Members of the University of Guelph Faculty Association (UGFA) have ratified their new three-year collective agreement. The bargaining team’s hard work, bolstered by an exceptionally strong strike mandate, enabled members to make noteworthy gains on their mandate goals of compensation to make up for the Bill124 imposed wage cap and inflation, collegial governance, and faculty complement.
In compensation, members receive a 6% market adjustment, followed by 3.75% cost-of-living increase in year one, a 3.5% cost-of-living increase in year two, and a 3.0% cost-of-living increase in year three. Members will also get an increase to their annual career increment in each year of the agreement.
On improvements to appointment processes, in the rare case of “Exceptional Searches”, where the Administration does not know in advance the home department of a potential appointee, committees will now consist of at least one elected member from each of the possible home departments. Members holding a contractually-limited appointment who apply for a tenure-track or continuing appointment-track position and get interviewed, but are not successful, will receive feedback from the committee.
Three new joint committees have been established: to reviewtenure, continuing-appointment, and promotion processes; to study workload and how to address it; and to examine the Collaborative Doctor of Veterinary Medicine Program to be offered jointly with Lakehead University.
Of special note is a new Memorandum of Agreement, signed parallel to the collective agreement, that lays out increases to complement, under which the university must reach a permanent member count of 853 by January 1, 2026. New hiring will include at least one librarian and one veterinarian. The agreement contains strong requirements on consultation, reporting, and timelines, and an arbitrator remains seized if the target is missed. The university will also pay UGFA lost union dues resulting from their failure to meet the target complement commitment on January 1, 2024, which was agreed to in 2019 as part of the single employer pension plan conversion to the University Pension Plan.