A name familiar to both sides in the ongoing dispute between the University of Northern British Columbia and its faculty has been appointed special mediator.
On Tuesday, and as the strike by members of the UNBC Faculty Association entered its third week, Labour Minister Harry Bains assigned Trevor Sones with the task of finding a way to get to an agreement.
In 2015, Sones, a full-time mediator at the Labour Relations Board, was also called in when the UNBC Faculty Association also went on strike.
After a day of talks, Sones recommended administration and faculty take their disagreements to binding arbitration. The move put an end to a two-week strike in March and a deal was reached in December.
Sones was also brought in during this round of negotiations, and prior to faculty members taking to the picket lines, and later booked out, a Ministry of Labour spokesperson confirmed.
Sones was expected to arrive in Prince George today and UNBC FA president Stephen Rader said he expected bargaining will resume once he is in the city.
UNBC spokesperson Matt Wood said administration is hoping to resume bargaining "as soon as possible."
A special mediator comes with powers meant to compel the sides to reach a settlement. They include requiring those involved in the bargaining to answer questions under oath or affirmation, produce records related to issues at hand and excluding specific participants from the process.
At particular issue, said Rader, is a concern that administration wants the Faculty Association to violate members’ contracts outside the collective agreement, despite legal advice that this would open the union to legal and financial risk. Rader said he is hoping the mediator can compel UNBC to show any evidence they have that says otherwise.
"Two different lawyers have advised us that in fact, it wouldn't be legal, so if the employer is continuing to insist that it is legal, I'd like to see what evidence they have for that...if it turns out they don't have anything that would support that view and have been holding up bargaining for seven months because of it, we are not going to be pleased," Rader said.
Bains made the appointment on the same day Prince George-Valemount MLA Shirley Bond raised the issue during Question Period in the legislature.
She accused Bains of sitting on his hands as the strike has dragged on.
Bains, in turn, said the B.C. Liberals cut UNBC's budget by $1.3 million when they were in power.
"That's the mess that we inherited," he said. "That's the mess that both parties are trying to deal with."
