Friday, June 9, 1993

SOCIAL CONTRACT:  The Ontario government and leaders of the universities
yesterday signed a "framework agreement" under the provincial Social
Contract Act.  No employee groups signed the agreement.  What was signed
is really a set of virtually identical separate documents, one for each
university; the individual institutions have until Tuesday to affix their
own signatures.

The agreement commits the universities to certain kinds of actions
(openness, preferential hiring for people laid off from other institutions,
a review of purchasing practices), but chiefly it obliges them to carry
on local negotiations for cutting millions of dollars from the payroll.
There's an August 1 deadline for those talks.

The text of the UW version of the agreement, which includes the four
church colleges, will be posted to uw.general this afternoon, and will
also be available on UWinfo under the Daily Bulletin heading.

At UW, the "stakeholders group" (otherwise known as the Tuesday morning
meeting, the Heads of University Groups, etc.) met this morning and will
meet again first thing Tuesday.  That's a roundtable of UW's top officials
and the heads of the staff association, faculty association, CUPE local
793, Graduate Student Association, Federation of Students, and church
college heads, which has been meeting regularly through the three months
of the Social Contract excitement.  It's a forum apparently unique to
Waterloo; participants have said the discussions are "open" and there's
real consultation, in contrast to how things are at some other, unnamed,
universities where groups barely speak civilly to one another.

That group, as well as other committees such as Staff Compensation and
Faculty Salaries, now gets down to serious work on cutting somewhere 
between $9 million and $11 million from UW's budget in what remains of
1993-94.  Agreement on a whole new plan is possible, but a present the
likeliest approach seems to include a three-year continuation of the
May 1 salary freeze, plus as many as 12 unpaid days off this year for staff
and faculty members.  That could include a one-week shutdown of the whole
university in mid-August.

The board of governors will be meeting July 26, the faculty association
July 28, as the August 1 deadline nears.

THE SUN'S SHINING:  Among events on campus this weekend are Mzwakhe Mbuli
(South African "dub poet") at the Bombshelter pub tonight, and a
Dungeons and Dragons tournament on Saturday and Sunday, sponsored by
WatSFic (885-5506).

VACATION TIME:  I'm going on vacation, and the Daily Bulletin will be
suspended in my absence.  Look for the Bulletin to reappear starting on or
about July 27.

Chris Redmond
Information and Public Affairs
credmond@watserv1    ext. 3004