YUFA
External
Report on CAUT Librarians’ Conference & Workshop "Moving Forward: Academic Librarians & Collective Bargaining"
26-27 October 2007, Vancouver, British Columbia.
by Arthur Hilliker, President of YUFA, Dept. of Biology, Faculty of Science & Engineering
3 Dec 07 - I attended this conference on Librarians and Collective Bargaining because I believe that as President of YUFA, it was important that some faculty members involved in collective bargaining to acquire further understanding of librarian issues. The conference was very enlightening to me in this regard. Following a review of bargaining basics, there were three presentations concerning the librarian roles and relationships within the academic staff association followed by three presentations on bargaining librarian issues. I found the presentations very helpful in giving me valuable insight into the issues important to librarians in collective bargaining. The presentations and conversations with librarians in attendance also gave me insight into the culture of librarians, which is somewhat distinct from that of the various faculty cultures. The final exercise was a mock bargaining exercise for which we were divided into several sets of employer and union negotiating teams who then negotiated a set of contract clauses of particular relevance to librarians. The rest of my mock union negotiation team were librarians from across Canada and I found the exercise to be most rewarding, providing me with more insight into librarian collective bargaining issues. An excellent conference and my attendance will greatly facilitate my contribution to the upcoming round of negotiations for the next Collective Agreement.
Other Reports from this Conference:
Maura Matesic