The Donald C. Savage Award was established in 1997 in honour of Donald C. Savage, Executive Director of CAUT 1972-1997, and was instituted to honour and to recognize outstanding achievements in the promotion of collective bargaining in Canadian universities and colleges.
This year’s winner of CAUT’s Donald C. Savage Award was Dr. Jon Church of Memorial University. Dr. Church has been an Academic Staff Member in the BioMedicine Division of the Faculty of Medicine at Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John’s, NL, since 1989. He first began working with the Memorial University of Newfoundland Faculty Association (MUNFA) in 1992. Since then he has been – variously, but continuously – a grievance officer and member of the MUNFA Academic Freedom and Grievance Committee, chair of that same Committee, a Member-at-Large of the MUNFA Executive, Vice-President of the Association, and chief negotiator in collective bargaining. This fall, MUNFA is once again at the bargaining table with the administration of Memorial University; it is the seventh round of collective bargaining of which Dr Church has been part, and the fifth time he has been chief negotiator. While union work has been very near and dear to Jon’s heart his entire career, he’d probably say he would rather have you join him around a pot of asparagus risotto, and enjoying a good bottle of wine, than at a labour relations meeting!
