Tentative contract agreement expected this week at CBU

Faculty and management at Cape Breton University say they've reached a contract settlement that includesno trimming of staff, and the school's acting president says a fulltentative agreement should be reached this week.

CBU's faculty had been prepared to go on strike today.

"There's agreement in principal on all the outstanding issues," including what had been a contentious layoff clause in the previous proposal, said acting president Dale Keefe.

"There are no layoffs," he told CBC Cape Breton's Information Morning.

Details of the settlement won't be released for a few days.

Faculty satisfied with layoff language

Andrew Reynolds with the CBU Faculty Association said he's satisfied with the language around scenarios that would trigger layoffs.

The association has argued from the beginning that only "financial emergency or distress" should be grounds for layoffs, he said.

The faculty wanted language to make surethat layoffs couldn'tbe "trotted out" simply because management decided to arbitrarily cut a program, said Reynolds.

The faculty association's executive will meet today before taking the latest proposal to its membership.

"I think we've reached a workable compromise that's good for both sides," Keefe said."We're very pleased with the language that's there."