Unrest within SFU’s unions not over yet
By David Dyck
Photos by Vaikunthe Banerjee
CUPE 3338 met with the university to continue bargaining for a new collective agreement several weeks ago, but according to the union, no tangible progress was made. CUPE 3338 unit 1, represents approximately 1,000 university staff members in a range of different positions such as library assistants, computer operators, store clerks, and others.
Even though the employees’ current contract expired over three years ago, there has been little progress over negotiations. A CUPE press release quoted CUPE 3338 president Lynne Fowler as calling the university’s last offer “insulting.” And in an interview with Fowler, she described the negotiations as going “very slowly.”
According to CUPE, the “insulting” offer was 0.5 per cent pay increases in the last two years of a four-year agreement. The union claimed that the offer was 75 per cent less than staff wages doing the same jobs at other BC universities.
Although no new meeting has been set up between the two parties as of print time, Fowler stated that this was primarily a result of scheduling conflicts. The university refused to comment on the negotiations; it is university policy to keep any comments private until an agreement is reached.
The last major labour event at SFU happened recently with the signing of a new collective agreement with the TSSU — the Teaching Support Staff Union. The university had been unsuccessfully fighting a bad faith bargaining ruling from the Labour Relations Board since January of this year.
