing that a clear majority of members who responded agreed with all of the statements in the survey.
No Concessions Bargaining
An approach common for unions to take in negotiations is a goal of “no concessions.” From a union’s perspective a concession is a proposal that would make your collective agreement worse than your already established working conditions. This does not mean “no compromise”, but those compromises would be about how and how much does your agreement get improved. It was most likely the best deal possible without a strike mandate from NASA members, but a large and significant concession was accepted by NASA members in the last agreement: wages that have lost us all thousands of dollars in the real value of our income in the face of double digit inflation and provided “savings” to NAIT of millions of dollars. That influenced your committee in voting to adopt a goal of no concessions for this round of bargaining.
Proposals
Proposals adopted in principle included: better conversion for Temporary staff to become Continuous; more clearly prohibiting IA IIs from teaching and to prohibit NAIT from using support staff to reduce NASA members work; improving the workload review process; and better human rights protections. The committee meets again on January 23 to continue proposal discussion. Look for invites to town halls soon for every department at NAIT to hear from your bargaining representative and have a broader discussion with you of proposals and priorities.
Bargaining Timelines
NAIT and NASA will be discussing the timing of bargaining and notice to bargain this week, with bargaining expected to begin this semester. While we can’t guarantee NAIT’s focus and prioritization of reaching an agreement sooner rather than later, the committee has definitely heard the feedback that the length of time to negotiate the last agreement was too long and so will be putting in evenings and weekends to make that happen.
Thank you all for your support and your engagement. We are stronger together!
P.S.. please remember to provide NASA with your personal email and phone number at this link, as NASA will be moving away from NAIT emails as bargaining progresses.
Sincerely,
NASA’s Bargaining Team