During our seventh meeting on November 22, we presented our monetary demands to the employer given the slow pace of negotiation on non-monetary issues. For context: we are signing an average of one non-monetary article a week, many of which come from the employer, in a collective agreement with 41 articles.
The employer was not prepared to respond to these demands and made it clear that they are not willing to discuss monetary issues until non-monetary issues have been settled. In their timeline, this will be well into 2023.
This is unacceptable to your Bargaining Committee given how you identified monetary issues as the most important bargaining topic and how critically underpaid and undervalued our members are at Concordia. The employer’s demand that we wait before addressing monetary issues is an uncommon strategy that will delay the negotiation of a fair collective agreement.
We will continue to keep you updated on how negotiation progresses. As we push the employer to negotiate and respond to our issues, we ask that you show your support by adding any of the following images to your email signatures. Here are instructions on how to add images to your Outlook signature.
In solidarity,
Adrian, Gabrielle, and Guénolé