The union unit representing teaching assistants had their first conciliation meeting with the university Jan. 9 in an effort to continue labour negotiations as they draft a new collective agreement.
The provincially-appointed conciliator sits at the bargaining table as an informal moderator to decide if the university and the union are too far apart to reach a deal.
At any time during the conciliation process, either the union or Carleton can file a no-board report if they feel the negotiations aren’t progressing. This starts a 17-day countdown to a strike.
Since this was the first conciliation meeting between Carleton and CUPE 4600, most of the meeting consisted of introducing the conciliator.
“It was a pretty preliminary day,” said Tabatha Armstrong, the co-chair for CUPE 4600 unit 1, the unit representing TAs.
The university said the meeting was constructive and confirmed the next conciliation meeting would be Jan. 16.
“The discussions to date have been constructive and the parties have agreed to more conciliation meeting dates,” Christopher Cline, Carleton’s media relations co-ordinator, said in a statement.
“The university remains committed to negotiating a settlement with the union,” he said.
There are several issues still on the bargaining table, but Armstrong said salary is one of the major points.
“The employer and the union are still very far apart on this particular issue,” she said.
Under the current collective agreement, if the university makes accounting errors, they can reclaim the money they paid employees by mistake. This happened in the 2011-2012 school year when TAs had to refund the extra wages the university paid them.
“The union has taken a position where we would like to introduce language that would protect our members from the employer making accounting errors,” Armstrong said.
“We’re pretty far apart from the employer on that one,” she said. “They haven’t really taken us seriously when we’ve proposed language around this issue.”
CUPE 4600 unit 1 filed an unfair labour complaint against Carleton in December 2013 after the university did not pay TAs their tuition rebate.
TAs only pay the tuition amount from the first year they became a TA. Every subsequent year, they are refunded the amount tuition has increased.
The university agreed to pay the rebate by Jan. 10 although they were supposed to pay the money in the fall semester.
Armstrong said this issue is “not something that can or will be discussed at the negotiating table” during conciliation.
“We find that it’s inappropriate to discuss that at the bargaining table because that is an ongoing labour complaint that has gone to the labour board,” she said.
CUPE 4600 unit 2, the unit representing contract instructors, had their first conciliation meeting Jan. 15.
