Employees, Employers, and PSEC: An Awkward Threesome

by Paul Bowles, President, CUFA BC
September 23, 2009

Although you may not think about it very often, faculty members at BC’s public universities are public sector employees. As a consequence, when a university faculty association sits down with the university administration to negotiate wages, benefits and working conditions, the whole process takes place under the umbrella of the Public Sector Employers’ Council (PSEC).

Established in 1993 by the NDP government, the legislated purposes of PSEC are to ensure coordination of human resource policies and collective bargaining activities amongst public sector employers and to improve communication and coordination between public sector employers and employee groups. Over recent years, however, its practice has gone far beyond simple coordination to include explicit limits on free collective bargaining.

Part of the problem with PSEC is the extent to which it allows for direct governmental management of our bargaining. PSEC is compromised of two components, the Council itself and the Secretariat. The Council includes representatives from each of the seven public sector employers’ associations, seven cabinet ministers or deputy ministers and the Minister of Finance as the chairperson. The Council is responsible for setting high-level policy. The Secretariat is responsible for implementing Council policies and for dealing directly with public sector employers.

From its inception, the Council’s mandate has included a form of wage controls, which is currently known as the “bargaining mandate.” The bargaining mandates given to public sector employers includes a general limit on growth in wages and sometimes include more specific directives. Over time, the range of items covered by PSEC’s bargaining mandate has expanded unevenly, sometimes including virtually everything that has a cost implication, sometimes setting rules for non-monetary issues as well. The wage-controls can likewise be rather unevenly distributed; in 2006, the general wage increases allowed for university faculty were a little larger than those for most other public sector employees. Nurses in 2009 were given more than the general mandate as well.

This uneven treatment makes it clear that bargaining mandates are discussed between PSEC and the public sector employers’ associations, but the final decision on the mandates is made, effectively, by the Minister of Finance. Because of this political dimension, many have asked if BC public sector employees really have access to free collective bargaining. A recent Supreme Court of Canada ruling on government interference in collective bargaining has raised further questions about PSEC’s role in constraining bargaining.

It’s certainly true that anyone from a union or employee association who has been at the bargaining table since the creation of PSEC would be hard pressed to say that it is a textbook example of free collective bargaining. What is also clear is that —in the short term— PSEC is unlikely to go away any time soon. CUFA BC and its member associations seek to effectively represent the interests of our members in the shadow of PSEC, and we continue to closely monitor PSEC’s impact on our ability to bargain freely with our employer universities.

Profs See Good, Bad and Ugly in Budget Update

CUFA BC News Release
September 1, 2009

BC’s university professors today gave a mixed review to the provincial budget update for 2009/10.

"In the short term, the maintenance of university operating budgets at the levels promised in February is welcome given a provincial budget awash in red ink. February’s budget increase reversed the damaging reductions in 2008 and we are pleased to see that increase preserved in today’s budget update," said Dr. Paul Bowles, President of the Confederation of University Faculty Associations of BC.

Although detailed budget allocations were not released with today’s budget update, government officials have confirmed that funding to post-secondary institutions will remain as announced this past March.

"The immediate bad news are the cuts to annual capital allowance and student financial assistance programs. At a time when federal and provincial infrastructure money is going to new buildings, it makes little sense to reduce expenditures on maintaining and upgrading existing buildings," Dr. Bowles said. "We also know that students are having a tough time and many are going back to school as a result of the recession. Reducing student aid funding at this time just increases the burden on students."

Provincial government funding for building repair and maintenance will drop by about $16 million from the amount announced in March. Funding for student financial assistance will drop by almost $17 million at a time when demand is bound to increase.

"Looking forward, the outlook is not pretty. The institutions’ operating budgets will not increase at all over the next two years. This means no increases to cover inflationary costs, no ability to respond to any spike in student demand, and increased difficulties in recruiting and retaining faculty," Dr. Bowles said. "These are indeed tough economic times, as the government points out, but the recovery which it predicts will not be seen in the universities over the following two years."

Funding to post-secondary institutions is expected to be flat over the next two years, but because the costs of goods and services needed by universities and colleges tend to grow faster the rate of inflation, this means a real reduction in funding. So, the impacts of the recession will be continue to be felt in these institutions if and when the recession itself is technically over.

CUFA BC represents 4,600 university professors, instructors, academic librarians and other academic staff at SFU (Burnaby, Vancouver and Surrey campuses), UBC (Vancouver and Kelowna campuses), UNBC (Prince George, Terrace, Fort St. John and Quesnel campuses), UVic and Royal Roads University.