Today members of MGEU Local #148, Université de Saint-Boniface Professors (APPUSB) gave their Bargaining Committee a strike mandate.
APPUSB has been in negotiations since May 2012 and after 22 months have arrived at an impasse with the employer.
Despite a teaching load well above the average of other Manitoba universities (Brandon University, University of Manitoba, University of Winnipeg), the remuneration of university professors at USB remains lower than that of these other institutions. And this gap in compensation is likely to widen even more significantly in the years to come, which will undermine the ability to recruit university teaching staff as well as the quality of teaching and research at the USB.
There are negotiation sessions booked for next week and a strike date of March 17th has been set.