Dalhousie, faculty union ratify labour agreement

After the threat of a strike last fall, Dalhousie University faculty and administrators have ratified a labour agreement that lasts to the end of June 2022.

The two parties came to a tentative agreement in January. It wasaccepted bythe Dalhousie Faculty Association (DFA) through a vote the same month. The deal was ratified by the university's board of governors last week, according to a news release Wednesday from the faculty association.

The DFA, which represents almost 1,000 professors, instructors, librarians and counsellors at the Halifax university, has been negotiating with the university since last summer when the collective agreement expired. In the fall, after failing to reach a new agreement, faculty voted in favour of strike action.

A conciliator was brought in but those talks reached an impasse after just one day. Several days with aconciliation board in November moved talksforward, according the DFA, but university administrators would not accept all the conciliator's recommendations.

An additional day of conciliation in January resulted in the final agreement.

Pensions a sticking point

"This was an extremely challenging and unprecedentedround of bargaining given the global pandemic and massive impacts on our members' working conditions," DFApresident David Westwoodsaid in thenews release.

Westwoodsaid pensions were a major sticking point, and the new agreement has "preserved the basic structure" of the pension plan.

"We have also negotiated a very modest wage increase to protect against inflation," he said.

Westwoodhas previously said that burnout caused by the transition to online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic was another issue at the bargaining table.

Work-from-home expense reimbursement was included inthe new contract, as well as several other "non-monetary gains," such as online material copyrights, educational leave for instructors and support for some "extraordinary" administrative work.

The next round of bargaining will begin mid-2022.