All Posts Tagged With: "labour"

Latest offer would maintain $30 hourly wages

Photo bt stephenrwalli on Flickr

Fifteen unionized employees remain locked out by the Simon Fraser Student Society nearly three months after the Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 3338 rejected a contract that included $10 per hour wage cuts in July.

The student union’s latest offer on Sept. 1 included no wage cuts for current employees and a reduction in full-time staff by attrition only. Instead of cutting wages and employees, the offer would have allowed for a gradual reduction in the number of full-time positions and the SFSS would have been able to hire students at starting wages of $13 per hour instead for future positions.

The union says that would create a two-tired system. Richard Overgaard, a CUPE national communications representative, told The Ubyssey student newspaper at UBC that the union won’t counter the offer until the SFSS ends the lockout.

Services that are unavailable due to the lockout include the copy centre, the Women’s Centre and the LGBTQ support centre.

The SFSS maintains that a $30.48 average hourly wage for 15 full-time staff is unsustainable in light of its $800,000 deficit. The average hourly wage for all Canadians aged 25 to 54 in August was $24.71, according to Statistics Canada. CUPE says that its members are not overpaid.

Prof. moved class to living room to avoid picket lines

A McGill University professor who moved her Islamic studies class to her living room to avoid crossing the picket lines of striking workers has been told to get back to campus or lose her pay.

Prof. Michelle Hartman said she was told by Christopher Manfredi, the Arts Dean, that she can’t do her job properly off campus. “I told him I’m moving it back under protest,” she told the Montreal Gazette. She wanted to avoid campus as a symbol of solidarity with the strikers.

Provost Anthony Masi wrote to all professors on Tuesday to clarify the school’s position: “A professor’s right not to cross a picket line does not confer any right to move classes away from campus,” he wrote. Students had complained of inconvenient off-campus classes, he said.

McGill University Non-Academic Certified Association (MUNACA) employees have been striking since Sept. 1. MUNACA has asked McGill for a 3 per cent wage increase each year for three years, plus a wage scale where employees reach maximum pay in six years. Negotiations continue.

Classes cancelled for 15,000 students

Instructors and staff at all campuses of the Saskatchewan Institute of Applied Science and Technology went on strike Tuesday, putting classes for 15,000 students on hold. But the Saskatchewan Government and General Employees’ Union will meet with a mediator this morning, reports CTV Saskatchewan. Before the strike, the union rejected an offer from the school that included a 5.5 per cent wage increase over three years.

Classes will go ahead as planned: university

McGill University’s 1,700 non-academic employees went on strike at 6 a.m. this morning. The employees provide course registration, laboratory support, clerical support, record keeping, student residence management, IT support and more.

University classes will go ahead next week. ”You have the right, as a student or an employee, to cross the picket line to get to class or to your work,” the university wrote in a statement. “McGill will ensure that you can enter the campus safely.”

The collective agreement expired in Dec. 2010. MUNACA wants a three per cent wage increase. McGill has offered 1.2 per cent.*

The workers say they also want more secure benefits. ”Unlike other university workers in Quebec, there are no protections for our pensions and benefits at McGill,” wrote McGill University Non-Academic Certified Association (MUNACA) president Kevin Whittaker. “The time has come for the university to recognize our hard work and our contribution to the quality of life students enjoy.”

*This post has been updated to remove salary data that was incorrect. Maclean’s On Campus regrets the error.

Union represents student affairs, lab support and housing

McGill University’s student affairs, course registration, lab support and residence management workers have voted in favour of a strike mandate, meaning a strike would now be legal. More than 1,700 workers belong to the Non-Academic Certified Association, which has been without a contract since 2010. They want pension and benefits protection, scheduling rights and a “proper wage scale,” according to their union, the Public Service Alliance of Canada. They will meet with McGill negotiators today.

Strike won’t occur if agreement is ratified

Queen’s University and its faculty association reached a tentative agreement on Monday afternoon.

That means there won’t be a strike or lockout anytime soon.

The deal still must be ratified by both sides, but it has the support of Paul Young, the Queen’s University Faculty Association president. QUFA represents 1,200 professors and librarians.

“It’s a sufficiently good agreement,” he told the Whig-Standard newspaper. ”I think it’s pretty reasonable, given the circumstances and the economic climate.”

Queen’s officials presented the union with the offer around 4 a.m. Monday, four hours after the strike deadline had passed. The union executive came to a consensus Monday afternoon.

Principal Daniel Woolf said he was “absolutely delighted” that a tentative agreement was reached. “This was a very challenging rounds of talks,” he said.

Details about the agreement aren’t yet available, but Young had previously said that pensions, pay and job security were some of the union’s concerns.

“Unthinkable” to be compared to Waterloo, McMaster, Guelph

A leaked letter written by Queen’s University’s principal reveals a man who is worried about the school’s slipping reputation, its upcoming labour strife and ongoing financial struggles — which he beleives can only be overcome by more corporate partnerships. The letter was supposed by be a private list of his goals for the upcoming year, but it found its way onto Facebook and Twitter.

Daniel Woolf’s candour on the school’s changing reputation is most striking.

“At Queen’s, where the financial situation is particularly acute, the quality that once defined the institution is clearly being compromised,” he wrote to William Young, who chairs the Board of Trustees. “It would have been unthinkable 20 years ago that the quality reputation of undergraduate education at Queen’s would be challenged by Waterloo and McMaster …to say nothing of Guelph – but it is clearly happening.”

He goes on to say, “it is time to leverage our assets to achieve international recognition… the distinctive small-town Ivy League experience of a Queen’s education with its excellence in both teaching and research, should be embraced – it is this cachet that attracts students from around the world to Cornell and Dartmouth in the U.S. In Canada Queen’s is arguably the only university with this pedigree.”

He also says that the school must “attract many more international students (which is the longer term key both to greater revenue and greater global reputation).”

Then he suggests that the long-term financial situation will only be improved through more partnerships with corporations, citing Stanford’s partnership with IBM and MIT’s partnership with Nokia as examples. More corporate cash is needed because: “the past two decades have seen a complete reversal of the funding model for Ontario universities: 20 years ago 74% of our operating budget was provided by the province; today, that figure has flipped to 47%.”

He also suggests that his Principal’s Commission on Mental Health could be leveraged for funding. “It crosses directly into fund-raising, as there are corporations with a keen interest in this area (including Bell, which has already funded a Chair in the area (to be announced publicly in the fall).”

He does see some light on the horizon regarding government funding — but, in doing so, admits that quick growth has compromised the school’s quality.

“The good news is that Queen’s may not have to grow dramatically just to get what little provincial funding there is. In late May, at a speech I attended in Toronto, the Hon. John Milloy, Ontario’s Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities, announced plans of replacing some per-student funding with performance-based support… We may revise our growth projections to take advantage of such a change, should it occur.”

Finally, he writes that his number one goal for the year is to “negotiate successful labour group agreements,” because he antcipates six months of labour unrest. He added that, “I appreciate the Board’s understanding that these disruptions, should they occur, will be unpleasant and potentially reputational-damaging in the short term, but they may be a necessary step in order to achieve success in salary restraint and pension reform.”

Near the end, he writes, “I would anticipate a summary of this document, duly adjusted for a public audience.”

The letter was posted by Ashley Ratcliffe to her Facebook in a “note” and then was circulated on Twitter.

Queen’s communications director Ellie Sadinsky told the Queen’s Journal that Principal Woolf learned that the letter had been leaked and circulated through his Twitter account. He defended the letter in a tweet to former Engineering Society President* Victoria Pleavin, saying “This is my annual ‘goals’ doc to the Board—a normal process; negotiated labour agreements are a priority, as stated.”

*This post originally named Victoria Pleavin as the president of the Engineering Society. In fact, the current president is Derrick Dodgson. We regret the error.

Arbitrator orders university to pay $1,000 in compensation to several employees

The University of Manitoba has been ordered to pay $1,000 to several employees over accusations of discrimination in the school’s carpentry shop. The ruling follows a hearing into complaints that offensive comments, including directing the N-word towards a black employee, was tolerated by the shop’s manager.

“The university breached its obligation to ensure, so far as reasonably practical, a safe, healthy, and respectful workplace for all employees in the Fort Garry carpentry shop,” arbitrator Arne Peltz concluded on Monday. Peltz also noted that many of complaints brought through the union lacked evidence, but pointed out that there was “a pattern of unprofessional local management practices.”

U of M director of public affairs, John Danakas, told the Winnipeg Free Press that the university had already completed its own investigation that “determined changes were necessary — including bringing in a new manager.”

And your phone. And your iPod. We have work to do.

Another day, another attack on us mean old industrial-age professors.

This time, it’s historian Fred Donnelly telling us all to chill out over lap tops in class. Students are not ignoring the work at hand, Donnelly suggests. Instead, they are returning to a pre-industrial mode of work:

Consider how people worked in the pre-industrial era. Labourers in agriculture and construction sang on the job. Weavers composed poetry to the rhythm of the loom and many skilled artisans employed a boy to read to them while they worked. Everyone talked on the job and took unscheduled breaks quite frequently. In short, they laboured away in a multitasking environment.

Right. And if slaves in the old South had had the internet, their masters would have been perfectly happy to let them caption Lolcats instead of picking cotton.

But seriously, the argument fails not just because of what seems to be an overly romanticized view of pre-industrial labour (oh to be a medieval serf: that was the life!), but because it creates a false analogy. There are some tasks you can do while you listen to music or chat with your friends. Who has not whiled a way a long car ride singing along to the radio? But there are other tasks that require one’s full concentration if they are to be done well. Listening to a lecture, and thinking about the content, and considering its connection to other things in the course, and taking notes — not to mention asking and answering questions — these are things that simply cannot be done effectively while watching videos on YouTube or killing zombies or updating your Twitter feed.

The laptop, Donnelly suggests, is a challenge to the authority of the professor, who is really no more than a Dickensian shop foreman:

Now, students have their own portable windows to stare into, their own songs to listen to, their games to play and messages to send to friends inside and outside the classroom. All the while they are seated at their work benches – oops, sorry, their places in the classroom – and presumably also taking notes from an instructor.

But that’s just it. They’re not also taking notes. They’re chatting with their friends in other classes:

ths class = CWOT prof thinks we r t8king notes FAIL LOL

That’s what kills me about the new apologetics of this supposed digital generation. While professors pat themselves on the back for being in touch and progressive, for creating a dynamic new learning environment, they are really creating an environment of increased contempt for learning and study.

All these students with laptops? They’re not multi-tasking. They’re just ignoring you.

U of T sessionals still set to strike on Nov. 9

The union representing part-time instructors at U of T has just taken the next step in a complicated dance that may result in yet another major university work disruption. If you’d like to follow all the news as it develops, you can watch for updates at the official strike website. It currently bears the following message:

Monday November 9
Day 1
In the event of a strike, the picket lines will be at the following locations:
-King’s College Entrance, College Street (just west of McCaul)
-Simcoe Hall, Galbraith Entrance (on St. George Street)
-Wellesley underpass, Hart House Circle
-UTSC, Military Trail entrance
-UTM, Mississauga Road entrance

In direct messaging to instructors who may be on strike, the union has some immediate tips, such as clearing out one’s office and making alternative e-mail arrangements in the event that U of T shuts down accounts.

Additionally, if you’d like the university’s own updates on the strike, you can access those here.

We are so many steps into this dance that it’s hard to remember where it started, but at the time 3902 was quick to reassure members that voting for a strike is a strategic consideration and that the union has traditionally not taken a strike mandate as far as an actual work stoppage. It’s entirely true that a strike vote has rarely resulted in a real strike, and that a strong “yes” vote gives the union clout at the bargaining table. But something about the tone of things this time around just makes me feel it in my gut.

So far it’s too early to assign any blame, and if we get as far as an actual strike there will be blame all around. It isn’t my intention to go around pointing fingers. But as someone who does believe in the power and value of organized labour, I’ve got to say that something is fundamentally broken in the post-secondary sector. Rhetoric and posturing seems to have replaced any kind of functional and respectful relationship between employer and union. This is true across the board.

As I wrote in the aftermath of the York strike, labour actions in a post-secondary context must be understood as unique. This isn’t the same thing as garbage collectors or drivetest workers going on strike. There are crossover issues, certainly, but the massive pressures on the rapidly evolving post-secondary system create a special situation. This isn’t simply jockeying over how much of the pie employees will receive. The entire sector is changing, and locating a reasonable benchmark for compensation, benefits, and job security in this context may be all but impossible. In such an unsettled environment, labour strife is all but inevitable.

I wish I had cheerier thoughts. And I hope my sense of the situation is wrong and it resolves quickly and without disruption to classes. But I suspect otherwise. Whether in this instance or in others, there will continue to be nasty and bitter labour disputes in the post-secondary sector for some time to come.

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Questions are welcome at jeff.rybak@utoronto.ca. Even the ones I don’t post will still receive answers, and where I do use them here I’ll remove identifying information.