Claims and Facts in the UTFA Presidential Election Campaign

This is a campaign that ought to have been conducted on the basis of open and honest debates about substantive views. Terezia’s campaign has tried to do that. Sadly, the other campaign has not. This document provides a detailed examination with supporting evidence of three examples of the ways in which the other candidate has chosen to misrepresent Terezia’s positions and mislead UTFA voters. Unfortunately, there are many others.

#1 Unionization:

In a recent email to UTFA members, the other candidate wrote the following:

“In recent messaging, my opponent signals that she would like to unionize (certify) all of the UTFA membership.

Quoting from Terezia Zoric’s Twitter feed of March 30:

‘If a majority of @utfaculty members appeared to want to have UTFA become certified I would become very supportive of unionization for UTFA.’ ” 

What Terezia in fact said came in response to an inquiry from an UTFA member to both candidates. Here is the actual context of the exchange, i.e., the tweet with the question and Terezia’s full response:

Do you think that the other candidate’s presentation of Terezia’s position is fair and accurate?

Perhaps you will be tempted to say that it is a political campaign, and candidates always distort their opponent’s positions. But then the challenge for you is to find a single instance in which Terezia’s campaign has similarly misrepresented the position of the other candidate. You will not find one.

The UTFA campaign structure was designed to try to avoid mudslinging and misrepresentation and to make possible a civil exchange of differing views. That is the path Terezia has tried to pursue. Misleading presentations of another candidate’s views do not foster that sort of exchange.

Later in the same email, the other candidate says,

“The main difference between UTFA current status and a certified labor union is the right to strike.”

Once again this is not accurate. Some unionized faculty associations in Canada have negotiated dispute resolution processes that do not include the right to strike but do include the right to compulsory arbitration (which UTFA also doesn’t possess). The point here is not that unionization is desirable for UTFA. As Terezia says explicitly, it is “not a panacea” (and it is, and always has been, up to the majority of UTFA members to determine). The point is that this discussion, like others, should be based on accurate information and the facts, not on ignorance or misrepresentations.

#2 Reforming our Memorandum of Agreement

In the same email, the other candidate quotes Terezia as saying “. . . we must reform our bargaining framework.”  He notes that this sentence comes from a March 30 campaign message and comments, “It is very concerning that such important announcements have become public so late in the campaign. However, they are not entirely surprising as Terezia Zorić has often stated her support for unionization.” Thus, the other candidate gives the impression that the idea of reforming UTFA’s bargaining framework is a new idea and one directly connected to a push for unionization. This is not true, and the other candidate knows that. Here is the relevant passage from Terezia’s platform which has been on her website since March 20:

MAJOR NEXT STEP: The reality that hardworking UofT faculty and librarians had to experience lengthy delays in receiving their PTR, and UTFA had to spend its members’ resources on expensive legal challenges to seek to obtain them, is evidence that the UTFA/UofT Administration bargaining framework must be reformed via negotiated changes to better protect UTFA members’ rights to PTR and other previously negotiated terms and conditions of work during ongoing rounds of SBPW bargaining. 

Later in the same document, Terezia explains exactly what she means when she speaks of reforming the bargaining framework:

Preventing any repeat of the senior Administration’s withholding of UTFA members’ PTR payments as a pressure tactic by reforming our bargaining framework.

• In the short term, under Terezia’s leadership, UTFA is pressing for all terms relating to salaries, benefits, and workload to remain in effect during each round of bargaining until a final resolution is reached by settlement or award.

• In the medium term, Terezia would prevent a repeat of the PTR denial tactic by renegotiating fundamental shortcomings within Article 6 of UTFA’s Memorandum of Agreement with the University Administration that is now hampering UTFA’s ability to bargain more effectively on behalf of our members.

So, it is clear that when Terezia speaks of reforming the bargaining framework, she is talking not about union certification but about fixing the flaws in the Memorandum of Agreement that let the University Administration withhold PTR as they had recently done. The other candidate is clearly familiar with Terezia’s platform, and so he knows that the concept of “reforming the bargaining framework” is neither a new idea introduced late in the campaign nor one tied to unionization. Why would he say otherwise? Why would he deliberately mislead the readers of his email? It is perfectly fair for him to disagree with Terezia and to recommend a different approach. It is not fair for him to misrepresent the alternative in such an egregious manner.

#3 Protecting equal health care benefits for retirees

In various communications, the other candidate and his team have asserted that UTFA should never have allowed the issue of equal health care benefits for retirees to go to arbitration. That claim reveals an ongoing inability to understand how the bargaining process works or an unwillingness to be honest about it. It also reflects a characteristic tendency to blame UTFA rather than the Administration for unreasonable decisions made by the Administration. Both things should worry anyone who thinks UTFA needs to stand up effectively for the interests of faculty and librarians, including retirees.

If you already understand how the bargaining process works and why the claims of the other candidate’s team are misguided, you probably do not need to read any further. But if their claims have left you feeling uneasy, please read on.

UTFA’s bargaining framework with the Administration is structured largely by Article 6 in our (antiquated) Memorandum of Agreement (MOA). This MOA does NOT allow UTFA to dictate any particular bargaining outcome "or else". If the Administration refuses to move off a position, arbitration is the only viable option to resolve intractable disputes. We do not have the option of going on strike or taking any other sort of job action to defend our interests.

In this last, extended, round of bargaining, one of the main intractable disputes was over the Administration’s demand to reduce the costs of health care benefits for retirees. (Another dispute related to excessive workloads.) As it has always done in the past, UTFA’s bargaining team steadfastly refused to agree to two-tiered health benefits. UTFA’s current leadership has staunchly and unfailingly defended equal benefits for retirees. But the Administration would not agree to withdraw its demand. On the other hand, the Administration did agree to our proposals to improve various benefits for UTFA members, including improvements in mental health, massage, physiotherapy, vision, and dental benefits, all of which apply to retirees. So, the UTFA bargaining team decided to obtain benefits improvements for all while sending the issue of future benefits improvements for retirees (and future workload improvements) to arbitration.

Why did we do that? Well, the basic answer is that as much as it was a top priority for UTFA to protect health benefits for retirees, the top priority for the Administration was to create a two-tiered system. Even the dedicated expert help of a highly respected senior labour mediator (Kevin Burkett) could not resolve this fundamental dispute. Moreover, the benefits improvements that we gained for all are real and important, and we were and are very confident that we will win the fight against lesser retiree benefits in arbitration.

Why are we so confident? Because the Administration’s demand is unreasonable and unnecessary (i.e., there’s no demonstrable need for it—U of T can easily afford to treat its UTFA retirees equally). That is not just wishful thinking on our part. We have received expert legal advice from Goldblatt Partners about our likelihood of success in arbitration which they judge to be very high. We have also engaged in a great deal of research and analysis about our position. Among other things, we conducted a careful review of faculty association settlement patterns. Ontario university employers are not winning major concessions such as the one the U of T Administration is proposing.

What was the alternative? If we had simply refused to bargain improved benefits, then those issues, too, would have gone to arbitration, which would not have improved the chances of success with respect to protecting equal retiree benefits but would have created a risk of much weaker benefit improvements overall. The other alternative, presumably, would have been to have offered massive concessions on benefits in general to see if we could thereby persuade the Administration to drop its proposal of reducing retiree benefits. You will notice that this issue of what concessions UTFA should have made to induce the Administration to withdraw its demand regarding retiree benefits is one that the other candidate and his team never discuss. They would like you to believe that they could get the Administration to withdraw this demand just by asking more politely or waiting longer than our team did. But they offer no reason to explain why the Administration would do that. And frankly, that is not how bargaining works.

That is why UTFA did not consider the option of foregoing the negotiated agreements and yielding to an unreasonable demand. Going to arbitration—with the knowledge that arbitration briefs are public documents that UTFA can use to rally its membership—is a way of taking a stand and letting the Administration know that we will not be bullied into yielding. UTFA can be effective at the bargaining table only if it is a united organization that takes the interests and concerns of all its members into account. That is the approach that UTFA has consistently taken as an Association.

That is why the UTFA bargaining team voted unanimously to recommend to Council that we approve the first two years of our Agreement and proceed to the only dispute resolution mechanism available to UTFA for the remaining items in year 3. And that is why Council agreed to this approach with only one dissenting vote.

The external indicators support our decision. As a result of the Agreement, UTFA’s leaders have been heralded among faculty association chief negotiators for the gains we achieved on behalf of our members at the bargaining table. For example, we have been invited to speak at OCUFA about our proven strategy and tactics for dealing effectively with an aggressive employer within an unfavourable bargaining context. The UTFA team is knowledgeable and prepared for the arbitration process, and so long as this team remains united and intact, we are confident of success.