Waterloo - Laurier professors Doug and Joyce Lorimer were each awarded the Donald C. Savage Award on Friday, Nov. 27 at the fall council meeting of the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT).

The award, which was established in 1997 in honour of Donald C. Savage, executive director of CAUT from 1972 to 1997, was instituted to honour and recognize outstanding achievements in the promotion of collective bargaining in Canadian universities and colleges.

Doug and Joyce Lorimer have promoted collective bargaining at the local, provincial and national levels since the late 1980s.

Doug Lorimer was involved in the certification of the Wilfrid Laurier University Faculty Association (WLUFA) in 1988 and has been its chief negotiator since then. He has also been the chief negotiator in the three collective agreements for part-time faculty and librarians at Laurier and has represented WLUFA at the provincial level on the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Association’s (OCUFA) collective bargaining committee since 1988, including as chair from 2002 to 2005. At the national level, Doug has been a member of CAUT’s collective bargaining and economic benefits committee and is currently its chair.

Joyce Lorimer has been engaged in virtually every important activity associated with WLUFA, OCUFA and CAUT. She has served WLUFA almost continually since 1987 on the executive committee, including multiple terms as president and vice-president. She worked on the original organization and certification of WLUFA and later played a lead role in organizing and certifying the CAS bargaining unit. She became WLUFA’s grievance coordinator in 2005.

At the provincial level, Joyce served as WLUFA’s representative on the OCUFA board from 1997 to 2000, later becoming its treasurer for three years. Joyce was elected CAUT president for two terms (1994-1996) and served two terms as past-president (1996-1998), and as a trustee on the CAUT defence fund (2000-2002).

According to a WLUFA news release, Doug and Joyce Lorimer have been among the most important figures in faculty association bargaining in Canada. Their contributions to collective bargaining in Ontario were recently recognized by OCUFA with the establishment of the Lorimer Award in 2009.