UNBC Faculty Association – “Don’t bargain through the media”

UNBC’s Faculty Association is calling on administration to come back to the negotiating table and not “bargain through the media”.

Faculty President Jacqueline Holler saw the university’s $4.5 million proposal on their website before it was put on the table.

“Bargaining through the media … I don’t think that’s where we’re going to get an agreement. We’re going to get an agreement by sitting down together and hashing it out,” she says.

Holler stresses the best way to revive negotiations is to see “something” tabled.

“The administration last tabled a proposal on Thursday of last week, we responded to it as quickly as we could by Saturday morning, here it is Wednesday, and we’re still waiting,” she says. “I’m really hoping that we’re going to see a proposal come across the table sometime today.”

Holler says the main issue is getting wages up to other universities, though she has avoided comparing UNBC to other research universities like UBC because that gap is just too large.

Instead, Holler says UNBC’s wages should be closer to smaller undergraduate universities.

“Those universities are similar-sized, they are very often in similar types of communities, in places like Charlottetown or Sudbury, relatively small cities,” she says. “That’s the kind of university we compare ourselves to and what we find when we do that, is that we’re woefully out of step.”

UNBC students are holding an info session about the strike tonight at the Prince George Public Library starting at 6:00.