NAIT accuses union of bad faith bargaining

In a recent new applications report from the Alberta Labour Relations Board, there was an application submitted by the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology.

In their application, NAIT claims that the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology Academic Staff Association, which represents 1,150 academic workers at the school, “has failed to bargain in good faith and make every reasonable effort to enter into a collective agreement”.

Specifically, NAIT alleged that the union is “placing unreasonable conditions on collective bargaining that includes refusing to meet with reasonable frequency and for sufficient periods.”

The two parties are in the midst of negotiating a new collective agreement, as the current 5-year agreement, which was ratified only a year and a half ago—expires in less than two months.

According to NASA, however, NAIT’s claim is based on the fact that the union doesn’t want to meet during the day, which the union says they’re doing to mitigate disruption to student learning.

In a statement published on the NASA website back in February, Randy Dreger, an instructor in NAIT’s personal fitness trainer programme, said that the bargaining committee of 24 workers told NAIT that they were “fully committed to have the least amount of disruption to students’ learning and logistical demand of substitutions”.

As such, they told NAIT that they would be available for bargaining during evenings and weekends throughout April, May, and June.

The bargaining team also want to negotiate transparently through open bargaining, including letting workers not part of the committee to attend and observe the meetings. NAIT opposes open bargaining, preferring to negotiate in secret, which allows them to more easily control the narrative when reporting on negotiations.

In a statement published on their website last month, NASA criticized NAIT’s move to file their application with the ALRB, saying that NAIT wants “to protect their managers’ schedules from evening and weekend work”.

According to NASA, the NAIT bargaining team also claims that evening and weekend bargaining would “prolong negotiations” and that NASA’s suggestion was “unreasonable”.

When NASA pressed the school further, NAIT admitted that if they hold negotiations during the day, they could not guarantee that members of the unions bargaining committee would be able to attend.

NASA tried to compromise by bargaining in the evenings and on the weekends in April, but switching to daytime bargaining during May through August, when the disruption to student learning would be minimized.

To sweeten the deal, they even proposed that the bargaining committee was willing to participate in negotiations on a volunteer basis, that they wouldn’t need to be reimbursed for their time.

NAIT rejected the proposal outright, according to NASA, and would rather try to convince the ALRB to force NASA into daytime negotiations than accept the proposed compromise.

Mark Zubis, a member of NASA’s bargaining committee, reiterated all this in another statement on NASA’s website a week later.