The Feature

Faculty Association rally fills Winter Garden

Colin Slark
Team Member

cutely aware of the situation regarding

the contract negotiations between UNBC
administration and the Faculty Association,
a large crowd gathered in the Winter Garden
last Wednesday to hear the instructors’
side of the story. A healthy contingent of
instructors was surrounded on all sides
by students, other university staff, and
reporters. Led by UNBC FA president Dr.
Jacqueline Holler, several members of the
Faculty Association spoke passionately about
what they hope to get out of negotiations
and why they are motivated to achieve their
goals.

While issues like how the university deals
with program redundancies are of concern
to the FA, the majority of time was spent
talking about the wage gap between UNBC
instructors and their colleagues at Canadian
institutions of similar size. According to the
FA, the approximate 25% difference in salary
is not just harmful to instructors, but to the
university as a whole. Lower wages, the FA
stressed, will not only alienate current staff,
but also prevent UNBC from attracting new
talent, which would in turn lower the quality
of education at UNBC and jeopardize the
university’s status as one of the top small
universities in Canada. Dr. Kevin Hutchings,
professor in the English department, told the

crowd that had he known that the situation
at UNBC would become so dire, he might have
taken a position he had been offered at an
American institution a few years previously.

When it came time for the FA to answer
questions, most queries addressed the
elephant in the room: the potential strike.

At the end of January, the FA voted 84.8% in
favour of a strike mandate and they have

90 days to initiate a strike, but have yet

to do so. People wanted to know: will the
strike prevent me from graduating? Will the
semester be extended? Will we be reimbursed
for the semester if classes are cancelled?
There was no answer for many of these
questions, as the strike is still hypothetical
and striking would be uncharted territory for
UNBC’s instructors. For example, instructors
do not know if they would be locked out by
university administration should they strike.
All they could do was point to examples from
similar strikes and express that they would
rather not strike except as a last resort.

After the rally, I had an opportunity to ask
Dr. Holler a few questions about the ongoing
contract negotiations and the recent strike
vote. When asked if the strike vote had
created any movement at the bargaining
table, she replied: “I think what we would say
is that at the table you can tell that a strike
vote has been taken. The administration’s
bargaining team definitely noticed.

The problem is, the progress we’ve made
is so slow compared to the number of days
we've spent in mediation and the number
of hours we've spent in negotiations since
May 2014 that we’re really looking for
more. We’re looking to get this thing done
in a reasonable amount of time and we’re
just not at that point yet so the strike vote
hasn’t had that much of an impact.”

It was reported when the FA’s strike vote
results were announced that while 84.8% of
voters were in favour of a strike mandate,
only 67% of eligible voters had cast votes.
Dr. Holler was not worried about the

voter turnout, saying that: “You have to
remember that the UNBC Faculty Association
represents both part-time and full-time
faculty members, and clinical instructors,
so if you look at our full-time compliment,

I think it was 91% of them [that] voted. It’s
normal for us not to get very many of the
part-timers voting because they just don’t
see it as their issue or they feel that they
shouldn’t participate in the vote so we

had a much lower participation rate from
out part-timers than our full-timers.”

Should the Faculty Association go on strike,
they feel like they can avoid one of the

big problems the BC Teachers Federation
encountered during their strike last year. The
BCTF’s strike fund quickly dried up which put
financial strain on some of their members

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during the long job action. However, Dr.
Holler says that should UNBC instructors
go on strike, they have a 23 million dollar
national strike fund they can draw from
rather than the UNBC FA's own coffers.

If you have questions about what might
happen during a potential strike, or if
you want to support your instructors, the
UNBC FA is encouraging students to make
their voices heard to the administration.

If you have a desire to watch the rally or
find out more information from the Faculty
Association, it can be found at unbcfa.

ca or their Twitter account @UNBCFA.

In addition, Wendel Schwab, an
undergraduate student representative
in the UNBC Senate, would like to hear
from students to better be able to ask
questions on behalf of the student body
and better articulate student opinions
about the contract negotiation to his
fellow members of the Senate. He can
be contacted at schwabw@unbc.ca.

Should negotiations break down, the
Faculty Association could conceivably
strike with 72-hours notice before Reading
Break, but the UNBC FA has promised

that they will not picket or protest during
the upcoming Canada Winter Games.

los