OPSEU Local 560

The College’s foremost strength is its well trained, skilled, and dedicated faculty and support staff, we told Mr. Lundy.  We also highlighted Seneca’s success in international enrollments, its strong catchment area, and its good fiscal position.

We pointed out that low morale and an apparent unwillingness to address serious educational and leadership concerns were ongoing challenges, among others.
We cited academic leadership as the foremost quality that a new president would need to succeed at Seneca and to make Seneca thrive.

In a wide-ranging, and candid discussion, the union representatives pointed out that the college was ready for new leadership and that this appointment would be a good opportunity for a new person. Staff are ready, indeed eager, for change.

No internal appointee could possibly escape the “baggage” and history that he or she would bring to the office. Some of the rumoured internal candidates may very well possess the qualities required to be a good college president sometime, some place.  But not this time and not this place.  It is not a matter of personality but of culture, environment, and reality.  To appoint yet a third internal president would be a disservice to both the College and that individual.

So what do we need in a new president?  The College needs a president with the courage and vision to bring focus back to the day-by-day educational issues — curriculum, class hours, evaluation methods, class size, etc.  Too long have we seen academic decision-making grounded on fiscal priorities first, with educational priorities a distant second at best.  This College should not be about “SuperBuild” and “yet one more capital project for our King campus.”   Of course, we must be a part of those processes, but no longer can we afford to be so at the continuing cost of dangerously low employee morale and ever-diminishing educational quality.

We advised Mr. Lundy that Seneca needed a president with experience in the public post-secondary sector, who could bring a valid commitment to educational goals and priorities.  It could be a glorious opportunity for someone courageous enough to challenge Seneca's entrenched culture. 

Over two days, delegates voted on many of the 231 bargaining demands submitted by all 25 locals. The demands forwarded by Local 560 were virtually all passed. On the final afternoon, delegates submitted their ranking of priorities. Our negotiating team will announce those priorities early in the New Year.

On Sunday morning, we elected a seven-member team to negotiate our demands with the Colleges: they are Ted Montgomery, Seneca (Chair); Sandi Webster, St. Clair (Vice-Chair); Kaia Beaudry, Confederation; Gary Fordyce, Fanshawe; Peter McKeracher, Durham; Harry Plummer, Loyalist; and Damian Wiechula, George Brown.  Diane Bull, an OPSEU Staff Negotiator is assigned again to work with our team.

The alternates are Mary Ann White of St. Lawrence and Pat Kennedy of Algonquin.

 JULIUS NYERERE, just before his death, met with top-level staff of the World Bank in Wash-ington in 1998. The champion of African unity had governed Tanzania for 20 years, from its in-dependence to 1985, and had applied a policy based on communitarian agriculture, social property and self-determination.

“Why have you failed?” the World Bank ex-perts asked him.

Nyerere answered: “The British Empire left us a country with 85 per cent illiterates, two engi-neers and 12 doctors. When I left office, we had nine per cent illiterates and thousands of engi-neers and doctors. I left office 13 years ago. Then our per capita income was twice what it is today; now we have one-third fewer children in our schools, and public health and social service are in ruins. During the past 13 years, Tanzania has done everything that the World Bank and the In-ternational Monetary Fund have demanded.”

And Julius Nyerere passed the question back to the World Bank experts, “Why have you failed?”

 A new CAAT-A bargaining team is in place and has pledged to start its task by submitting notice to bargain to the Council of Regents on January 1, 2001, the earliest possible date.

Delegates at the provincial CAAT-A Demand Setting Meeting (December 9-10) elected the team. Immediately following their election, the team members reached consensus on their choice of chair and vice-chair: Ted Montgomery and Sandi Webster, respectively. Speeches and discussions at the weekend meeting revealed the strength and commitment of our new team.

The chair, Ted Montgomery, has served on three previous bargaining teams and will be the first individual to serve twice as chair of a CAAT-A bargaining team. He stressed that the team's mandate and direction come solely from the members. The "real bargaining team," he stressed, is the members: they provide the solidarity the elected bargaining team needs in negotiations. (The strong strike mandate in the previous round of negotiations gave our team the support it needed to successfully press for our demands.) He therefore reminded delegates of the important role of local stewards in keeping members informed and confident that the team is fighting for their best interests. Because members are not present at the bargaining table, building and maintaining their trust is a critical element of this difficult task. He therefore also discussed with delegates the various means the team could use to communicate with local executives and members.

Montgomery cautioned members about the limitations of the new-style "mutual gains" bargaining. He assured them that wherever mutual gains were possible, we would embrace them, but that the union has distinct positions on issues, and the team will use all possible avenues to energetically pursue solutions to the very hard problems that will arise in bargaining. He assured delegates that the team would never "go backwards" on the existing contract, including benefits, salary and working conditions.

The new team has a hard job ahead, but Ted spoke of his confidence that, like the previous team, the new team will work entirely by consensus and maintain their strong common goals.
Sandi Webster, the vice-chair, spoke of her experience on the previous bargaining team. She also has many years' experience as a local union executive officer at St. Clair College. Over 30 years in the college system, she has worked as a post-secondary and non-post-secondary professor and as an instructor, and realizes the artificial nature of these distinctions in job classifications. She too stressed the necessity of frequent communication with the members whose backing is so essential for the team.

Also returning from the last team is Harry Plummer of Loyalist. He has served on the Joint Insurance Committee since 1978 and has a strong background in accounting. He is committed to protecting our health plans. He also served on the bargaining team which negotiated our workload formula in 1984 and produced massive hirings in the college system.

Peter McKeracher of Durham is another returning team member. He promised to fight for the "nuts and bolts" elements such as salary and benefits, but also stressed the  importance of fighting for "a vision of education." Like other team members, he expects negotiation to go more quickly since we will no longer have the delay imposed by the resolution of the Social Contract issue.

New team member Kaia Beaudry of Confederation College in Thunder Bay has taught for 20 years in the college system It was her logging of her workload over the course of one year that provided the figures used in the calculation of our workload formula in 1984. At the time, she had 21 teaching weekly contact hours and six preps.

Damian Wiechula of George Brown, new to provincial bargaining, has served as a steward, secretary, treasurer, chief steward, and first vice-president for his local. He has worked very hard to make the most effective use of the WMG at his college, and has been instrumental in organizing six annual WMG conferences for Toronto area colleges. Like most members, he is concerned about the excessive use of non-bargaining unit professors.

Gary Fordyce of Fanshawe College, another new team member, has served as chief steward for the past 17 years. Gary is a member of the provincial Grievance Scheduling Committee. He also serves on the Joint Educational Qualifications Subcommittee. He recently represented his local in his 50th WRA hearing.

Working with the bargaining team for the second time is Diane Bull, an OPSEU negotiator. She emphasized that her experience on the last team revealed to her the commitment of the team, the enormous skills they brought to the table, and the exceptional support their members provided them. She spoke of her confidence in the skills of the present team, four of whom served on the previous team.

 In October, the Ontario Tories introduced a bill that paves the way for the privatization of Ontario’s universities.

In 1998, Harris deregulated tuition fees for all graduate and some professional programs. This resulted in tuition fee hikes of up to 500 per cent. Since 1998, tuition fees for computer ani-mation at one college have increased from $1,400 to $8,000.

Some institutions are cam-paigning to deregulate all tuition fees. Tuition fees for a four-year program at the private University of Phoenix in British Columbia are $40,800. A comparable degree at an Ontario public institution is less than $16,000. Private universities, combined with deregulated tuition fees at public institutions, will not create access. By opening the floodgates to massive tuition fee hikes, most people will be shut out of post-secondary education.

“Students are being forced to mortgage their futures,” states Erin George of the Canadian Federation of Students. “The average debt for one undergraduate is $25,000.”

The Ontario Federation of Labour has found that pri-vate universities are not fully funded by private money but do draw on public dollars. Unexus University, for ex-ample, in New Brunswick received $600,000 in public money in one year through government grants. In the U.S., private universities receive an estimated 30 per cent of their income from direct or indirect public subsidies. This is in addition to the excessive tuition fees.

The Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations argues that “private, for-profit universities offer niche programming at exorbitant prices while drawing on public resources without enhancing either the quality or accessi-bility of a university education.” 

 As new SWFs for each term are cranked out, here are some abuses of the workload formula that faculty need to watch for.

The Local 560 SWF doctors have noted that supervisors are trying to avoid either creating overtime or exceeding the overtime cap of 47 hours — not by reducing workload, as they should, but by manipulating the workload formula so that you do not receive proper credit on the SWF for the work you do.

Here are some of the manipulations of your workload to watch for:

• Inappropriate assignment or weighting of  “routine” or “in-process” evaluation factors, where the proportion of "essay or project" evaluation methods for a subject has not changed or where these evaluation factors do not accurately describe the evaluation techniques which are/must be used.
• Inadequate time for complementary functions or a reduction in hours from what appeared on the Fall SWF for a task assigned for the year.  In one case, a professor who has to visit students in the field has seen her travel time for Winter 2001 cut by 25% from what it was in Fall 2000, although the number of students to see and the distance travelled have not changed!
• Inappropriate preparation factors. In particular, if there has been a major overhaul in program or curriculum, a subject should be treated as "New".
• Understating class size — monitor class sizes throughout January, and be sure to notify your supervisor if you have more students than your SWF indicates.
• Assignment of more than 4 subjects, and more than 6 sections.  This practice is common in some areas, but it cannot be done unless you consent. Sometimes this kind of workload is not onerous, but if it is, it is reasonable for you to refuse the overload of subjects and sections.

Any time you become aware of a new problem, you can request an adjustment. For instance, where the time allotted on a SWF for some activity looks inadequate, keep a log of the time spent.  When you are about to run over the time allocated, ask your supervisor to give you extra attributed hours.  If he or she will neither provide you with extra time nor confirm that you can stop doing the work, you should refer the matter to the WMG by contacting the union secretary, Patricia Clark at Extension 2208.

If you have any SWF questions, please call the union reps on the WMG: Larry Olivo: Extension 2814; Ingrid Philipp: Extension 2034; Paul Matson: Extension 2434; and Julie Levin: Extension 5223

You may also want to consult our web page on SWFs: http://webhome.idirect.com/~opseu560/swf.htm 

 While Article 11 has given us some control over workload, the position of coordinator remains largely undefined and subject to inequitable workload.  Article 14.03 A 3 says that, in addition to teaching, coordinators are required to provide “academic leadership” in the coordination of courses or programs.  The article further states that coordinators are not responsible for disciplining teachers in the bargaining unit, and that no one can be compelled to accept a coordinator’s duties.  What article 14.03 doesn’t do is furnish a job description for coordinators.  It is whatever the chair wants it to be — and it can be plenty.

The article goes on to say that coordinators will receive an allowance equal to one or two steps.  You can be sure that most coordinators aren’t receiving the two-step allowance, But there are no guidelines to determine whether one step or two should be given. Often, the teaching load for a coordinator is reduced as well, but there is nothing in the agreement that specifically requires this, and in fact, reductions in teaching load vary widely across the college.

Many coordinators accept their assignment out of a sense of duty to their colleagues and their students, in the hope that they can help maintain the quality of their programs.  As a result, however, many find themselves with endless hours of work and too few hours on the SWF to do the assigned work.

The coordinator’s job is made more difficult by the fact that faculty are no longer available in May and June to work as a group to do the program maintenance necessary to maintain quality programs.  To the extent this work gets done at all, coordinators do it … it's either that or no one does it.

However, there are things coordinators can and should do.  One coordinator started keeping track of the time it actually takes to perform her coordination duties.  She quickly realized that the hours allotted on her SWF did not come close to covering her workload.  She brought this to the attention of her supervisor to no avail.  She has now brought her workload to the WMG to request extra attributed hours to properly compensate her for the work done.

One coordinator also found that her two-step coordinator’s allowance had been reduced to one step, although no told her to cut back on the work done or even that her pay had been reduced.
Coordinators who find themselves with these kinds of problems or who have other questions should call the union office at 495-1599 or Larry Olivo at Extension 2814.

Because of these problems, which are system-wide, faculty at a number of colleges have put forward a demand for bargaining that coordinator’s duties and the criteria for determining the amount of the coordinator's allowance be clearly defined. 

 The rights of union members received a welcome boost recently, when a court ruled that arbi-trators setting wages and working conditions must be unbiased.

The case of CUPE and SEIU v. The Minister of Labour for Ontario dealt with an attempt by the Ontario government to manipulate the interest arbitration process. This is an arbitration system often used to set wages and working conditions for workers who are not allowed to strike, for ex-ample, in the health care sector.

The idea is that if a union and employer can-not reach a negotiated settlement of their collec-tive agreement, the outstanding items will be de-cided by an arbitrator instead of a strike or lock-out. For many years in Ontario, these arbitrators were appointed from a roster of arbitrators who had been approved by a committee of union and employer representatives.

Enter the current ultra-right government. First, it tried to set up a new tribunal to decide collective agreements in certain situations. How-ever, unions mounted a vigorous campaign against the new tribunal, and the government backed down. The minister of labour told unions that it would go back to the way things had been previously.

Too good to be true? Sure enough, the gov-ernment promptly reneged on its commitments. Instead of appointing arbitrators from the roster, it started assigning handpicked retired judges who had no background in labour matters.

CUPE and SEIU took the minister to court, challenging these appointments. The first level of court dismissed the case, but the Ontario Court of Appeal decided the unions were right.

The Court said the retired judges not only lacked the expertise of the previous arbitrators, they were also not independent. Mincing no words, the Court found that the minister of labour had attempted to seize control of the bargaining process and to replace mutually acceptable arbitrators with a group of people seen to be adverse to the interests of labour. In the circumstances, said the Court, the government’s actions gave rise to a reasonable concern that the retired judges were biased.

The Court went further, finding the govern-ment had violated the principles of fairness and natural justice by reneging on its commitment to go back to the previous system of appointing ar-bitrators. The Court said the minister’s actions could be regarded as provocative and defiant.

After this unusual dressing down, the Court ordered the minister to stop appointing people who were not on the previously established roster of arbitrators.

Of course, the Ontario government’s war against unions is not over. But at least for now, unions can enjoy the sweet smell of victory.

Judith McCormack is a former chair of the Ontario Labour Relations Board who now practises labour law with the firm of Sack Goldblatt Mitchell, which represented CUPE and SEIU on this case.

Between February 1998, when the college tried to get rid of me, and May 2000, when the arbitration board unanimously restored me to my position, many things happened at the college which might not be noticed on a day-to-day basis.  But they are very noticeable to someone who cares about students and has been gone for a while.

Now that I have completed a semester as both a professor and coordinator,  it is much clearer to me than it ever was before just what damage has been done to programs as a result of misguided, inappropriate and stupid management policies.  The biggest problems stem from the Tilly/Callaghan “White Paper/Action Plan” that views education as some kind of assembly line, cranking students out at high speed.  No thought whatever was given to the need to provide time for faculty work on program maintenance or improvement.  As you may recall, our concerns about decline of program quality were dismissed. The students’ concerns about the effect of cuts on their ability to learn and get good grades were dismissed when President Quinlan in his now infamous remark, told them that “grades don’t matter”.

As with machinery, a lack of preventive maintenance, doesn’t show at first.  But in two and a half years, the problems are now glaring and obvious. In my area, for example, I discovered I was about to teach a subject which had been covered in other courses in the same program. This would never have happened where faculty had May and June to discuss programs, curriculum and subjects as a group, exchanging information, and doing the necessary work to maintain coherent, high quality programs.

Faculty in my area were great believers in language across the curriculum and the absolute necessity of students being able to write clearly — and with 100% essay evaluation, they had plenty of opportunities to work on that objective.  Not any more. Faculty had the essay evaluation factors drastically reduced, so that even more duties could be piled onto their SWFs.  For a while, they did the extra, unattributed work — but overwhelmed by the increased workload, they dropped it.  Essay writing is now becoming an endangered evaluation species in my area.

 The other thing I noticed was just how many of my former colleagues had disappeared over the last two and a half years. Any faculty member who could afford it apparently opted for early retirement, so eager were they to get out.  More would have gone, but the college would not have been able to fund all those who wanted out.  Every spring now, I’m told, the union office is flooded with calls from faculty inquiring about another early retirement buy-out.

In talking to faculty around the college this fall, I have discovered that faculty are still focused and caring about their students and programs, but have shut the window on other aspects of college life that they used to participate in. "Too depressing, too discouraging.  Just leave me alone to teach my students, and if I can get out of here, I’m going.”

As people do leave, the other noticeable thing is that they are not replaced…at least not by full-time faculty. My area is awash in part-time, partial-load and sessional teachers. All of these are hardworking, worthy folk, but they often have other jobs [Well, they do have to live!] and are not available to students. There is no time or opportunity for full-time faculty to act as mentors, and once part timers do become effective in programs, they are soon gone.

Revolving door teachers, experienced teachers leaving, minimal program maintenance… What next? Match box covers advertizing our programs?

 Ontario wage settlements have increased over the last three years.  Increases in 1998 averaged 1.7 per cent.  In 1999, the increase was 2.0 percent on average.  And in 2000 to date, the increase has been 2.6 percent.  Public sector increases are slightly higher than private sector, a reversal of the 1998 and 1999 trend.  As of August, the Ontario Consumer Price Index (CPI) increase for 2000 was 2.8 percent.

Seneca Faculty made salary their top priority for the upcoming round of negotiations.
Two basic considerations are built into our salary demands.

First, College faculty want to continue to be situated between secondary school teachers and university teachers.  At this time, pending further secondary settlements, we remain in that in-between position.  However, we need to increase at a rate greater than high school teachers if we are to move closer to half way between the two groups rather than be just barely above the high school salaries.

Second, we need to ensure that our earnings are not eroded by inflation.  Negotiators need to keep an eye on the CPI which has grown at a much quicker pace this year than over the pervious three. (CPI increases were 1.9 in 1997, 0.9 in 1998 and 1.9 in 1999.)

In the last two rounds of negotiations the union was successful in getting agreement to add steps to the top of our salary grid.  At first blush, this may seem a problem for some faculty who see only that it will take longer to get to the maximum.  However, those who had been frozen at a maximum recognized the value of "raising the ceiling" in this way. By increasing step maximums, the employer is able to agree to higher salary rates, while avoiding some of the immediate financial burden.  In the last round of bargaining, the parties decided to maintain the commitment "to address the salary adjustment issue" by renewing the Letter of Understanding in the Collective Agreement [page 107].  That letter sets out the practice of raising the salary maximum by adding new top steps as a way to achieve necessary salary adjustment.

Recently, Seneca has been unable to fill posted faculty vacancies in Technology and Health Sciences.  Clearly, the compensation package being offered is one reason.
We cannot know what the upcoming round of negotiations will bring, but the issue of compensation will once again be front and centre.

UCS / CALM -- Union members in the U.S. average $5,241 more a year in pay and $7,571 more in benefits than workers who don't have a union. The average economic value of a union card to the nation's 16 million union members was $12,812, according to the U.S. Department of Labour. 

 Many faculty have expressed their displeasure with the College's recent e-mail concerning the death from meningitis of a long-time Seneca College employee.

While people were obviously upset with the passing of a friend and colleague, many were also concerned by the manner in which management chose to communicate with employees.

Aside from the fact that e-mail, which does not reach all employees, was not the most appropriate vehicle for a communication concerning such an important health and safety issue, the information offered was limited in both depth and scope. While the Toronto Public Health Office ensured that the minimum health requirements and regulations were met, it appears the College gave little thought to the concerns staff and faculty might be experiencing.

Employees' displeasure was evident by the phone calls I and others received. I have learned that employees had called the Toronto Public Health Office, not trusting the College's account of the situation. As your elected Health and Safety Officer, I share this concern. Historically, the College's interpretation of some situations has been found to be less than accurate, and its actions less than adequate. Their response to the unsafe parking attendant's booth at Jane Campus and various threats to personal safety are glaring examples.

Should such a sad event occur again, it is to be hoped management will consider the personal feelings of employees, adopting a more open and informative approach and expanding on the pertinent facts, without resorting to the patronizing overtones of the e-mail in question.

Simply meeting the minimum requirements of the Health Act and Regulations in such a situation is not appropriate for one of the largest post-secondary educational institutions in Canada. Specific information is vital if peoples' natural concerns are to be alleviated and risk to health minimized. Further information concerning the symptoms of meningitis would have been most helpful.
I despair at our being treated so shabbily.

 Teaching Assistants, Graduate Assis-tants and contract faculty at York University have been on strike since October 26th. They are striking to keep university education affordable. They are striking to regain control of the sky-rocketing cost of university education.

In 1980, Teaching Assistants at York earned $6,000 and paid about $1,000 in tuition, leaving $5,000 to live on. Twenty years later, they earn $9,900 and pay $5,000 of it on tuition, leaving $4,900 to live on.

In the past five years, the Ontario Government has drastically cut operat-ing grants to universities, and forced them to make up for the lost revenues. As a result, tuition at York and else-where has increased dramatically: by over 60% since 1995-96 alone.

Two years ago, York University's ad-ministration agreed with teaching assis-tants that they need protection from es-calating costs. Now, the administration wants to take away that protection. Accessible graduate education is in all our interests. Why is York University's administration not fighting for it?
 

• Signed by: Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations, Algoma University  College Faculty Association, Canadian Auto Workers, Carlton University Faculty Association, Laurentian Faculty Association, Association des professeurs de l'Université Laurentienne, Queen's University Faculty Association, Trent University Faculty Association, Faculty Association of the University of Waterloo, Brescia College Faculty Association, University of Windsor Faculty Association, York University Faculty Association, Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario, Elementary Teachers of Toronto, Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation, Canadian Federation of Students - Ontario. 

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 The World's Easiest Trivia Quiz
CALM
Questions
1. How long did the Hundred Years War last?
2. Which country makes Panama hats?
3. From which animal do we get catgut?
4. In which month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution?
5. What is a camel's hair brush made of?
6. The Canary Islands in the Atlantic are named after what animal?
7. What was King George VI's first name?
8. What colour is a purple finch?
9. Where do Chinese gooseberries come from?
10. How long did the Thirty Years War last?

Answers
1 116 years, from 1337 to 1453
2 Ecuador
3 From sheep and horses
4 November -- the Russian calendar was 13 days behind ours
5 Squirrel fur
6 The Latin name was Isularia Canaria, meaning, Island of the Dogs
7 Albert -- when he came to the throne in 1936 he respected the wish of Queen Victoria that no future king should ever be called Albert
8 Distinctively crimson
9 New Zealand
10 Thirty years, from 1618 to 1648 

• Label on the back of a cardboard auto-shade: "Warning: remove auto-shade before driving."
• Label on a Batman costume: "Caution: cape does not enable user to fly."
• Sign posted at the bottom of an out-of-service escalator: "Escalator not moving: please watch your step."

Is this possible, or is it just hyperbole? Let's do the math.

At the highest minimum wage in Canada ($7 an hour, in British Columbia), it would take Stronach — even if he could work 24 hours a day, every day of the year — 688 years to earn $43.2 million! He doesn't look that old.

To view it another way, if the Magna International CEO had worked every hour of every day for the last 40 years, his $43-million-plus salary would amount to about $123.20 an hour.
Maybe Stronach can tell us where he finds a minimum wage like that. We'll gladly pass the information along to those who now have to settle for $7 an hour, or less.