The Collective Agreement offers significant protection for collegial governance, and resolutions to recent grievances help to illustrate these various protections.

The Collective Agreement is clear that the collegial committees established pursuant to the Collective Agreement (renewal and tenure committees, promotion committees for example) are required to determine their own operating procedures provided they are consistent with the Collective Agreement; that is, each collegial committee determines whether or not their meetings are to be recorded.  The Chair of the collegial committee does not have the right to unilaterally declare that collegial meetings are to be recorded.

In departmentalized Colleges, membership on the College Review Committee (CRC) is to be made up of no fewer than 6 tenured members of the College plus the Dean who shall be chair.

In spite of a long held practice of interpreting Article 15.8.3 as restricting nominations to in-scope faculty members, the employer has recently challenged this interpretation and is seeking to “open” up nominations to out of scope faculty in addition to the Dean as Chair.  A grievance has been filed, and pending resolution of this grievance, the Employer has agreed that only in-scope faculty members will be eligible for nomination to the CRC of departmentalized colleges.  College Nominations Committee members should ensure that only those eligible to be a member of the CRC are nominated.   College Nominations Committees should not divest themselves of the responsibility to solicit the names of interested faculty to sit on the CRC. The College Nominations Committees should consider carefully the criteria for nominating faculty members and are responsible for overseeing the nominations process.

As a result of a second grievance, the Sabbatical Appeals Committee was required to “re-do” their appeal meeting when the Appeals Committee went ahead without the required attendance of the Faculty Association Observer.

Academic employees of the University have a right to have a voice in guiding the academic mission of the University. The provisions in the Collective Agreement are to safeguard the principles of collegial governance.  Through peer review, faculty ensure that the highest academic standards are being met.

Faculty are encouraged to take an active role in establishing fair procedures for their committees.  Any committee member can contact the Faculty Association for assistance in interpreting the Collective Agreement.