Bargaining Update

I am very happy to report, and as you all know, the ASPA membership has voted to accept the tentative agreement with 92.5% in favour. I have personally heard from several ASPA members that they are very happy that we have settled this round of bargaining and in such a timely manner.

In follow up of this result, I will be meeting with the ASPA Research committee on Nov. 10 to help draft a follow up survey, to learn from this experience and make recommendations for the next bargaining team.

I expect that this will be my last report to you as co-chair of the Bargaining Team. I want to take this time to thank all of the ASPA members on the bargaining team Colleen Cochrane, Milan Bogunovic, Graham Wisser, and Curt Larson. Without their persistence and support, we never could have come to this (fairly) swift resolution. A big shout out as well goes to Hugh Wagner for providing us with his expert guidance. I would highly recommend him to any future bargaining team because his experience, tact, and skillful understanding of the bargaining process and of people in general, helped our team immensely. I also want to thank Darcy Hryn-Bird, for her expert note taking skills and understanding of the membership as a whole. She kept a spotlight on the issues that are important to the membership.

I want close by thanking you for the opportunity to serve the diverse group of knowledge workers that are the ASPA community. This has been a challenging and interesting experience – to bargain in the midst of a pandemic, but we did it. I am proud to call ASPA my union.

In solidarity,

Dawn Giesbrecht, ASPA Co-lead Negotiator