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Other university locals ratify new contracts

CUPE Local 2278 reached a tentative agreement with the university last night. The union local reports that: “After more than two years of negotiations, two rounds of mediation and more than a week of job action, the bargaining committee believes it has made significant gains and secured several new items which give UBC TAs a stronger, fairer contract.” 

Details of the tentative deal will be released once they have been finalized. The tentative deal will be put to a membership ratification vote in the coming days. CUPE 2278 represents about 2,300 teaching assistants, tutors, markers and English language instructors at UBC. 

The deal ends daily job action by CUPE 2278 and marks the end of CUPE negotiations at UBC in this round of bargaining. CUPE 2278 was third and final CUPE local at the university to settle. CUPE 2950 got the first agreement followed by CUPE 116. Both of those deals have now been ratified in membership votes. 

That leaves only SFU and CUPE 3338 without a contract in BC’s CUPE universities sector. Every other campus has settled for variations of a four-year, no concessions deal with 2 per cent (or 1+1 per cent) in each of the final two years.  

Collective agreements were ratified this week by CUPE locals 917 and 951 at UVic. The third CUPE local there, CUPE 4163, has also reached a tentative agreement for its Component 1 and 2 workers and plans to hold a ratification vote after Reading Break at the university next week. CUPE 4163’s Component 3 – representing about 70 sessional instructors - has just starting bargaining. 

The provincial government, which interfered in this round of collective bargaining with its Net Zero Mandate and Cooperative Gains Mandate for the past 2½ years even announced the ratification results Monday of the deal between CUPE 4879 and Thompson Rivers University.  

Workers at Royal Roads University ratified their new collective agreement last Friday as did UNBC after waiting for the votes to come in from its regional campuses.