Reiterates call for stable multi-year funding
Winnipeg – The Manitoba Organization of Faculty Associations (MOFA) is proud to congratulate the members of the Association des professeur.e.s et professionnel le.s de l’Université de Saint-Boniface (APPUSB) on the ratification of their new collective agreement.
The agreement comes after APPUSB members were without a contract for many years, due to a restrictive wage mandate and years of funding cuts relative to inflation. The previous agreement expired on July 31, 2020, and the new agreement will run through until July 31, 2024, meaning members should anticipate a quick return to the bargaining table.
“We’re pleased to hear that members of the APPUSB were able to reach a new collective agreement, but this news underscores the damage done by chronic underfunding,” said Allison McCulloch, MOFA President. “With an election this fall, we call on all parties to rescind this backwards approach to university funding in Manitoba. What we need is consistent, multi-year funding so that we can focus on the lecture hall and not on the bargaining table.”
MOFA’s call for multi-year funding comes as the PC government has only now increased funding in their election year budget. While the increase begins to help catch up on years of freezes, our university system cannot meet the needs of students in Manitoba without consistent funding to recruit and retain faculty and staff that our institutions rely on.
“While we’re pleased to reach this agreement, the reality is that it shouldn’t have taken this long and that the government of Heather Stefanson certainly has some explaining to do,” said Patrick Noel, APPUSB President and MOFA vice-president. “Our universities simply can’t survive on six years of famine and a single year’s feast. We need multi-year funding so that we can continue to provide a quality option for Francophone students in Manitoba and from across the world.”
As part of this call for multi-year funding, MOFA has asked each major political party to commit to multi-year funding as well as to share their positions on a number of policy areas relating to university education. MOFA looks forward to releasing the results of these surveys once the parties provide them.
The Manitoba Organization of Faculty Associations (MOFA) is comprised of members of faculty associations from Brandon University, Université de Saint-Boniface, University of Manitoba, and University of Winnipeg representing over 1,600 individual academic staff. MOFA is a proud member of the Canadian Association of University Teachers. We are based on both Treaty 1 and Treaty 2 territories, and the homeland of the Métis Nation.