UNBC Strike Suspended
Prince George, B.C. – A move by UNBC has suspended the nearly two week old labour dispute with its Faculty Association.
This after president Daniel Weeks confirmed the University has made an application under Section 55 of the Labour Relations Code of B.C.
The section only applies to first collective agreements and permits the appointment of a mediator or arbitrator.
The application suspends all job action and in a posting on the school’s website tonight said “my expectation is that classes will be able to resume in the near future.”
While he acknowledges it doesn’t guarantee a settlement he says he’s “hopeful that access to the Board’s specialized process will bring the parties to a negotiated settlement without any further job action.”
The strike began March 5th and centered largely around the union’s demand for higher wages.
Comments
This is a good step in the right direction. Interested to know who the Mediator is. Vince Ready would be a good man to help sort this out
no strike was needed if the admins had shown any interest in negotiating over the last year. Vince to the rescue.
Well I am surprised to see UNBC follow due process now, after they failed to do so with the negotiations, however, that said from a student’s perspective I hope that the semester can be recovered so that they can complete their studies.
? How have they not followed due process? Not agreeing to faculty demands is not following due process?
They still haven’t said when classes will resume or how they will make up the lost time. When you only have 13 weeks losing 2 – 3 weeks is a lot. They had already extended the semester by a week to accommodate winter games. Most students can’t have it extended any more than that. They have jobs and internships to go to.
Slinky, communicating with the media instead of the faculty association is a good example of not following due process. I understand the university has apologised to each member of the faculty negotiating team for that blunder.
Let me get this straight: The union orchestrates a strike at time to most inconvenience students, realizing full well that the administration can access the provisions suggested within bill C-55, and suspend the job action? Priceless…how about triggering these provisions at time that doesn’t harm the students?
This just goes to show how poorly lead this FA is. If the legislation stipulates a strike suspension can be requested and enforced on an initial contract negotiation, then the FA has just been playing chicken with the administration. Hoping that mass whining and group think will extort wage demands from the nasty “corporate types” that govern the university. Fail.
Considering that the negotiations on the University contract is taking place between the intellectual giants of our community, one wonders why they have difficulty in arriving at an agreement.
Considering that they have experts in all sorts of fields at these Universities you would think that they would have experts to solve these labour disputes.
Hmmmmm
Comments for this article are closed.