All Posts Tagged With: "unions"
Student quits over Halifax transit strike
39,000 students can’t use their bus passes
A Saint Mary’s University student said he quit his classes on Monday because the transit strike in Halifax has made it too difficult to get to school. ”I was already missing assignments and quizzes and stuff due to the strike,” second-year criminology student Chase Sabourin told CBC News. “The strike could be over this week, it could be another month down the road. I’m not going to wait around hoping it’s going to end tomorrow,” he added. Sabourin said he plans to return in September. Seven hundred Amalgamated Transit Union workers went on strike on Feb. 2. rendering Halifax’s 39,000 student transit passes useless, at least for now.
Bloggers prove that not all students support McGill strike
Union says they’re a “small minority”
McGill students. By shahk on Flickr.
In the war of words between McGill’s administration and MUNACA, the union representing 1,700 support staff who have been on strike since Sep. 1, a new battalion of students has emerged— and they’re fighting for Principal Heather Munroe-Blum.
Since the blog Exposing MUNACA went online Nov. 9, it has been viewed roughly 25,000 times.
The bloggers are physics student Peter Guo and English student Kayla Herbert. Their critique of MUNACA fills a hole in the public debate, considering that both the Students’ Society of McGill University and the McGill Daily newspaper have sided with the union.
In response to the popular blog, Joel Pedneault, SSMU’s vice-president of external affairs, told the Montreal Gazette today that he will send an e-mail to all students with more “objective” facts. “When they see the conditions at other universities, they will see MUNACA’s side,” he said.
Continue reading Bloggers prove that not all students support McGill strike
How much should professors make?
In my opinion, they’re paid well enough already.
Photo by ggbaker on Panoramio
More than 1,000 students at Brandon University have signed a petition asking for their tuition money back because of a faculty strike that caused classes to be cancelled since Oct. 12.
But the Brandon University Student’s Union (BUSU), which has collected the signatures, doesn’t blame the professors—who are striking for the second time in three years—for their three weeks of missed classes. BUSU supports the picketing profs. They agree they’re underpaid.
But are Brandon’s professors really underpaid? More importantly—are professors underpaid in general? It’s a question students and taxpayers should ask—they’re the ones who pay the bills.
McGill workers could strike
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.
Queen’s reaches tentative deal with faculty
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.
When reality bites
Recessions hit young people hardest—even long after they’re over
During his final year at the University of Ottawa, Justin Cantin had one goal for his first job after graduation: not to wear a uniform. Ideally, he hoped to put his undergraduate degree in history to work in a museum or doing research. But after graduating last December, in the aftermath of the most severe recession in decades, reality hit. With $45,000 in loans, the 23-year-old moved back in with his mom in Mississauga, Ont., and started sending out resumés. He soon broadened his search to include part-time jobs, factory positions—“whatever would give me a paycheque,” he says. Last week, he landed a warehouse gig in Waterloo, Ont. Though relocating for a manual labour job is not something he ever imagined he’d do, he says, “It’s better than nothing.”
As Cantin struggles to adjust his expectations, he can take comfort, however cold, in the knowledge that many of his peers are doing the same. Though it’s been months since Canada’s economy returned to growth, recessions have a way of bearing down hard on youth, even long after they’re officially over. Predominantly employed in industries like retail and food service, which depend on consumer demand, or in unions where seniority rules, youth tend to be first on the chopping block when the economy goes south. This time was no different: since October 2008, more than 190,000 jobs for young people have disappeared; unemployment among 15- to 24-year-olds rose to 16.3 per cent in August 2009, almost double the overall rate.
Although jobs are slowly coming back—as of February, youth unemployment had dropped to 15.2 per cent—what’s on offer is hardly the stuff from which middle-class careers are made. Thanks to the disappearance of manufacturing jobs, hiring freezes and the delayed retirement of workers, for many the reality is a spell of unemployment or a low-paying gig—both of which can have lasting consequences, derailing careers for years to come. While it’s impossible to know how much their future will be shaped by the Great Recession, one thing is clear: the generation raised to believe in the limitlessness of their own potential has just been dealt a very unlucky blow.
Strictly in terms of unemployment, this recession has not been as cruel to youth as other downturns. In August 1992, unemployment for those aged 15 to 24 shot up to 18.4 per cent; in the early ’80s, it reached 20.6 per cent. But according to Armine Yalnizyan, an economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, it’s the kind of jobs that were lost that’s cause for concern. Whereas the recession in the early ’80s replaced full-time jobs with part-time jobs, and the one in the ’90s replaced traditional employment with self-employment, this downturn “seems to be replacing permanent jobs with temporary jobs,” she says. “Where is the next generation of middle-class jobs going to come from?” she asks. “There’s just nothing coming up on the menu.”
The best way for youth to survive the hostile job market, say experts, is to wait it out by investing in school or volunteer positions. The trouble is that with median family incomes slipping, indebtedness at record highs and boomer parents struggling, many youth can’t afford to delay working. To make matters worse, says David Green, an economist at the University of British Columbia, the social safety net is not what it once was. While 83 per cent of those who were unemployed at the beginning of the recession in the early ’90s qualified for jobless benefits, this time only 43 per cent qualified. And incomes aren’t what they used to be either: though new workers began to gain ground again in the mid-’90s, at the start of the recent recession, says Green, they were still facing real wages below those of their counterparts in the early ’80s.
For youth who are unable, or unwilling, to prolong their entry into the job market, breaking in during a downturn is an uphill battle. When Amanda, who asked that Maclean’s not use her last name, got her undergraduate degree in math last June, she wanted to get a job as an analyst. But after four months of unemployment, she took an entry-level position at a Toronto IT firm. While her friends who graduated with similar credentials just a few years earlier started out making about $40,000, she’s earning $30,000.
In fact, most young people entering the job market now are making less than peers who found jobs two or three years ago. “And that lasts for quite a while,” says Paul Beaudry, Canada Research Chair in Macroeconomics at UBC. A study of Canadian men who graduated with B.A.s over almost 20 years found that, on average, those who begin their careers in down times tend to do so at smaller firms that pay less, suffering an eight to nine per cent income hit. And it takes 10 years to catch up to those who graduated in boom times. Worse still, for those who graduated from less prestigious universities with degrees in lower-paying fields, the scarring effect on their earning potential “sort of remains permanent,” says Phil Oreopoulos, a University of Toronto economics professor who co-authored the study.
The prospects are bleaker for those without post-secondary education. “Employers out there, they’re asking for everything—the moon and the stars,” says Joan Gardener, project administrator at the Mississauga, Ont.-based Youth Community Connections, a government-funded program that serves out-of-work young people. For those who do manage to secure employment, the erosion of high-paying, middle-class manufacturing jobs means it’s tougher to get ahead. “Think about it as a career ladder with the rings in the middle all being missing,” says Morley Gunderson, an economics professor at U of T. “You don’t have a way to start at the bottom and move up anymore.”
On “sell out” student leaders
What does it really mean, to represent students?
I recently created a twitter account. This is an unrelated fact, save that it explains how I was trolling around looking for a few people I wanted to follow. And I came across this article by the Ryerson Free Press. I resolved to ignore it, but now a couple days later it’s still in my head. So obviously it is more than just a passing annoyance. This article is almost a year old, but nonetheless I think it deserves a rebuttal.
The article calls out by name three former student representatives, and accuses them of (a) selling out the student movement and (b) using their roles as elected representatives as springboards for their later careers. I’ll decline to note who I was initially looking for when I found this article. But I will say that I know two of these people personally and the third by reputation. I wouldn’t call any of them friends exactly (if you’re wondering about my bias) but I’ve noted and appreciated their work in the past.
This article infuriates me for any number of reasons, but I’ll confine my criticism to the two primary critiques in the article itself. First, there is the idea that student leaders “sell out” the movement when they assume centrist – or even right-of-center – positions on issues. I simply cannot agree. I may find myself in opposition to the opinions expressed by these and other student leaders, but I am not prepared to dismiss their legitimacy simply because I disagree with them. The notion that there is only one orthodox position to assume on behalf of students is patently ridiculous. Students are free to elect whomever they want to represent them. And just as mainstream politics may swing among representatives that espouse one position or another, there is no reason to imagine that student politics must be different. If someone were to suggest that a candidate campaigned on one position and then did something radically different I would agree – that’s a problem. But simply to assume that centrist or right-of-center views represents selling out the movement is ignorant. This dismisses the possibility that students might have actually voted for that.
Second, and even more importantly, there is the assumption that these student leaders somehow used their former positions to form the basis of their future careers. As a former student leader myself, I find this very insulting. I wrote an article on this topic some months ago, but the central premise bears repeating. Students who assume prominent positions on campus are in no way guaranteed future success. Some do go on to achieve prominence in various fields. Others do not. But in either case the determining factor is not the positions they held as students. Elected office may be a brick in the wall of someone’s career, just as any job is one step along the path, but it is only that – one step or one brick. The totality of anyone’s personal career path is so much greater than any student office.
I need to refute this article because it perpetuates two very damaging myths. First, the notion that there is only one legitimate perspective to assume on students’ behalf. In my experience, students are very capable of electing representatives who stand for a large range of perspectives and views. Whether I happen to personally agree or not is irrelevant. So too if anyone else happens to agree. That’s politics for you. Sometimes people get elected who you don’t agree with. That doesn’t mean they are wrong, or ill-intentioned, or diabolical. Often, that simply means you have to rethink your ideas about the dominant views held by the voting base of people who elected them. Second, the idea that future success is created by elected student office. This is a dangerous myth because it encourages people to seek office for all the wrong reasons – no matter their political views. It isn’t true, of course. Maybe elected students are “successful” in greater percentages if only because they are naturally dynamic personalities. But the success still isn’t due to the prominence in student politics. I have plenty of counter-examples at my fingertips. But of course no one writes stories about the elected students who go on to do nothing in particular after their university days.
Student politicians and elected representatives make easy targets. This is true while they are in office and true even afterward. Part of assuming a prominent position is accepting this role as designated target. I lived through this myself and I have a lot of sympathy for students who are living through it now. But when criticism spills over from attacking the students of the day to attacking the movement as a whole, I need to make some reply. Flawed though the results may be, in an immediate sense, the system as a whole does work. Students are capable of electing a large range of potential representatives – and this range is what legitimates the choices they make. And elected representatives truly don’t derive enough personal benefit to ever make the job worth it for selfish reasons (even if a few may try) and this is what guarantees sincere, if not always effective, representation.
It does work. Don’t let the cynics get you down.
—
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.
AMICCUS-C
A fantastic organization with a very awkward name
Recently I had the opportunity to attend and speak at this year’s annual western AMICCUS-C conference, hosted in Calgary by the Students’ Association of Mount Royal University. AMICUSS-C stands for the Association of Managers in Canadian College, University and Student Centres. That’s one hell of an acronym, isn’t it? But apart from the difficulty with the name it’s a great organization that people should know more about.
Students’ unions are big business. Okay, “big” may be pushing it, but far bigger than most suspect. Budgets in the seven-figure range are typical. Many unions have responsibility for their own restaurants and bars, buildings, and other services. And in order to run these things properly, unions quite naturally hire full-time managers to do the job. You wouldn’t want to rely entirely on students, after all, with the rapid turnover, annual instability, and general inexperience. Unions typically employ a lot of students also, but the full-time managers are different. They’re there to stay and it’s their job – for many it’s a real career.
How all of this infrastructure runs is frequently a mystery to students. First, many students don’t draw a clear distinction between services that are operated and delivered by their union and services that come from the university or college. For all practical purposes it often doesn’t matter. And second, even where students know what their union is really doing, the full autonomy and power of the union may not be obvious. It’s easy to imagine a relationship similar to student government in high school, where student activities are still directed at the highest level by the administration. But it simply isn’t true. Unions are separately incorporated. They exist outside the administration entirely. The directors of these unions have as much power and responsibility as the directors of any private corporation. And many are still teenagers.
Seen from this perspective, the role of a full-time professional manager in a union environment is very complicated. The manager is certain to be older – maybe much older – and to have far more experience. But the students are still in charge. This isn’t theoretical. Students do the hiring, set the compensation packages, make decisions about promotion, and yes sometimes fire people. When a union is running well students tend to do this with the benefit of a lot of competent advice. When a union is running badly, well, sometimes things go less professionally. But either way these decisions affect people’s careers.
There is also a very complicated dance to perform with the administration of the university or college. As I said, the administration isn’t calling the shots. But they do have deeply entrenched interests. While the union may own a building or control it with a long-term lease, the institution typically owns the land. While a union may run the campus pub, the administration probably holds the liquor license. Contracts for cleaning, maintenance, and utilities in student space may or may not be carried out by the staff of the institution. All of these relationships need to be managed. While the employees of the union and the employees of the school may both “work for” students in some sense, their relationship towards students is very different. And so their relationship towards one another is complicated.
N.S. college union calls for arbitration as strike date set
Walkout would suspend class for 25,000 students at 13 campuses across the province
The union representing community college workers in Nova Scotia is calling for binding arbitration to avert a strike by faculty and staff.
The Nova Scotia Teachers Union suggested the move Thursday as it set a date of Oct. 20 for a possible strike to back contract demands. “Binding arbitration will allow the parties to reach a negotiated settlement without resorting to a strike,” said union president Alexis Allen.
A walkout would result in the suspension of classes for about 25,000 students at 13 campuses across the province.
In a news release Friday, college spokeswoman Gina Brown left the door open to arbitration. She said the college “will explore this possibility as an option in our ongoing efforts to achieve a resolution, preferably without a strike.”
In the event of a strike, Brown said classes would be suspended but all campuses would remain open, supported by more than 1,000 employees who would continue to work. Students would have access to libraries, bookstores, computer labs, cafeterias, classrooms and other facilities.
Meanwhile, Education Minister Marilyn More said Thursday her department would honour the collective bargaining process and doesn’t plan to intercede.
“The collective bargaining process guarantees certain steps and a strike is one of them,” she said. “We don’t plan to interfere.”
The 900 faculty and staff represented by the Nova Scotia Teachers Union have been in a stalemate in negotiations for a new contract for months.
The union is demanding the same 2.9 per cent salary increase given to public school teachers last year, along with similar improvements to medical benefits. The province is offering one per cent.
Deputy premier Frank Corbett said Thursday it’s up to the two sides to hammer out a deal with what’s already on the table. “They know the size of the pile of money so if they want to be more creative around that in negotiations we certainly can work around that,” he said.
Corbett, who is also minister for the Public Service Commission, said to his knowledge the government doesn’t plan to come up with more money to avoid a strike.
Community college workers, who voted more than 90 per cent in favour of strike action last month, have been without a contract since August 2008.
- The Canadian Press
Alberta education minister stands his ground on teacher raises
Province says raise will be five per cent, teachers’ association says it should be at least six
Alberta Education Minister Dave Hancock says he’s prepared to stand his ground over wage increases for teachers.
The province announced last week that school instructors will be getting a raise of just under five per cent. The government imposed the increase after months of wrangling over a formula used to determine salaries.
The Alberta Teachers’ Association calculates the increase should be at least six per cent – a difference of $23 million – and has said it will take the province to arbitration if necessary.
“If one side invokes a process, the other side has to be there to defend themselves,” he said Monday.
Alberta teachers have a deal with the government that guarantees five years of labour peace in exchange for annual wage adjustments based on average earnings in the province.
The deal is tied to the Statistics Canada average weekly earnings index, but the national agency recently changed its method of calculating the figure, and that’s where the dispute began.
Hancock says everyone needs to work together to figure out how to slice $80 million from the education budget.
“I’ll be sitting down with school boards, with the ATA, with the parents association and with other stakeholders in the system through the course of the fall to be really focusing on what that means for the next year and the next two years,” he said.
Applied lessons from student politics
The skills you learn in student organizations apply to the “real” world also
There’s a story I like to tell about how I took what I learned from my students’ union and used it in the wider world. Years ago I registered my own website. That’s jeffrybak.ca, which I still use today. And then I started getting messages from some organization called CIRA (the Canadian Internet Registration Authority) which I had apparently joined by registering my dot-ca website.
This happens all the time. We are all members of far more things than we typically think about. Ever buy anything at Mountain Equipment Coop? You’re a member, if so. They can’t sell to you otherwise. But we often ignore the many organizations we belong to – especially the ones we joined involuntarily. That’s why voter turn out at student elections is so low. I’d wish it were higher, of course. Perhaps we could aim for 20% instead of the typical 5-10%. But we’ll never get everybody because let’s face it, students don’t show up at a university to join their students’ union. It’s not the goal; it’s a side effect.
That was the same with CIRA, for me. I wanted a dot-ca domain and ended up a member of this organization. Then they sent out notice of a general meeting, which happened to be in Toronto, and bribed members with free USB keys and a decent buffet lunch at the Royal York to attend. Sound unlikely? If you’ve ever been to a general meeting of your union, or another student organization, I bet there was food. Student organizations do the same thing. It’s hard to get people out at a general meeting. So when you need a certain number of members in the room to conduct official business (which is always the case) bribery is one sure way to go. So I showed up.
At the general meeting, I was mostly prepared to just eat my lunch, pocket my USB key, and vote as required. I know the drill. But then a funny thing happened. Someone I know from the tech community spotted me in line and he was spitting mad about proposed changes to CIRA’s bylaws. And I realized that I was doing exactly what I often fault students for doing. I’d shown up at a general meeting prepared to blindly support the proposals on the agenda. I didn’t even understand the issues. And that was embarrassing. So I started reading really fast.
As it turned out about four hundred members showed up (far more than required) because the changes were, in fact, somewhat controversial. The leaders of CIRA were changing the way they recruited and elected directors. In other words they were tampering with the highest control mechanisms on how the organization is run. And suddenly I had strong feelings about that. So I got up at the microphone and expressed those views. I ended up supporting the proposed changes, after some serious explaining from the board and in particular from Michael Geist, but not without reservations. I was still a bit suspicious.
University unions cry blackmail amidst economic downturn
UGuelph denies it threatened closure, says all universities are being hit hard
Unionized university staff say they are being pressured to accept pay and benefit rollbacks as their institutions cope with pension and operating shortfalls, according to this story in the Toronto Sun.
CUPE Ontario president Sid Ryan says unionized workers are increasingly becoming the scapegoats for the economic downturn. In a press release issued Monday, he said the University of Guelph, whose pension fund has a shortfall of $260 million, recently told its workers to open up their collective agreements or face the closure of their university.
“The University of Guelph is…blackmailing employees and threatening closure if they don’t open up collective agreements and give concessions,” said Ryan. “Universities can’t just threaten to close if workers don’t bow down to their demands.”
Alastair Summerlee, president of the University of Guelph, says there are absolutely no plans to shut down the university and no request has been made to re-open staff collective agreements. However, he did concede that union representatives have been asked to meet with human resources to discuss ways to address the university’s $16 million operating deficit with as little impact on jobs as possible.
“Everybody is in this kind of financial challenge — not just the higher education sector,” he says. “We’ve been working to try to do this without involuntary layoffs, so we’ve had an early resignation and retirement package, and so far we have been successful.”
According to Summerlee, all universities are currently struggling with the effects of the economic downturn on endowment funds and pension plans, which has been combined with the strains of increasing enrolment on operational budgets.
Despite facing a similarly large shortfall in its pension fund, Duncan Watt, Carleton University’s vice-president of finance and administration, told the Ottawa Citizen the school has no plans to ask unions to re-open contracts.
Academics on strike across France
Universities, faculty and unions across the country go on “total and unlimited” strike
Universities across France are closed today as academics take job action against the Sarkozy government’s Universities’ Freedoms and Responsibilities law which devolves responsibilities for budgets, staffing and salaries from the state to university administrations. From University World News:
University professors, lecturers and researchers have united across political divides to oppose the new decree. A national coordinating group of representatives from 46 universities and seven union federations, together with action groups and scholarly societies, met in Paris last month and voted for a “total and unlimited strike”.
More news here from Le Monde.
