NEWS, ANALYSIS & OPINION
As part of the lead-up to its strike authorization vote next Thursday (September 14), the union representing college faculty members in Ontario recently provided professors with “Q&A” information about the possibly impending work-stoppage.
Among the details provided on the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) website on September 8 were these:
Are we going on strike?
Your OPSEU bargaining team is bargaining for a collective agreement, not a work stoppage. We’ll go on strike only as a last resort.
When could a strike or lockout happen?
A strike can be called only after:
(a) there is no collective agreement in operation between the (the College Employer) Council (“management”) and the employee organization (OPSEU) that represents the employee;
(b) a conciliation officer has made a report to the Minister of Labour … to the effect that, despite his or her efforts, the terms of a collective agreement have not been settled, and the Minister has informed the parties of the report by notice in writing;
(c) the members of the bargaining unit have voted in favour of a strike by a vote by secret ballot conducted under the supervision of, and in the manner determined by, the Ontario Labour Relations Board;
(d) after a vote in favour of a strike … the employee organization that represents the employee gives the Council and the employer written notice of the strike and of the date on which the strike will commence, at least five days before the commencement of the strike; and
(e) 16 days have elapsed after the date on the Minister’s notice referred to in clause (b).
It is important to note that a tentative agreement can still be reached at any point during this process.
It is also important to stress that the bargaining team never calls a strike lightly. It is only used when all other avenues for negotiation have failed and when the issues at stake are of sufficient importance.
Strike Deadline: Where there has been a “Yes” (result) to a strike vote, the union has the authority to set a strike deadline with five days’ notice to the employer. A strike deadline further increases pressure on the employer to reach a fair agreement.
Can bargaining continue after the strike vote?
Yes. In most cases, both parties feel strongly motivated to bargain seriously when the clock is ticking towards a strike deadline.
PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED BACKGROUND INFO
As the 2017-18 academic year gets underway, the threat of a work-stoppage by unionized faculty members at Ontario’s 24 colleges – St. Clair included – looms.
Faculty members are represented by the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU).
“Management” of the 24 schools is represented by the contract-negotiating College Employer Council (“the Council”).
The current contract with approximately 12,000 professors is set to expire on September 30.
Summer-time talks between the two sides soured after just a few days of negotiations, leading OPSEU to request the appointment of a provincial conciliator to assist with the process.
One of OPSEU’s chief proposals was summarily rejected by the Council at the outset of the talks.
The union was proposing that the “oversight system” at all colleges should be revised to a university-like configuration: with a Board of Governors (composed of college and community officials) managing financial and operational matters, while a Senate (made up strictly of college administrators and employees) would deal with all academic issues.
Currently, Boards of Governors have decision-making responsibility for all of those topics.
The only college that currently features a Senate-like, “collegial governance” component for academic issues is Sheridan in the Greater Toronto Area.
The Council does not, necessarily, reject the value of the Senate idea … But it argues that it has nothing to do with terms-and-conditions of employment, so it cannot be incorporated into – or implemented by – the new contract with OPSEU.
It further notes that each of the 24 colleges is a separate corporation, so each would have to decide how to configure its administrative/oversight structure, with addition regulatory input from the Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Development.
The initial few days of fruitless talks were followed in quick order by a request by OPSEU for the appointment of conciliator by the provincial Ministry of Labour, and then OPSEU’s scheduling of a strike vote by its members. That vote is now slated for September 14.
Then, in a very unusual move prior to the resumption of negotiations in late-August, the Council published its contract offer.
Such matters are usually kept confidential … But, in a press release, the Council stated that it was publicizing the details of its offers because the union had not “provided any information to its members about the 7.5 percent increase (over the four-year term of the proposed contract), the new maximum (salary) of $115,094, and other benefits with no concessions. We felt it very important to get the information out to faculty.”
The Council also urged that OPSEU should allow a full-membership vote on that offer prior to conducting a strike vote. The union rejected that idea.
Several mores days of talks in late-August did not ease the impasse between the two sides, meaning that the union will proceed with its strike vote in mid-September.
If subsequent talks do not lead to a new contract, faculty could hit the picket-lines several weeks thereafter (that is, in mid-semester).
ANALYSIS AND OPINION REGARDING THE FACULTY CONTRACT
By SRC Student Publications Managing Editor E.P. Chant
Job Interviewer: “Well, I think you’ll fit right in. So, I’m very pleased to offer you this part-time job with our Bestest Burger franchise. I hope you’ll enjoy your time with us, and that your wages will be helpful as you pursue your college education. When can you start work?”
Soon-to-be-Hired Student: “Well, first, I want you to talk to your headquarters to have it create an entirely new, separately empowered sub-corporation, that will deal exclusively with all issues pertaining to its student-employees. Oh, and I want to be on its Board of Directors. I think that is really essential to my well-being. How soon do you think you can have that in place?”
Job Interviewer: “Ummm … On second thought … Don’t let the door hit your ass as you leave. Get the hell out of my office.”
A goofy scenario? Crazy?
Yeah … But it is actually happening. Initially, at least, this asinine state-of-affairs was one of the chief roadblocks to a speedy resolution of the negotiations to set a new contract for unionized faculty at Ontario’s two dozen colleges.
As noted above, one of OPSEU’s major demands is that the colleges dramatically and drastically revamp their administrative structures – as a component of the new employment contract – to create “collegial governance bodies” (usually termed “Senates”). They would oversee all academic matters, leaving the existing Boards of Governors to deal chiefly with financial issues.
Entirely aside from the merits of academic Senates, management’s response was completely correct:
• Such a radical change would involve complicated corporate restructuring and possibly even legislative amendments at the provincial level; and, more to the point,
• The existence (or non-existence) of a Senate really has little (if anything at all) to do with day-to-day conditions-of-employment.
For both of those reasons, the forum of contract-negotiations hardly constitutes the appropriate time or place for such a proposal to be debated, much less enacted.
(The Ministries of Advanced Education and Skills Development and Labour, traditionally, don’t get directly involved in college contract talks. But, in this instance, we think one or both of those agencies should step in. They should define the parameters of the relevant subject matter, and emphasize that a restructuring of the governance system is not a proper topic for negotiations, nor for inclusion in the contract’s terms.)
The union’s demand for more extensive and empowered collegial governance, coupled with its lobbying for a more official and entrenched recognition of “academic freedom”, suggest that professors believe that there is something significantly dysfunctional about how colleges are currently operating in the fundamental scholastic realm.
What might that be? Curriculum development snafus? Draconian prohibitions against teaching methods? Unilateral and unreasonable rejections of professor’s preferred textbooks? “Forbidden” lecture material?
Aside from all of the highfalutin, deeply philosophical, university-like blithering that can dominate the pedagogical profession, what the hell are we actually talking about in terms of concrete, day-to-day, real-world, teaching-and-learning?
Some examples are in order, please, of actual academic-administrative catastrophes and horrific infringements upon “academic freedom”.
Last but not least, OPSEU is trying to address job security by limiting the number of part-time faculty flooding the system – or, alternatively, by securing unionized representation of that group of teachers.
And that’s just fine. But, again, this specific contract isn’t the place to do that because (like it or not) this deal won’t be applicable to such workers. The entirely separate process of creating a legally recognized-and-ratified part-timers union (as a separate bargaining unit) is still running its course; and it will, presumably, fight its own contractual battles when/if it comes into being.
In terms of wages, benefits and certain conditions-of-employment, maybe the faculty union does have some legitimate issues to bring to the table.
But if talks ultimately break down (and/or a strike occurs) over such dubious issues as collegial governance, academic freedom and the fate of part-timers, students will be – and should be – rightfully infuriated. Those topics may merit discussion … at some other time … in some other political forum. Hell, they may eventually merit enactment. But they shouldn’t be subject matter for these contract talks, much less issues that should be causes for a work-stoppage.
GOT A RESPONSE TO THIS ANALYSIS-AND-OPINION? Shoot your comments to echant@stclaircollege.ca, and we’ll tack them on to the end of this article for re-publication.
