MUNFA’S INDEX

Number of days since receipt of notice of intention to begin negotiations: 518

Number of days since MUN and MUNFA agreed on which Articles would be negotiated: 363

Number of days since MUNFA and MUN actually began collective bargaining: 247

Number of days since MUNFA presented a salary proposal to the administration: 212

Number of actual bargaining sessions: 16

Of 31 total Articles, number to be negotiated: 6

Number of Articles agreed: 0

Amount of money offered towards salaries or benefits by the administration: $0

One of the key goals of collective bargaining is to negotiate salaries that fairly compensate ASMs and are competitive with those at other universities. In addition, a union should ensure that salaries among its members of similar experience are approximately the same. At MUN, salaries are fair when ASMs are paid on scale’, i.e. according to the provisions of Article 31 and Appendix D.

MUNFA accepts the fact that in order to recruit, it is sometimes necessary to place colleagues higher on the scale than their experience alone would dictate. This supplement or “market differential” is in addition to basic salary.

If the ASM salary scale were nationally competitive, there would be little or no need for significant market differentials. In the last few years, however, there has been a marked increase in market differentials offered in all disciplines at MUN. This is largely because our salary scale is not competitive with that of other universities. This has resulted in serious wage compression, i.e. some colleagues are paid more, sometimes quite a lot more, than others who have equivalent or more experience. This unfairness if allowed to persist, would result in a large difference in life-time earnings. We do not find such differences in salary amongst colleagues acceptable.

An effective remedy for wage compression is to raise the salary scale and salary floors, and convert some of the market differential steps into salary scale steps. This reduces wage compression while granting greater salary security. The MUNFA salary proposal takes this approach.

MUNFA Negotiating Committee:

• Jon Church (Medicine) Chief Negotiator
• George Jenner (Earth Sciences)
• Dorothy Milne (Q.E. II Library)
• Richard Rivkin (Ocean Sciences Centre)
• Lili Wang (Pharmacy)
• Paul Wilson (SWGC)
• Marian Atkinson (MUNFA Executive Officer, non-voting member)