Striking faculty members at Brandon University were back to work Nov. 28 after a six-week work stoppage.
The Brandon University Faculty Association (BUFA) and the university met Nov. 25 to end the strike, which lasted 45 days, according to the university’s website. It was the longest in Manitoba’s history.
This decision came after Manitoba’s Minister of Labour and Immigration Jennifer Howard ordered faculty to vote on the university’s final offer, the Winnipeg Free Press reported.
Faculty members went on strike Oct. 12 after failed meetings with the university administration, said Brandon University Student Union (BUSU) president Deandra Tousignant.
The salary increases proposed by both parties were within 0.2 per cent of each other, but problems as to when the salary would be implemented caused much of the friction, according to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).
The faculty association also wanted reduced teaching loads to balance research and teaching, job security and wage increases for sessional instructors, and transparency dealing with personnel files, according to a BUFA press release.
Terms of the deal have not been released.
“We were not that far apart, in terms of what the union position was and what our position was,” university president Deborah Poff told the CBC.
During the first week of the strike, BUSU voted to support the faculty.
BUSU also provided information and aid for the students during the strike. They created forums between the administration and faculty for students, circulated a petition, and held rallies, Tousignant said.
But support for the faculty soon decreased.
“In the beginning, there was a lot of support for the faculty,” Tousignant said. “But after a couple of days, students started to get frustrated . . . between the two parties there was a lot of hostile communication.”
A lack of information for students caused a lot of the tensions, Tousignant said.
“Students felt outraged by the fact that they didn’t really know what was going on,” Tousignant said. “There was a lot of confusion and it was a very polarizing issue in our campus community and the Brandon community in general.”
The issue of refunds for classes was also a topic of discussion among students. Students are allowed to drop courses and collect their full tuition refunds one week after classes resume.
However, the student union will not refund its membership fees.
“It was not an easy decision,” Tousignant said. “As a student union, we continued to operate during the strike and a lot of our budget was spent in the first week of school . . . since many students have already taken part in these services, refunding their BUSU fees wasn’t actually possible.”
Tousignant said it’s much easier for the university to refund students, because they were actually saving money during the strike.
“Their budget is made up of both tuition fees and government funding, whereas [the student union’s budget] is entirely made up of membership fees,” she said. “[They’re] in a far better position to be refunding fees.”
Classes resumed Nov. 28 and the first term will continue until mid-January. The last day of classes before the holidays is scheduled for Dec. 20, while students will return to complete the term Jan 4. The second term will start Jan. 31, according to the university’s website.
“When we found out about the strike being over, there was a whole lot of excitement to get back into the classroom, but that was followed by a large amount of anxiety about what school was going to be like,” Tousignant said.
“But since we’ve been back to class, all parties at the university are working really hard to move forward. It will take all of us to take the learning environment at this university back to where it was.”
