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TO:
CAAT Academic Local Presidents FROM:
The Faculty Negotiating Team DATE:
RE:
Negotiations Update While most of the reporting we have seen has been very supportive, we have seen some misinformation on various media regarding today’s events. Shortly after At the same time, the union asked that the news blackout be lifted. The Colleges Collective Bargaining Act allows the parties to agree to send all matters in dispute to arbitration. Within a half hour, management called us back. At that time, they rejected binding arbitration and proposed final offer selection, a very rarely used process. To be clear, it was the union that proposed arbitration, not management. Management has suggested that the union offered to end picketing. The union did make that offer but only if management agreed to arbitration. Management rejected that offer. We announced our proposal at a press conference open to everyone. Management called a press conference after ours but barred all faculty representatives from the room. Seeing the news reports tonight, we have learned why. The management spokesperson accused team chair, Ted Montgomery, of personally creating the strike and of keeping students from their classes. It is unfortunate and regrettable that college representatives have turned to personal accusations. As you know, the strike was supported by an 80% majority vote. Ted has chaired the last three negotiating teams, each of which successfully negotiated a settlement without a strike. The faculty negotiating team consists of seven elected members, each of whom contributes to achieve the demands set for bargaining by faculty, each of whom represents the over 9000 faculty members. All decisions made by this team are made by consensus. Every team member stands by all of the decisions we have made. Our processes are open, transparent, and democratic. We have a very experienced and representative group of faculty on the team. Management wants the picket lines taken down and blames one individual. The management spokesperson asserts that Ted could and should “order its [the union’s] pickets down tonight. He should take down the pickets without condition.” Continuation of the strike is entirely due to management’s refusal to accept binding arbitration. We are well aware that the pressure of bargaining can be very stressful for some individuals. The faculty team will not be engaging in any personal attacks or character disparagement. In our view, such conduct is not beneficial either to bargaining or to the relations that exist in the colleges. The union’s revised position will be posted on the OPSEU website shortly. We made several changes in an effort to get some bargaining going. Management has not replied. The most significant proposal was to offer a third option in the way to address the quality of education issues. We proposed a kind of escalator clause that would give additional time to the teacher based on the total number of student teacher contact hours [STCH] per week. We proposed that a teacher with over 350 STCH in a week would receive 0.03 of an hour credit for each additional STCH. Fourteen teaching hours of classes of 25 would be the 350 STCH threshold. A teacher with 14 contact hours with classes of 35 students would be credited with 4.2 additional hours per week. All teachers would also be given 3 hours of credit for general preparation, course updating, dealing with student diversity, preparedness, subject renewal, etc. Partial-Load teachers would be given 2 hours paid as teaching hours for their similar preparation. Management has not responded to this proposal. The centerpiece of management’s revised offer is a Letter of Understanding to add 120 faculty to the provincial sum. These will be hired at 40 per year over the next three years. The costs are $3.8 million dollars in the first year and a cumulative total over the four years of the contract of $23.6 million. The 2005 funding allocation to the colleges was $1.076 billion. An expenditure of $3.8 million is 0.35% of the total budget. Out of the $87.3 million allocated specifically for Quality Improvement, it is 4.35%. This is the level of investment that has been offered. To put the 120 in perspective, in the last 3 years there have been 291 net new hires. Management’s offer includes a right for a teacher to ask the WMG to consider if class size is excessive. There is no definition given for “excessive.” This does not expand the rights of the teacher or the WMG. Existing language provides this same right – “numbers of students” is already one of the variables in assessing inequitable workloads. Under the present system the WMG must have regard for class size issues if they are raised by a professor. Their proposal is no improvement. Dental benefits are increased
by $500 and vision by $100. However, these benefit improvements are delayed
until Management for the first time today introduced a new concession. They proposed a definition of sections that would mean that classes where groups of students are divided into smaller groups would count as only one section no matter how many distinct groups of students the teacher has. For example a large lecture class with two subsequent breakout or lab sections that now count as 3 separate sections would only count as one section. All of the concessions of the
previous offer are still there – averaging, a 12 month work plan beginning May
1 of every year, split vacation periods, 36 weeks of 44-hour assignment with or
without teaching hours, loss of prep time for curriculum review and all the
others. There is nothing for partial-load teachers, nothing for Counsellors or
Librarians, no job security improvements. The salary offer is still below the
high schools and far below You should expect that developments will come quickly at this point. Thanks to everyone for your continued support and patience. We will keep in touch. Jeff Arbus, Daniel Bouchard, Peter McKeracher, Ted Montgomery, Harry Plummer, Sandi Webster, Damian Wiechula |