by Louigi Addario-Berry, AMPS President
Last Friday, the COFAM bargaining team sent in our entire common demand book – monetary and non-monetary – to McGill. This was the result of a truly herculean effort on the part of the team – as you can tell merely by the length of the document (450 pages!!)
Over the weekend, I read the demand book, and below I’ve included some of what I view as its highlights. Just my highlight reel is already rather long, but that’s because the bargaining team has done such a good job of creating a book that aims to protect and improve so many aspects of our workplace. Keep in mind that there will be science-specific bargaining as well, so there is still the chance to bargain for things that don’t appear in this book.
Some of you may also wish to look at the submitted demand book yourself, and I’ve included a link to that, below. The format of the whole book may be a bit overwhelming; here is some info that may help you parse it.
Column 1 contains initial demand book submissions from COFAM – these long predate the current book.
Column 2 contains McGill responses to the initial demand book.
Column 3 contains our current demand book submission – if you want to understand what we have currently put on the table, this is the column you should be looking at.
Column 4 contains articles that have already been agreed between the COFAM bargaining team and McGill.
Column 5 is reserved for comments.
Please note that the articles in Column 3 weren’t all first submitted on Sep 11 – many were submitted in early July. This means that some priorities that have been raised by AMPS and other COFAM union members in the intervening time don’t yet appear in our demand book. We have heard all the priorities that have been raised by members, but we can’t change parts of the demand book that we’ve already submitted until we have a reply from McGill, and McGill has refused to respond to the latest aspects of our demand book until we submit the entire book. This is part of the reason the bargaining team has been working so hard to get the demand book to McGill as soon as possible. It’s also why you may notice some typos, grammatical infelicities, oddly highlighted passages, or the occasional “2027” that should say “2026”, in the submitted version of the demand book. The team was working down to the wire, and there are some minor issues – nothing substantive – that need to be cleaned up.
All that is to say, if there’s something that’s a priority for you, that you don’t see addressed here, that doesn’t mean it has been ignored by the bargaining team; they may still be planning to bring it to the COFAM bargaining table, and it also may be something that we can address in science-specific bargaining.
You can find version of the demand book that was submitted on September 11 here.
Below are my notes on some of the aspects of the demand book that jumped out to me as highlights as I read the book. Note that this is a personal assessment – these are not meant to be “the most important points” in any absolute sense. Before going into those notes, here is a photo of the cake that we presented at the bargaining team appreciation event last week. It’s almost as thick as the actual demand book!
Highlights from the demand book
Article 3 concerns how the agreement will be applied. This article of the demand book in particular states the important requirement that McGill treat its employees justly (3.5).
Article 5, on relations between AMPS and McGill, requires McGill to allow AMPS representatives or legal counsel to access McGill’s premises to assist AMPS with its business (5.2).
Article 6 protects academics in the faculty from McGill unilaterally changing our working conditions, by enforcing that McGill’s policies that affect academic staff can’t be changed accept by mutual consent. McGill has objected to much of this section of our demand book.
Article 8 concerns disagreements and grievances. AMPS wishes to be involved in representing members in grievances whenever an employee encounters a problem concerning the collective agreement (8.9). McGill’s response appears to take issue with this; and suggests that McGill wants to be able to talk to members directly about collective agreement issues without involving the union.
Article 9 is about academic freedom. There are some paragraphs in here that I think are worth simply quoting in toto.
9.2 Where applicable, every Employee shall have the right to organize course content, classroom or laboratory activities, and evaluations and to employ methodology and didactic material, including textbooks, for the courses assigned to them, in a manner appropriate to the course and consistent with relevant academic standards as well as course descriptions approved by Senate.
9.3 The Employees have the freedom to pursue research and artistic creation and to disseminate their results, without being constrained by political or disciplinary orthodoxies, monetary incentives or punitive measures as a result of their academic pursuits.
9.8 The Employer and its officers have a duty to protect the academic freedom of the Employees, both individually and collectively, from infringement and undue external influence as well as to maintain the Employer’s institutional autonomy.
Article 10 is about academic duties. This section lays out an expansive view of what our academic duties are in the faculty. It also is the section that describes the conversion of contract academic staff to the tenure track (see 10.6.1 in particular), and protects the job duties of those whose classifications do not change.
Article 11 – Appointment, reappointment, tenure and promotion.
Among other things, this article describes the reasons for which tenure can be denied, and prohibits the university from denying tenure because of numerical limits on tenured appointments, budgetary considerations, program restructuring, or other institutional priorities. It also stipulates that deans and provosts must not override departments on hiring recommendations subsequent to a job search.
In the description of how reappointment and promotion decisions are made, the article states that in considering teaching and pedagogical contributions, evaluation “shall be based on effectiveness, quality, significance and impact, rather than student feedback alone” (see 11.3.2.2 and, relatedly, 11.6.1.4). Similarly, when evaluating research contributions, it states that “No assessment of research and scholarly activity shall rely exclusively on quantitative indicators […] Such indicators may be considered only where relevant to the field and shall be assessed in context.” (see 11.3.3.5). It also takes a broad vision of service contributions, stating that “Service may include administrative, supervisory, committee, governance, mentoring, professional, academic, public, community-engaged, or equity-related work, including work that supports students, colleagues, programs, academic units, scholarly or professional communities, or communities beyond the Employer.” (see 11.3.4.2).
It allows employees undergoing tenure review to supplement their tenure dossiers with relevant new information at any stage of the review process before the final decision is made, provided that the material is submitted in a timely manner and that its relevance is explained (see 11.6.2.1).
It provides a detailed, explicit and transparent appointment and tenure process, giving responsibility to departments to decide on field-appropriate standards and criteria.
Finally, it protects the meaning of tenure as it now exists in McGill regulations, which McGill could otherwise unilaterally change: “An Employee awarded tenure shall be appointed for an Indefinite Term that may not be terminated except for cause“.
Article 13, on disciplinary measures, protects employees from arbitrary punishment: “The onus shall be on the Employer to demonstrate that any disciplinary or administrative measure taken against a member is fair, reasonable, commensurate and compliant with this agreement” (13.5.1).
Article 14 provides that all employees have the right to request reduced load appointments, and that such requests shall be approved unless the employer can demonstrate that the proposed arrangement would cause a severe disruption in the operation of the academic unit (14.03). It also emphasizes that an employee decision to take a reduced load appointment shall not be treated as evidence of reduced commitment, reduced productivity, or diminished contribution (14.16).
Article 15 describes sabbatic and other leaves. In addition to protecting the sabbatic leave policy from changes, this article also provides that a sabbatic leave is suspended if an individual on sabbatic leave has to take disability leave, maternity leave, parental leave, adoption leave, or another form of leave protected by the agreement (15.42).
The article also provides that leaves of absence can be arranged with less than 3 months notice, in exceptional circumstances and on compassionate grounds.
It also provides for full pay during one year of parental leave, and an additional one year of unpaid parental leave. These leaves can be taken by one parent, or split between two parents as they wish.
It additionally provides for up to one year of care leave (without pay) for close relatives with serious physical of psychological health problems, upon employee request.
Article 16 describes our privacy rights in the workplace. It insists among other things that there should be no digital of physical surveillance of us in the workplace without our consent. McGill has already objected to this clause at the bargaining table.
Article 17 concerns intellectual property and patents. One of its provisions is that “The Employer shall not use or share, including uploading to any artificial intelligence system in any way, copyrighted works created by the Employee without their written consent” (see 17.4) It also provides that we own any of our inventions, unless we invented them on employer time or using employer resources (17.13) and that McGill can’t upload our IP to an AI (17.17).
Article 21 comprehensively describes the accommodations McGill must make for members with disabilities, including improving the flexibility surrounding the forms of medical documentation required to request accommodation.
Article 23 describes how McGill will value contributions of Black and Indigenous employees. It recognizes that service contributions of Black and Indigenous employees to their communities, to students, and to colleagues are frequently over and above regular service contributions, and provides mechanisms for Black and Indigenous employees to adjust their service contributions accordingly.
Article 24 concerns governance. Our demand book provides for the associations to have representation in the searches for new provosts/presidents. McGill objects to this. The demand book also insists that a majority of external members of our Board of Governors should be academic employees of Canadian universities.
Article 26 concerns management of infrastructure, purchasing, procurement and travel. Importantly, it enforces that McGill will honour its tri-council obligations. This means if McGill says they’ll provide some form of support if you get a grant, and they get a grant, they are bound to actually provide that support (26.3). It also provides that all expense reports and purchase requests will be processed within 2 weeks (26.8).
Article 27 is about AI. Its first paragraph is, in my view, extremely important:
“Where the Employer is considering making plans or proposes changes related to the adoption, availability, or use of technologies or systems that will impact conditions of employment and/or the academic duties and responsibilities of Employees, the Employer shall provide the Association with information regarding the proposed changes including but not limited to an assessment of the technology’s anticipated impacts, including privacy, bias, security, and labour implications, allowing sufficient time for the Association to consider the proposed changes. No changes of any kind can be made by the Employer without the express written consent of the Association.”
Some other highlights from the AI article: these articles ensure that AI is not used as an excuse for the transfer of new labour onto academics in the faculty, or to lay off academics in the faculty, or as an excuse for inadequate hiring.
27.8 The Employer shall not directly or indirectly use AI systems to replace Employees or limit the number of new academic staff hires.
27.10 The Employer shall not use AI systems in a way that directly or indirectly leads to the reduction of other human resources including administrative and support staff, teaching assistants, or research assistants that work for or with Employees in the Association.
Article 28 is about our pensions. It protects us from unilateral changes to our pension plan without our consent; restores defined-benefit pensions; increases the employer contribution level to a minimum 10.5% of salaries; provides for employer contributions to pensions until the age of 71; indexes our pensions to the Consumer Price Index; and ensures that employees have adequate representation on the pension administration committee.
Article 29 concerns benefits. It doubles the basic life ensurance coverage and provides coverage for eyecare and massage therapy.
Article 30 increases the value of the professional development fund, and the number of years it can be rolled over.
Article 31 aims to bring our salary up to the top 3 of the U15 based on three measures: salary at the 10th percentile, 50th percentile, and 90th percentile. It also indexes the envelope for salary increases to the inflation rate. Details on ongoing annual salary increases will be bargained faculty-by-faculty, but bringing salaries up to the level of our comparator institutions will already require a 39k across-the-board salary increase for all academic staff, independent of rank and classification, over a 3-year period.
Note that ~40k per member for about 1000 cofam members would be about $40M in additional spending. Last year, McGill created an operating surplus of over $43M/year in a single year through austerity and increased enrolments and tuition. This all went to a “sinking fund” for repaying debt McGill has chosen to incur for the sustainability park project. It could have gone to people. If McGill can find $43M in one year, they can find $40M over three years.
This article also increases the raise that comes with a promotion in rank (31.5), and makes the allocation of anomaly, retention and equity raises a more collegial process (31.7).
Article 32, concerning our working environment,provides that McGill shall provide us with adequate administrative support to enable us to carry out our academic duties (32.1), and in particular protects our right to private offices (32.5) and to work computers (32.15-16) and tech support (32.21), among many other things. It also provides that retired academics retain library and email access for life (32.23).
Article 33, on workload, enforces a fair and equitable distribution of work, taking into account career stage, personal circumstances, and other factors. It contains a detailed description of factors that should be included in a workload assessment (that is not meant to be exhaustive).