ARTICLE 31, SALARIES AND BENEFITS
On Wednesday, March 26 the MUNFA Negotiating Committee tabled an outline of our salary and benefit demands for Article 31 of the MUNFA-MUN Collective Agreement. Included were:
- across the board percentage salary increases for all Academic Staff Members (ASMs) that recognize the financial package other unions have received as well as the timing of our last pay increases, our future needs and maintaining competitive salary structure with Canadian and International institutions;
- modest additional step adjustments for Lecturers and Co-operative and Field Education Members, and for our junior Faculty and Librarian ranks whose pay lags behind similar positions at other Canadian universities;
- new contract language meant to address low salary anomalies at each rank and new clauses designed to formalize MUN’s use of discretionary market differential salary steps;
- increases in Professional Development Travel Expense Reimbursement (PDTER) amounts for all ASMs and an expressed desire to use PDTER to leverage additional funds for research and scholarly activity;
- a tuition waiver for use by an ASM, his or her spouse, and family members;
- a monetary “Childcare Benefit” for families of ASMs with children under the age of 12. At the sametime we continue our efforts to ensure adequate childcare on all MUN campuses.
It was the MUNFA Negotiating Committee’s hope that this relatively modest package of demands would help satisfy many of our members financial needs over the next few years, as well as address the critical issues of recruitment and retention of ASMs. We also felt that by making our financial demands now, MUNFA signaled to the administration that we feel we are closer to the end of collective bargaining than to the beginning.
MUNFA Negotiating Committee:
- Dr. Jon Church (Chief Negotiator), Medicine
- Dr. Barrie Barrell, Education
- Dr. Alistair Bath, Geography
- Dr. Stephen Butt, Engineering & Applied Science
- Dr. Sonya Corbin Dwyer, Grenfell Campus
- Mr. Dan Duda, Library
- Ms. Kelly Hickey, MUNFA Executive Officer
- Dr. George Jenner, Earth Sciences
- Dr. Basil Kavanagh, Human Kinetics & Recreation
- Mr. Leroy Murphy, Cooperative Education Coordinator, Business
- Dr. Richard Rivkin, Ocean Sciences
- Dr. Paul Wilson, Grenfell Campus
