Arbitrator: Drastic cuts to faculty support services violates collective agreement
University’s drastic, unilateral cuts to support services harms faculty and violates multiple collective agreement obligations
In a landmark decision in the University sector, Arbitrator Michelle Flaherty has held that York University’s drastic, unilateral cuts in 2016 to the support services previously provided to faculty members by Graduate Assistants (GAs) resulted in harms to faculty across the University and violated multiple collective agreement provisions. The ruling sends a clear message across the sector about the importance of ensuring an adequate level of support services for faculty members’ teaching, research, and service work.
Background
For over 30 years, York University funded hundreds of Graduate Assistants (GAs) every year who provided administrative, clerical, research, and other support services to faculty members in several Faculties across the University. Suddenly in 2016, the administration dramatically reduced the number of centrally-funded GAs (from over 800 to less than 100) and drastically increased the cost faculty members must budget when hiring GAs with their grant funds. The administration made the changes as part of a restructuring of its graduate student funding model. Overall, York cut its annual funding for GAs by 90%, from approximately $4.5 million per year to under $500,000 per year. The millions of dollars in lost annual funding for GAs left hundreds of faculty members without the administrative, clerical, research, and other supports upon which they had come to rely over decades.
YUFA filed a policy grievance alleging multiple violations of the collective agreement.
Parties’ positions
YUFA alleged that, prior to the changes in 2016, there was a broad, systemic pattern of reliance on GAs by faculty members and that the sudden, substantial decline in university funding for GAs in 2016 represented a withdrawal of adequate, reasonable support services under the collective agreement. It maintained that this unilateral withdrawal of crucial support services resulted in significant harms to the working conditions of faculty members across six of the university’s eleven faculties, including harms to faculty workload, research productivity, and prospects for professional advancement, among others. YUFA also grieved the administration’s failure to properly notify and consult with the association and affected members prior to the changes.
The administration argued that there was no obligation – whether explicit or implicit – in the collective agreement for it to fund GAs or the supports historically provided by them, that YUFA had failed to prove a broad, systemic reliance on GAs by faculty prior to 2016, and that the wide variation in the use and availability of GAs across the university was inconsistent with a collective agreement obligation, which it argued should apply uniformly across the bargaining unit.
Arbitrator’s decision
Following a hotly contested 26-day hearing spanning more than two and a half years, Arbitrator Flaherty upheld YUFA’s grievance.
The arbitrator held that the administration’s sudden and significant decrease in GA funding in 2016 adversely impacted faculty members in several faculties across the university and violated multiple provisions of the collective agreement. Taking note of both the longstanding practice of assigning GAs to faculty and the significant level of funding allocated for this purpose, the arbitrator held that the administration’s funding of GAs translated into meaningful support for affected faculty and that, prior to 2016, there was a broad, systemic pattern of reliance on GAs by faculty members.
The arbitrator concluded that the administration’s dramatic, unilateral cuts to GA support in 2016 represented a withdrawal of the adequate, reasonable support services it is required to provide under the collective agreement. She found that the withdrawal of these support services increased faculty workload, adversely impacted faculty members’ ability to carry out their work, and undermined their research productivity. The arbitrator further concluded that the administration violated its obligations to properly notify and consult with YUFA and affected faculty prior to the changes.
Arbitrator Flaherty’s ruling reflects three key take-aways.
I. Policy grievances need not affect all members of the bargaining unit
In arriving at her decision, Arbitrator Flaherty rejected the administration’s argument that YUFA had failed to prove a systemic breach of the collective agreement because it did not demonstrate the GA cuts affected the bargaining unit as whole. The administration argued that because the decrease in GA funding primarily impacted faculty members in six (not all eleven) faculties at the university, YUFA’s policy grievance could not succeed. Arbitrator Flaherty disagreed. She held that a policy grievance need only concern a matter of general interest to the bargaining unit1 and that, as such, YUFA was not required to show that all members of the bargaining unit were directly affected by the cuts. In her view, such a requirement would create an “unduly restrictive interpretation” of a policy grievance not supported by the jurisprudence or the parties’ collective agreement (which imposed no such requirement).
II. Variation in supports across the University no bar to finding collective agreement obligation
Arbitrator Flaherty also rejected the administration’s related argument that, because of the variation in the use and availability of GAs across the university, it would be “unfair, odd, and incongruous to recognize a collective agreement obligation that applies so inconsistently across the bargaining unit.” Arbitrator Flaherty again disagreed explaining:
It is again important to keep in mind the specific context of a university, which is a diverse workplace. It was evident from both the Association and the Administration’s witnesses that there are considerable variations in the type of work faculty conduct, the types of professional activities they engage in, and how they meet their professional obligations….Given the variations in how faculty accomplish their professional obligations, it is reasonable to expect that the support they require will also vary…based on factors including their research interests, the manner in which the research is conducted, and the scale of their funding applications.
Arbitrator Flaherty’s finding that the heterogeneous nature of the university environment is relevant in interpreting a university’s collective agreement obligations may prove helpful to other faculty associations.
III. Unilateral cuts to support services for faculty risk violating University obligations
Finally, Arbitrator Flaherty’s decision reinforces the importance of ensuring an adequate level of support services for faculty members’ teaching, research, and service work. Many faculty association collective agreements across the country commit university administrations to ensuring an adequate and/or reasonable level of support services for the work of faculty members and librarians. This ruling breathes new life into these provisions and may cause university administrations to think twice before cutting critical supports to the detriment of their academic employees, upon whom universities rely in fulfilling their institutional goals.
Moving forward
While the issue of remedy remains outstanding, Arbitrator Flaherty’s award represents a major victory for faculty members and other employee groups in the post-secondary sector, who have long resisted cuts to institutional supports arguing that such cuts increase employee workload and undermine employees’ ability to carry out their work to the expected standard.
Lawyers
Emma Phillips, Mary-Elizabeth Dill