We are now on Day 23 of a strike at the University of Manitoba, where the two sides genuinely did not start all that far apart.  Binding arbitration looms.  How did it get to this point?

To really understand what’s going on here, one must go back to 2016.  In that year, the University of Manitoba Faculty Association (UMFA) went on strike over a combination of governance and salary issues.  They ended up winning a good chunk of what they wanted on governance, but about halfway through negotiations, the university withdrew a salary increase offer and tabled a 0% offer, which, after a 3-week strike, the union accepted.  It later emerged that the University had withdrawn its earlier offer on the (secret-ish, behind-the scenes) order of the then-new provincial government, and a court later ruled that this constituted an interference in collective bargaining.

That’s the first thing you need to understand: to a considerable degree, the union and its members are angryabout stuff that happened five years ago.  And they are angry not just with the university but also with the province. 

But there are some interesting nuances here.  It’s not quite so much that Manitoba courts have said that government can’t tell universities what to do in bargaining: an actual formal mandate on bargaining came into effect across the public sector in 2017, and just last month the Manitoba Court of Appeal affirmed that this is completely legal (no surprise really – BC has had such mandates for ages, and unions there do not view these as illegitimate).  It’s not so much that the government can’t tell the university what to do, it’s that it can’t do so in secret.

Which makes the present situation odd.  The University of Manitoba, which tabled an offer a few weeks ago, which was not ungenerous but nevertheless seen as inadequate in the context of a 4-year wage freeze, has been clear from the start that it is operating under a government directive.  So – no possible way UMFA can sue, right?  But the provincial government for some reason has chosen to deny that any mandate exists.  This has left the union in a bit of a bind.  Who’s the villain here?  Is it fighting the institution or the province?

This is where the post-2016 hurt feelings come into play.  It’s not just that UMFA feels it needs a “win” to make up for the shortcomings of the 2016 strike, its anger about the way 2016 played out is leading it to see both parties equally as “opponents”.  And while this is understandable, it is leading the union to make some very strange decisions. Half the time, UMFA is slamming the administration for not making a more generous offer because its financial position clearly allows it to do so (I argued back here that U of M’s financial position is not quite as good as it looks, but certainly it is true that if there were no mandate, it would likely be in a position to offer more).   The other half of the time, the union is bashing the government for not allowing the university to negotiate, thereby undermining its argument that the administration could offer more.   Basically, the comms are muddled: it’s never clear if UMFA thinks the university is more in need of liberation or excoriation.

(If pushed, the union argument shifts a bit, to “the university could do more in standing up to the government”, either by paying more and accepting any penalty the government imposes, or just by being more forthcoming about the exact nature of the mandate-not-mandate that it received.  This is a fair argument for the union to make – though practically, I don’t think the university has a choice in the matter – but it’s a much softer critique of the administration than what you see from UMFA members online and I imagine on the picket lines as well.)

My view is that the 2016 events have led the union to take its eye off the ball.  As irritating as the provincial government’s position might be, it is not the negotiating partner.  As unfortunate as its post-secondary funding policies may be, UMFA members did not vote to strike to try to reverse them (and what presumption that would be, given how recently the government was re-elected with a healthy majority).  The pro-UMFA line in recent days has been boiling down to i) “post-secondary education and research are good and improve the economy in various ways”, ii) “profs are the heart of post-secondary education”, and therefore iii) “we deserve higher salaries”.  Even if that last bit is true – and I argued back here that it probably was – that’s a weak syllogism.   

Given the mandate-not-mandate thing, it seems to me this strike was probably always heading, as it now seems to be, for binding arbitration.  The university couldn’t budge – something it signalled in a world-class passive-aggressive fashion by just not showing up to bargaining – and once UMFA decided that the university’s final offer wasn’t acceptable we were basically done.  The only way an alternative ending could have been imagined is if UMFA had a workable strategy for either getting the government to lift the mandate or making things so hot for the university that it too would ask for the mandate to be lifted.  Maybe one of these goals (probably the latter) could have been attained had UMFA focussed on it more wholeheartedly, but by dividing its attention across two potential paths, it has succeeded in neither.    Morally, the strike is defensible (though some of the students missing weeks of classes would likely disagree); tactically it seems like a primal scream driven at least in part, it would seem, by a desire to re-fight the last war.   

Anyways, binding arbitration to end the strike.  The mediator recommended it on Sunday, saying that all issues could and should be resolved that way.  The university agreed quickly; UMFA seems amenable to dealing with financial issues that way (as it should, it is unlikely to get a better deal otherwise) but wants to deal with non-financial issues through actual negotiation.  Which, you know, fair enough, provided it’s not an excuse to keep this thing dragging on.  Why the University comms team decided this moment of potential reconciliation was a good time to needlessly dunk on the union is a complete mystery, but there we are.

It’s a sad state of affairs all around, particularly for the students.  But hopefully it will be over soon.