Grievance Committee Terms of Reference

Approved by QUFA Executive March 2003
Amended and approved by QUFA Council November 2010
Amended and approved by Grievance Committee October2013
Approved by QUFA Executive December 2013
Approved by QUFA Council December 2013

The Grievance Committee
1. The Grievance Committee shall consist of a minimum of five (5) Members of QUFA and the Grievance Chair, the Grievance Officer, the Executive Director, and the President of QUFA. Staff members are non-voting. The elected members shall be as representative as possible of the academic and cultural diversity of the University. Quorum shall be three (3) voting members.

2. The mandate of the Grievance Committee shall be:

      i.  to provide input and advice to the Grievance Officer on all grievances brought to the attention of the Grievance Committee;
      ii.  to provide other assistance in specific cases at the Grievance Officer’s request;
      iii.  to assess any policy issues that arise in the context of individual grievances, and consider whether further action should be taken to address systemic problems;
      iv. to bring policy issues of general concern to the attention of both Council and Executive, without breaching confidentiality or in any way jeopardizing the anonymity of potential grievors;
      v.  to monitor complaints, grievances, and other issues that come before the Grievance Committee for the purposes of identifying systemic discrimination and, where necessary, to consider whether a group or association grievance might be warranted;
      vi.  to monitor the practices of University administrators to ensure that the collective agreement is being respected;
      vii.  to make recommendations to the Executive Committee about whether to carry grievances forward to arbitration;
      viii.  to report at least twice a year to the Executive Committee and the Council; to report to the membership at large in a written report and/or an oral report at the two regular general meetings;
      ix.  to identify deficiencies in the collective agreement and to report, with recommendations, to the Executive Committee and the negotiating team.

3. If a majority of the voting members present at a Grievance Committee meeting disagrees with a decision of the Grievance Officer on how to proceed with any given grievance, the Committee may advise the Executive Committee of that disagreement and may make alternate recommendations to the Executive.