FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)

Am I a member of AUNBT? What are AUNBT's dues?

For full-timers, AUNBT dues have long been 1% of pay. The University deducts these union dues at source every pay period and remits them to AUNBT. For the contributing member they are fully tax deductible.

For part-timers, the 1% dues deduction will commence when there is a collective agreement. Until that time there are no dues.

Note, however, no one is a member of AUNBT just because of paying dues. The only way to become a member is to fill in the membership form found elsewhere on this site. Having done so, one can attend meetings, stand for the executive, vote, ratify collective agreements, etc. Membership in AUNBT is free (since you're already paying dues).

What is CAUT? Why is AUNBT a member?

The Canadian Association of University Teachers is the principal association of Canadian university faculty associations, unionized and non-unionized. (French-speaking faculty associations in Quebec have their own association.) At CAUT's semi-annual (November) and annual (May) meetings, delegates are briefed on the latest concerns and developments in higher education, nationally and internationally. CAUT has a large staff headquartered at Ottawa.

CAUT's particular focus is academic freedom in its largest sense. It intervenes financially when local associations face issues of national significance. In the 1950s it took the lead in publicizing the Harry Crowe affair, transforming it into the foundational episode in the development of academic freedom in Canada. More recently, it sponsored the meticulous investigation (led by former AUNBT president Jon Thompson) into the Nancy Olivieri case. CAUT also offers extensive assistance to associations in collective bargaining and grievance arbitration.

Individual UNB faculty members joined the newly-founded CAUT even before AUNBT was formed. Immediately after our own founding (1956) AUNBT allied itself with the national organization and has remained a member ever since. Two AUNBT members (Isreal Unger and Allen Sharp) have served as CAUT president and another (George McAllister) would have become president had not UNB's Mackay-Strax affair created the possibility that CAUT would be placing UNB under censure.

Recently, CAUT financed the unionization of UNB's part-time teachers and librarians and provided much advice in that endeavour. It has also helped put into national perspective our resistance to the NB government's persistently ill-considered higher educational policies.

AUNBT dues to CAUT are about $100,000 per year.

The Association is also a subscriber to the CAUT Defence Fund. In this CAUT-related organization, those members that are unionized have banded together to create a fund that gives financial support to academics when locked out or on strike. Currently the fund stands at $20,000,000. AUNBT's annual dues are about $40,000.

AUNBT is not yet a member of NUCAUT, the CAUT-related organization of academic unions who want affiliation with the Canadian Labour Congress.

What is FNBFA? Why is AUNBT a member?

The Federation of New Brunswick Faculty Associations is an alliance of the six unionized faculty associations at the seven campuses of NB's four publically supported universities. FNBFA has an executive director and an office located in Fredericton.

Founded on 26 September 1970, FNBFA is primarily a vehicle for lobbying the provincial government on matters connected with higher education. One of FNBFA's finest hours was early in the 1990s in resisting the McKenna government's plan to include university labour contracts in a public sector wage freeze. By then accepting a ‘voluntary' wage freeze, AUNBT and other university faculty associations remained free to negotiate non-monetary items with their respective employer universities. More recently the Federation has worked to provincial-ize resistance first to the Miner-L'Écuyer report and then the government's Action Plan, so that it could not be dismissed as disgruntlement at just UNB-Saint John or at just UNB.

The Federation is also a vehicle whereby the larger faculty associations support the smaller ones, especially in grievance arbitrations (for example, Moncton's successful challenge to mandatory retirement), so that arbitration decisions do not set precedents that would be awkward for all.

FNBFA's Legal Defence Fund is chaired by AUNBT's Jon Thompson.

AUNBT's dues to FNBFA are about $115,000 per year.

What is AUNBT's relationship to the Pension Plan for Academic Employees?

In 1992 the McKenna government announced that UNB's full-time academic employees would be expelled from the provincial superannuation plan. AUNBT and the Administration responded by founding the Pension Plan for Academic Employees, which came into effect on 1 January 1993. (Unretired members with pre-1993 academic service retain any already-accumulated entitlement under the provincial plan.) This pension plan covers all full-time academic employees at UNB, whether union members or in the Administration.

AUNBT and the Administration are the architects of the Plan. That is, they designed it and when, from time to time, changes must be made to the scheme of the Plan, they mandate or effectuate those changes by amending the trust agreement that governs the Plan. However, AUNBT and the Administration do not run the Plan.

The Academic Pension Plan is run by a board of 10 trustees, 5 appointed by AUNBT (Norman Betts, Robert Maher, David Bell, Evelyn Richards, Gopalan Srinivasan) and 5 appointed by the Administration. These appointees do not "represent" the appointing body. Rather, they serve as trustees for all the Plan beneficiaries.

In turn, this Pension Board of Trustees contracts out the day-to-day administration of the scheme to professionals. The Trustees also employs actuaries, investment managers and legal counsel.

What is AUNBT's relationship to UNB's Senates?

One of many surprises in the now-notorious Miner-L'Écuyer report in 2007 and the Discussion Paper that preceded it was the suggestion that New Brunswick's university senates failed to "meet the needs of contemporary society". Senates were alleged to have outlived their usefulness "since faculty interests are now protected by unionized collective bargaining". They should be reduced to mere presidential advisory bodies.

Such an attitude reflects a most woeful misunderstanding of the respective roles of senates and faculty unions.

Senates are the academic parliaments of Canadian universities. Assisted by faculty councils, they are the forum where academic policy is debated and set. (By contrast, the role of the board of governors is to superintend university finance and management.) One of the distinctive marks of the university as a work-site is collegial governance by academics and librarians, and it is in senates that collegial decision-making plays out. While our own two senates have a larger voting bloc of administrators than is the Canadian standard, the UNB Act does provide that elected teachers and librarians hold half of all senate seats. We anticipate that the next round of amendments to the Act will strengthen the senates by adding representation for contract academics.

At present UNB's senates are not notable forums of policy debate. They would increase effectiveness if senators caucused prior to senate meetings, attended consistently and then offered post-senate reports to their constituencies. Despite current senate short-comings, any move to subvert or circumvent their potential is to be resisted. On that point AUNBT and the administration were united in critiquing Miner-L'Écuyer.

While the senates and faculty councils are UNB's primary forum for collegial governance, and while AUNBT does not have a practice of favouring particular candidates in senate (or board of governors) elections, a university union cannot be agnostic in academic affairs. Article 3 of the full-time collective agreement binds the administration to collegial governance, and to administrative openness, transparency and accountability. Accordingly, were the administration to by-pass faculty councils or the senates in making academic decisions, it would contravene not only the UNB Act but also the collective agreement. That was the basis on which, earlier in this decade, AUNBT led successful resistance to an exercise whereby deans were to rank the university's academic programs with a view to prioritizing hirings. AUNBT took the position that establishing criteria of ranking was an academic matter that ought to be undertaken by the senates and that failure to do so would violate the collegial rights provision of the collective agreement.