By Neil Balan, PhD, 3912 SMU PT Faculty Steward and Bargaining Team Member
As we move into the Fall 2025 semester in what is a challenging institutional and political economic set of conditions for our members and for academic workers across the sector, we want to reiterate our collective power and strength as a unified union local. When we talk about challenges, we mean the wider structural and systematic contexts of revenue-centred management methods, austerity measures, diminished provincial and public funding, reliance on tuition fees and “self-sourced revenues” for operating budgets, overreaching government legislation related to post-secondary education (Bill12), new bilateral agreements, revenue-centred institutional planning, and cuts to international student permits (i.e., cuts to a system of segmented and insourced revenue-generating user fees).
Given the substantial cuts to 3912 PTA positions in April 2025 mainly in Faculty of Arts and given what are substantially fewer 3912 PTA contracts issued for Fall 2025, our bargaining sessions in June gained even more importance as we sought to connect the bargaining process to the material condition our members were experiencing. It was a bizarre but also important backdrop to our preparations and planning. We were seeing in real-time how the very substance of our proposals and bargaining priorities were so important and crucial to protect the work and collective interests of our members. If the current situation at Dalhousie University is any indication, where an administration and board of governors opted to lockout DFA members while they were voting on tentative agreement, we have to be ready. Dal U is proposing binding arbitration, effectively refusing to bargain and working to derail a negotiated deal that cuts to heart of many of the challenges listed above.
We acknowledge that it can feel difficult to organize and mobilize our efforts to defend our collective labour rights when our access to work is always precarious but seemingly more so in the current moment. We may think that now is not a good time to push on demanding a better deal for our members, our unit, and our local. Yet we are also of the view that no time is a good time—which is to say also that anytime is a good time—to push for better workplace protections and conditions, better jobs, and fair wages that are just and that align at a minimum with median wages across the sector. We need a collective agreement that reflects and respects the work we do as contract faculty members and teachers. We might feel vulnerable, but we also have to remain committed in relation to our demands and our core priorities. As we said at the outset of this current round of bargaining: a union local that is not ready to strike is not ready to bargain, and this is an important premise to guide us going forward.
Our collective agreement expired in August 2024, and we gave notice in April 2024 to start bargaining a new collective agreement. After nine months of bargaining with the employer that began in October 2024 and focused entirely on our non-monetary proposals, we tabled our monetary proposals in early June 2025. Throughout the process, we bargained in good faith and modified our proposals, withdrawing some proposals where warranted, making concessions, and creating counter-proposals to try and reach an agreement with the employer. In some instances, we took multiple runs through our proposals to come up with a solution acceptable to both parties. By and large, we bargained on our proposals from the start, with the employer having only two proposals—one of which was a proposed 10-FTE carve out for equity-seeking and representative working groups that fundamentally undermined our seniority and precedence, which is the only real form of job security we have as contract instructors.
Over the course of bargaining, we focused on the substantive priorities that we established as a unit: jobs security for members with precedence; permanent part-time appointments; reducing the number of FTEs to move up the steps on our wage structure; and updating the process of obtaining letters of appointment. We continually made the case for more consistent timelines around job postings, appointments to teach, and the issuing of contracts, citing existing and well-defined timelines and procedures at other universities. We also focused on securing worker-friendly language on discipline, performance improvement, and termination. And while we were able to come to some small agreements with some concessions from the employer, the process was frustrating.
While not wanting overdetermine or overdraw the disposition of the employer, the general tone we encountered was not so much acrimonious and adversarial but more of a generalized indifference premised on the presumed prerogative and power of an employer invested in a zero-sum conception of management rights. This is the structural antagonism built into labour negotiations and collective bargaining. As such, and despite some positive conversations, we remained well aware of what continue to be significant gaps between what we want and value versus the needs and interests of the employer.
During our three bargaining sessions in June 2025, the employer’s responses were remarkably consistent with the responses and reasons we received continually: recourse to management rights; not able to “operationalize” proposals or measures; and proposals being unrealistic in financial or institutional terms (i.e., “not in a position to do this at this time”). Regarding our momentary proposals on course stipends and wage increases, our wage structure (3% increases per year plus a $1000 wage increase at the outset) was rejected outright and countered with 1% and pittance-like increase in holiday pay contingent on agreeing with this 1% proposal. We found this to be insulting, a response that further cheapens our labour with an employer that continues to stall on issuing contracts and seems more interested in relying on just-in-time labour to teach just-in-time university courses according to the logic of “revenue-positive course offerings.” We don’t deny the economic and financial pressures that shape SMU and the sector, but we refuse to play the role of proportional “acceptable losses” as cost-cutting measures on some pathway to financial recovery. As workers who drive enrollments and sustain program development, we create value for the university on its own terms.
Our proposals on access to an extended health benefits plan, access to a pension plan, on compensation for work on committees, on compensation for course cancellations, and on increases to professional development funds: all were rejected. Notably, even as we crafted many of our new proposals with language from other existing collective agreements at SMU (with SMUFU, CUP 4491, and NSGEU 179) and with an emphasis on existing agreements with other workers on campus, we ran into walls.
After what became our final bargaining session on 20 June where SMU responded to our monetary proposals, we caucused and agreed that this was unacceptable and that we were at an impasse and so decided to file for conciliation. Our CUPE National Rep communicated this to the employer, and we formally filed for conciliation with the province on 23 June. On 11 July, we received notice that we’d been assigned a mediator and conciliation officer and that conciliation was scheduled for Thursday 11 September.
In effect, conciliation is a mediated opportunity to reach a tentative agreement. If conciliation fails to produce an agreement, the pathway to job action and a strike is open. If no agreement is reached, a conciliator files a report that triggers a 13-day “cooling off” period and an opportunity for one final meeting on Day 14 after the report. If no agreement is reached, 3912 SMU PTA workers would be in a legal strike position. Sometimes, there is a possibility of a second conciliation date, but this would be contingent on the conciliator’s decisions and assessments.
What do our members need to know? The 3912 SMU PTA unit will be holding a strike mandate vote (a “strike authorization vote” or “strike vote”) on 9 and 10 September, just before conciliation. All 3912 SMU PTA members with a teaching contract in the Fall 2025 semester can vote. A strong strike vote—that is, a high percentage of members with contracts vote to authorize a strike and provide a mandate to strike if and when warranted and necessary—is a normal part of the bargaining process. It provides the bargaining team with leverage going into conciliation, and it sends a clear message to the employer that our membership is committed to labour action. While a strike is disruptive for workers who rely on their wages, withdrawing our labour can ultimately force a tentative agreement if we cannot reach one in advance that is fair, just, and sustainable for our membership. We remain committed to bargaining, but we are mobilizing and preparing our membership for what could be a possible strike. This is essential, and to do otherwise would be irresponsible and a surrender.
Because of the cuts to SMU courses that are typically taught by 3912 contract faculty, we know that we have fewer active 3912 SMU PTA members teaching this fall. To some, this may suggest that a strike may have less of an impact or effect in terms of the SMU’s academic offerings in the Fall 2025. Yet, our comrades in the 3912 SMU TA unit are also heading into conciliation, and our CUPE 4491 (facilities management) colleagues are also waiting to receive a date for conciliation. Some of our other 3912 PTA units at Dal U and MSVU are also heading into conciliation, too. So, again, while we may feel vulnerable, we have support across the campus, the local, and the sector. The everyday work of the unit and local doesn’t change: we continue to move grievances on the behalf of members and in the interests of the local, and we continue to push the employer to respect and apply the current CA in all labour management contexts.
As we move into the new semester, we encourage our members to stay informed, to prepare, to be ready, and to be clear about possible developments over the next month. We expect to send out consistent communications in the next week about meeting to hold the strike vote, and we’ll begin to ramp up a strike mobilization campaign, too. We are stronger as a unified and collective group of workers, and we will continue to represent the wider needs and interests of the membership. Stay tuned.
