YUFA

Executive

 
Home

I came on as one of YUFA’s two Chief Stewards (the other is John Bell) in the summer of 2001, as did John.  Our ongoing responsibilities, as stated in the Executive Work Plan for Winter/Spring 2002, have been:

• to chair the Contract and Grievance (C&G) Committee (Bell);
• to represent C&G on the Executive Committee (Silverman);
• to pursue members’ complaints and grievances (Bell, Silverman);
• to prepare for, and represent  members at, mediations and arbitrations (Bell, Silverman)
• to represent C&G on the Committee for the Implementation of the New Constitution (Silverman); and
• to “build community” (Bell, Silverman, through C&G)

The most visible work which the Chief Stewards do is to represent members, and/or YUFA, through the complaint, Dispute Resolution Committee (DRC)/mediation and arbitration phases of a grievance.  As I noted in my January 2002 Report, the Chief Stewards deal with about 25 grievances at any one time.  As one is resolved, another comes forward.  In addition, many grievances take a long and tortuous time to resolve themselves, largely because we are in an institutional environment in which compromise as an option for settling members’ complaints and problems is not often used, even though the Employer pays lip-service to the ideals of co-operation. What therefore happens is that the Employer insists on “the letter of the contract” and, if it’s not defined in the contract, then the Employer wins and our member or YUFA loses. That’s how labour law works; and because our environment has become increasingly less like a “community of scholars” and more like a “factory floor,” a compromise or a splitting of the difference with the Employer in order to resolve issues is happening less and less frequently.

Such an environment also impacts on us in another way.  As resources decrease, as stress and workloads increase, and as the Employer is less willing to ameliorate the complaints and problems which individuals encounter, the Chief Stewards have been spending a good deal of time trying to mediate fraught relationships among members themselves. Workload allocations, tenure and promotion, hiring, and differential treatment of members are all issues which create conflict among members and which the Chief Stewards try to resolve, either by intervening collegially or by grieving against the Employer for not managing the situation properly.

It is at that point that the work of the Chief Stewards, and the Stewards who sit on C&G, become one of member education and dispute resolution at the same time that the work involves pursuing formal grievances against the Employer.  The complaints and grievances now in train against the employer include CLA workload; course credit for cancelled courses; non-contractual overload rates in Schulich; non-payment of administrative stipends; HRDC regulations on Canadian-first hiring practices; equity practices in hirings; several tenure and promotion cases; nine-month CLAs; academic freedom; remediation payments after the CUPE strike; exam scheduling; the procedures of the York’s Women’s Centre; vacation pay; cut?backs in secretarial help; obligations of the Employer viz. research grants; full-time library complement.

The new constitution which was recently ratified will have implications for the structure, organisation and workload of Chief Stewards and the Contract and Grievance Committee.  A continuing problem for YUFA has been building grass-roots participation through a viable stewards’ network which links together all faculties, schools and departments.  The new Steward’s Council will form the basis for this network.  At the same time, C&G’s structure and responsibilities will be altered.  It will no longer be made up of Stewards representing faculties, but of members whose sole concern will be to help the two Chief Stewards process grievances.  This new Grievance Committee will continue its work of monitoring the contract, through the grievances which emerge, but its educational and political work will be removed.  Both Chief Stewards will sit on the Stewards’ Council and one of the Chief Stewards will be the Chair and responsible for formulating the agenda.  In this way, the new Grievance Committee will be directly linked to the membership network while, at the same time, the network will have input into grievance processes as it addresses the more general policy and political issues which confront YUFA.

The responsibilities of the Chief Stewards under the new constitution will be:

• to chair the Grievance Committee;
• to advise Executive on policy grievances and arbitrations;
• to pursue and file individual member’s complaints and grievances;
• to prepare for and represent members and YUFA at mediations and arbitrations; and
• to organise and chair the Stewards’ Council.