Nearly 850 Dalhousie University Staff Poised To Go On Strike Over Pensions
HALIFAX – Nearly 850 Dalhousie University employees could go on strike as early as Thursday after 80 percent of the NSGEU members rejected the latest offer from the university. The potential strike action comes after seven months of failed negotiations between the two sides.
The 844 employees work in administration and technical support and are spread out over the Halifax campus, the agricultural college in Truro, and New Brunswick.
The NSGEU claims the big sticking point for the union is pension contributions. They say Dalhousie University wants to use the federal government’s CPP enhancements to subsidize the employer contributions.
“Members are required to pay 6 percent of their pay toward Dal pension premiums and the employer is responsible for the investment and funding of the plan. That is the agreement our members have with the employer and that is the agreement we want them to uphold,” states the NSGEU press release.
“They want the recent Federal CPP enhancements that are supposed to go to the members to instead subsidize their own responsibilities to the Dal pension plan. Dal also wants to change the plan so that indexation for current and future retirees would be substantially reduced and perhaps eliminated.”
In an interview, NSGEU president Jason MacLean says the union is satisfied with accepting the “modest” wage increase proposed by Dalhousie but wants to protect their retirement money. He also stressed that members don’t want to go on strike just before the summer semester begins, which will negatively affect those students.
“There’s no problem with the Dalhousie pension plan. (Dalhousie) wanted pension reform for the past 20 years and they want to force our members (picketing) out on the street, and our members don’t want to go,” said MacLean.
“There’s a modest increase in wages already attached to their final offer. What we’re saying is that’s not the sticking point. Our members would like to have more wages, but that’s not it – it’s the pension.”
MacLean says any strike action will have a major impact on campus activities. If the collective bargaining impasse isn’t resolved, there will be no staff on hand to handle any IT requirements for professors, students, and staff.
“Let’s say, for instance, they’re doing distance learning, our members are the ones conducting the IT on that,” said MacLean. “They’re working the cameras, the audio, and they’re running the internet and security-based stuff on campus… they are all over the campus.”
“It will effectively shut down the campus…the professors will have nobody to rely on, different teams will have nobody to rely on…”
NSGEU also claims that the university can’t claim to be struggling financially because of the pandemic, as Dalhousie actually saw an increase in enrollment and a budget surplus.
According to Dalhousie’s own numbers, the union is correct. Their enrollment numbers, published online, indicate that the overall student population for the 2020/2021 academic year was 21,110, an increase of 664 from 2019/2020.
The University, in its 2019/2020 financial documents, reported a $6.4-million surplus. The main factor for this financial surge was increased student enrollment.
“The major contributor to the overall operating surplus for the year is tuition revenue which exceeded budget by $4.3-million because of increased student enrolment,” reads the financial statement. “Other significant variances impacting the overall results for the year include a $1.1 million improvement in operating interest revenue and utility costs which were lower than budget by $1.1 million.”
MacLean told Huddle Today that negotiations are ongoing as of Wednesday, April 14. Dalhousie University did not respond to a request for comment.