We opened a Unit-wide vote on our Tentative Agreement on Tuesday, March 30th, and closed it on Thursday, April 1st. In total, 1914 of us voted on the ratification of the Tentative Agreement and 94.2% voted YES to form a new Collective Agreement (renewed for the term from January 1, 2021 until December 31, 2023)! Take a look at the official results of the vote here. This new agreement will have wide-ranging impacts on our lives as Unit 1 workers, and has resulted from well over a year of preparations and four months of bargaining. Our high participation in strike prep actions and other membership-wide shows of support have made so many of the gains in this new agreement possible. Although these changes are technically coming into effect immediately, it will take up to six months to finalise the Collective Agreement. Some time will be needed, especially for financial changes to take effect (including our retroactive pay increase for this semester). As always, Executive Officers and Staff are available to address questions and concerns about enforcement. The Memorandum of Agreement (i.e., the Tentative Agreement) is still viewable in its entirety on the main page of our member portal until the Collective Agreement is finalised, and summary documents are viewable here.
Also, now that this round of bargaining has ended, we will be electing a Collective Agreement Implementation Committee (CAIC) responsible for reworking our financial assistance funds: goals set for the CAIC at our platform meeting in the Fall included streamlining tuition/funding assistance, and creating an equity fund for BIPOC workers. A meeting dedicated to electing this committee will likely be called in the coming weeks.