NAIT and NASA met on November 25 & 26, December 5, 9, 11 & 12 continuing negotiations.
Negotiations are still in early stages, with discussions and questions around both parties’ proposal packages to inform counter proposal exchanges. More dates are scheduled for January and February listed below, and while those negotiations continue there can not be a legal lockout or strike.
NASA consistently pressed NAIT to table their monetary proposals which could include wages. We know that NAIT has tabled their wage proposal with AUPE, and other institutes have tabled wages with their faculty as well. As of today NAIT has not even provided an estimate on when they might table those proposals, stating they intend to cost out NASA’s proposals before doing so.
NASA has stated that many Articles in the collective agreement have monetary impacts, particularly on key issues for NASA members of wages, workload, benefits, and job security. NASA informed NAIT that attempting to negotiate on issues such as workload will not be possible without knowing NAIT’s proposals on wages and other monetary matters.
NASA began tabling counter proposals at the September 25, 2024 meeting. NAIT’s first counter-proposals were provided on November 25, including one that simply stated that “The Employer does not agree with this proposal” and offering no movement on their position. This included NAIT outright rejecting a NASA proposal that NAIT not maintain or adopt policies which would not be grievable for NASA members, which NASA raised in light of the Distributed Work Agreement policy currently containing elements NAIT states would not be subject to a grievance.
NASA had then responded with more counter proposals as well as simple rejections of NAIT proposals including a redundant proposal to allow time off at straight time when attending functions like Open House – this is already the practice and permitted under the current agreement.
At the same time there had been some productive discussion on some minor proposals, and some agreement on some of those as well. A more detailed update will be provided after the holidays after everyone has hopefully had some time to rest.
Bargaining dates January and February and call for observers
NAIT has agreed to the following dates “without prejudice” to their attempt to “seek clarity” from the labour board on whether or not they will be obligated to continue bargaining into the evening.
Daytime, 8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.:
Thursday, February 13
Evening session from 4:30 – 8:30 p.m.:
Tuesday, January 14
We’re looking forward to seeing more NASA members at the next sessions.
Look for more updates in the new year. We hope you enjoy the holidays!
As usual, we’ll end with a quote from one of the observers who attended bargaining:
“It is eye opening to see what bargaining entails, and see how everyone conducts themselves for myself rather than relying on the words of someone else dictating my view of the process. I think it is important to keep up observer attendance at these sessions to show NAIT that we haven’t forgotten that the process is still ongoing, and that we still believe that we are worth more than we are getting.”