Bargaining Updates
Our last update
November 19th 2025
The bargaining meeting held on November 19th, 2025, consisted of a review of McGill’s responses to the articles listed below
- Article 3: Application of the Agreement
- Article 5: Relations Between the Association and the University
- Article 7: Information
- Article 8: Disagreements and Grievance
- Article 16: Privacy and Personal Files
- Article 18: Electronic Copy of the Agreement
- Article 19: Correspondence and Notices
- Article 21: Disability Inclusion and Universal Accessibility
- Article 22: Employment Equity
- Article 24: Governance
Our previous updates
November 17th 2025
There was no formal agenda for this meeting. Discussion ranged over a variety of articles. Details can be found in the full minutes of this meeting. The two highlights of the meeting are as follows:
- Addition of AMLAS to the COFAM bargaining table
The McGill team raised concerns about the faculty-specific nature of many of the additions made to the demand book by the Association of McGill Librarian Academic Staff (AMLAS). According to the McGill team, there was an understanding that the COFAM demand book would be limited to general matters applicable to all faculty associations.
The COFAM team responded that, in their view, the understanding was not that all content must be applicable to all associations, but that the COFAM demand book would include matters that go beyond a single faculty. COFAM listed many aspects of the demand book that are not applicable to every faculty association and to which no objections have been raised.
The McGill team noted that it was not attempting to exclude AMLAS from COFAM but rather to determine what is the right bargaining table for certain aspects. They acknowledged that they had only quickly reviewed the additions earlier that morning.
- Article 10, Job Classifications
At the November 3rd bargaining meeting, the McGill team advised that they had hired an analyst to cost out the conversion of ranked contract academic staff (CAS). This exercise is not expected to be complete until the end of December, 2025. At today’s meeting, COFAM asked the McGill team to be more specific about the monetary concerns mentioned on November 3rd. The McGill team responded that they are not ready to do that yet. They will need the costing analysis in order to do so. Members of the McGill team expressed frustration with this seemingly circular response.
The McGill team was then asked whether there is any objection in principle to the conversion of CAS. They responded that they are unable to answer that question. The question was rephrased: Would it be accurate to tell members that, assuming that there are no unreasonable financial barriers, McGill will agree to the conversions. The rapid answer was “no.” It was pointed out that if there is a philosophical or ideological objection to converting CAS to tenure-track and tenured appointments, we should not have to wait six months to find out.
November 3rd 2025
McGill’s Most Recent Response to COFAM’s Demand Book
- On Wednesday, October 29th, the McGill team sent its most recent counter-proposal, which was again limited to only a few articles, none of them especially substantive. At the same time, they requested that the November 3rd meeting and five other meetings scheduled for November be cancelled to allow them time to read and respond to more articles prior to the first meeting in December (the 11th).
- It was agreed that the November 3rd meeting would not be cancelled and that some of that time will be used to discuss McGill’s request.
There was no formal agenda for this meeting.
(a) New Members of the COFAM Bargaining Team
- Michael David Miller and Gen Gore introduced themselves as representatives of the Association of McGill Library Academic Staff (AMLAS).
(b) COFAM’s Response to McGill’s Request to Cancel the Remaining November Meetings
- Sibel Ataogul informed the McGill team that COFAM’s preference is not to cancel any of the November meetings and to continue bargaining.
- There is particular concern among the COFAM membership that McGill has not yet responded to Article 10, Job Classifications, which details the conversion of CAS to tenured and tenure-track positions.
(c) Article 10, Job Classifications
- Shakir Ladha noted that Article 10 is the reason why they had requested cancellation of the November meetings: Article 10 involves a major restructuring of the University; the McGill team needs time to consider all the ramifications, including the impact on University expenditures such as salary, pensions, and sabbaticals. In fact, they see Article 10 as more monetary than non-monetary, so they would want to see COFAM’s monetary demands before a decision can be made about Article 10.
- They have hired an analyst to assist them in costing out COFAM’s proposal. The analyst has indicated that they will need at least two months (November and December) to complete this work.
(d) Integration of Librarians into COFAM
- COFAM’s proposal has been amended to reflect the inclusion of AMLAS in the confederation of faculty associations at McGill.
(e) Agreements and Next Steps
- The November meetings will remain on the books.
- COFAM will endeavour to submit the modified demand book to McGill by the end of this week or early next.
- The meeting scheduled for November 17th will go ahead. The following items will be on the agenda:
- COFAM’s response to McGill’s most recent counter-proposals.
- The McGill team’s response to amendments to COFAM’s original proposal resulting from the certification of AMLAS and their decision to join COFAM.
- COFAM has indicated that it expects to have an answer to Article 10 by the beginning of December.
October 7th, October 9th 2025
The COFAM (Confederation of Faculty Associations of McGill) bargaining team met with the administration’s representatives on the 7th and 9th of October to continue negotiations over the non-monetary demand book. While the administration did not have a complete demand book to return to us, they did accept several of our articles as written, as well as present several counter-proposals. On Oct 7th we primarily focused on discussing the counter-proposals. Oct 9th was reserved for a general discussion about several of our previously provided proposals, as admin was looking for more information from us before providing official counter-proposals.
July 14th, August 6th, August 7th 2025
Moving forward, COFAM’s secretary, Sue Laver, will be sending out a bargaining update to COFAM members after each session, but for now we will offer an abridged one to cover the three sessions we had over the summer (July 14th, August 6th and August 7th). We offer a more detailed account below, but briefly, the administration has not yet provided us with counter-proposals to our initial demand book but they did propose a model of bargaining behind closed doors that we ultimately rejected.
The main point of discussion for these sessions was over the terms of bargaining moving forward in the Fall. This is because, although we sent administration our first book of non-monetary, COFAM demands on July 28th, they did not come back to us with any counter-proposals. The discussion over terms of bargaining consisted of two main points: course releases and open bargaining.
For the former, it is common practice for those on executive committees and bargaining committees to get some type of work release for union work. The McGill administration offers this to other unions on campus, and they even already offer it to MAUT, which doesn’t bargain. As a confederation of four certified unions, we asked for 16 course releases for the year, with the proposed cost-sharing model admin uses with MAUT.
This proposal was initially rejected by admin, who suggested instead “service releases”: 2 per year per faculty union. We explained how logistically challenging this would be but also how it would be unfair to our colleagues who would have to pick up the extra service work we would be released from (without any extra pay). We were eventually able to negotiate admin to agree to 6 course releases for the entire year, but this came with the caveat of the second main issue: open bargaining.
Admin has been clear since the first session that they want bargaining to be a private affair. They asked us not to post about bargaining on social media, not to talk to students about bargaining, and not to bring non-bargaining committee members to observe bargaining. This is closed bargaining. As we are all bargaining for the first time as new unions, we believe bargaining should be open. We want the right to bring members into bargaining if they would like to see how it works, or learn more about what is going on. We don’t want to restrict how members can talk about bargaining with the press, online, or with students.
During the last bargaining session, it was clear that admin’s offer of 6 course releases would only stand if we agreed to closed bargaining. We rejected this offer, thereby ending the negotiations, as it conflicted with our commitment to an open bargaining process.
Our next dates for bargaining are Oct 7th and 9th; we expect that admin will have counter-proposals to share with us so we can continue working toward settling our university-wide non-monetary demands before moving on to the monetary ones.