The bargaining committee and NASA member observers met with NAIT on September 25, 2024 in person for the third session of negotiations.
NASA provided our final 3 proposals around artificial intelligence, intellectual property, and on call and call-in pay. This means NASA has now tabled all proposals and NAIT has the full scope available to them to better assess where early bargaining can focus to seek some common ground.
NASA also came prepared with two counter proposals around resignation and benefits for long-term disability recipients, as there had been some minor beneficial aspects in NAIT’s proposals that agreement is being sought on. To be clear though, NASA has not agreed to the seriously concerning aspect of NAIT’s long-term disability proposal that aims to remove some benefits for long-term disability recipients.
As expected, NAIT came with zero counter-proposals. NAIT also once again refused to table their monetary proposals which would include their wage offer, and refused to provide a date that NASA members would be able to know what those proposals are.
NAIT’s focus for this meeting was to ask questions about NASA proposals, which is fair. It’s common to seek clarification and look for common ground early in bargaining. Unfortunately it did not appear that that was the lens NAIT applied to all its questions.
Despite NAIT’s prior insistence that monetary matters should wait until later in bargaining, of the 13 NASA proposals NAIT questioned, only 3 would clearly be non-monetary. NASA had provided NAIT a list of identified NASA proposals that were no cost or low cost that could have been beneficial for early discussion, but NAIT declined to take that information into account.
Questions for clarity on the meaning and possible implementation of proposals can be productive, but NAIT also chose to use its time to try to argue against NASA proposals rather than seek clarity. This came to light discussing NASA’s proposal to give right of first refusal on additional work currently assigned through casual contracts, NAIT suggested that with NASA identifying workload as an issue, it would somehow be incompatible with the idea that NASA members could decide for themselves whether additional work like evening courses and curriculum development would be best developed in house instead of going external.
NASA had to spend time providing a simple and obvious explanation that if your workload is actually under control, the ability to do supplementary work on contract like curriculum development and teaching becomes easier. That’s to say nothing of the need or desire some have to have that extra income available to them.
NASA asked if any of NAIT’s questions about proposals were with the aim of finding common ground early in bargaining and developing counter proposals to be tabled soon, and NAIT did not identify one proposal being questioned that fit that lens.
As the meeting ended NASA explained to NAIT that they have now been able to take time in bargaining to better understand NASA’s monetary proposals, and that NASA members deserved to see NAIT’s monetary proposals in order to make similar assessments.
If this all sounds frustrating, honestly it was. NAIT needs to take a more productive approach for the next meeting.
That said, it was good for observers to attend and see for themselves what progress or lack thereof in negotiations looks like, and we’ll end with a quote from one of those observers:
“I think that all NASA members should attend as an observer at some point. If you had any doubts on what NAIT is concerned about, seeing NAIT in “action” will confirm your suspicions. Also, our NASA team only gets stronger when more of us are there.”
Signed in solidarity,
Trevor Zimmerman & Shauna MacDonald