If you had a feeling of deja vu when you heard the news last week that Mount Allison’s dining services staff had received termination notices, there’s a good reason. The situation is nearly identical to one that took place about a year ago at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton.
In both cases, the universities issued Requests for Proposals (RFPs) to companies interested in competing for the dining services contract at the schools, and in both cases, the unionized workers under existing collective agreements were not guaranteed successor rights in those RFPs. That means the winning bidders had no obligation to take over those collective agreements.
At both Mount Allison and UNB, it meant a slew of termination notices to workers, after the companies with union agreements did not win renewed contracts. .
Adrienne Paradis is a national servicing representative for CUPE. She says the change of dining contractors in Fredericton was disruptive and painful for workers in her union, but it wasn’t always that way. The union doesn’t have copies of the RFPs issued by UNB over the years (“I’m not going to lie,” says Paradis, “they’re very hard to get ahold of.”) But Paradis is convinced that 2023 marked a change in how union contracts were treated in UNB’s RFP process.
“In talking with the members that have been there for 40-plus years, and speaking with previous representatives… There was never termination letters given. It was a seamless transfer,” says Paradis.
In the past when UNB changed contractors, according to Paradis, union workers would see a change in uniforms, and that’s about it. “All we can figure is that in the past, it was part of the RFP to recognize the union automatically,” says Paradis.
This is not the first time a contract change has nullified a union contract at Mount Allison. CUPE local 1440 lost their collective agreement before, the last time the university changed dining services contractors, around 2007. In that situation, local president Jason Tower recalls that the transition was difficult, and involved a tough battle to get a new contract that looked like the previous one.
That was also the goal for CUPE local 2266 at UNB last year, and Paradis says that while the local did manage to form a new union contract, they ended up making concessions in some areas, including sick days. “The new employer refused to recognize the previous language in the collective agreement for sick days,” says Paradis. Under their new contract, members of local 2266 can get short term sick leave, but not the day-to-day sick days they had access to previously.
After the termination notices were handed out, the process to negotiate a new contract in Fredericton went on for months, says Paradis, leaving workers worried about their future. The new company took over in June 2023, and it wasn’t until near the end of May that they knew a new union contract was was coming, she says.
“The majority of [the UNB dining services workers] had been there 20-plus years,” says Paradis. “We even have some that were there 40 years… They didn’t know if they were going to have a job within a couple of weeks. They were just left in a lurch to see what’s gonna happen. It was awful for these employees to have to go through this.”
Paradis points out that in New Brunswick, there’s no requirement for institutions like universities to guarantee union agreements between corporate contractors, but she believes the onus should be on universities to do it anyway.
“I can’t express it enough,” says Paradis, “the university should be looking after, not just New Brunswick citizens that are employed with these services, but they should be looking out for, you know, this family on the campuses that provide these services to students and faculty.”
“It needs to go back to the universities, and they need to ensure that this doesn’t happen,” says Paradis. “Do the right thing.”
CHMA reached out to Mount Allison University for an update on the dining services contract, and to ask if the university has the ability to guarantee union agreements when it issues RFPs. A communications officer for the school replied via email, “The process remains ongoing, so are unable to comment at this time. The community will be notified as soon as there is an update.”
