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OPSEU Local 560 |
| The Local: February, 2003 |
In this issue....
A
Healthy Strike Fund
THE
WORKLOAD MONITORING GROUP ROUNDUP
Collective
Bargaining
Partial-Load
Professors — Are You Getting Your Health Benefits?
College
Presidents Overlook Basic Principle: More Students Need More Faculty
Chronic
Underfunding Threatens Colleges, Students, Employers & Ontario’s Economy,
warns ACAATO
College
Faculty Join CAUT
The
Colleges’ Role
GRIEVANCE
UPDATE
The Colleges announce that applications are up for next year by nearly 25%. The College system, which prides itself on accessibility, says that — although not every applicant gets into the program of first choice — there’ll be a place for every Ontario high school graduate who wants in.
The ratio of part-time
teachers to full-time teachers has steadily and dramatically increased
over the last decade. Average teaching contact hours have gone down
as class sizes have ballooned.
The Local 560 Executive
is proposing a local dues levy increase.
How do these things
relate, you might ask? Here’s how.
Issues of quality and excessive workload were at the core of two faculty strikes in the 1980’s. At that time, Local 560 had a fund dedicated almost exclusively to income replacement for striking members. In fact, after the 1984 strike, the membership voted to double local dues to replenish the fund quickly. That fund is earmarked for strike pay and other urgent contingencies.
Subsequent to the 1989 strike, our fund grew significantly. In response, three years ago, the membership decided to soft-cap the fund at $750,000 so as to provide about $1,500 per member in the event of a strike. (There’s a flexible system that adjusts dues levels based on the amount in the fund.) Current dues levels were set so as to produce an annual deficit and reduce the fund. That has happened. However, at our general membership meeting in October, members raised once again the issue of the strength of our strike fund.
Local 560’s membership
has grown such that at current levels, the Local fund would have about
$1,000 per member available in the event of a strike. (Both Full-time
and especially Partial-load numbers are up.) The Local Executive
agreed that an increase would be in order to restore the fund to the target
level and, better still, to increase the per-member amount. The entire
amount of any dues increase would go to the strike/contingency fund.
There is no
proposed increase
in the local’s operating expenses or funding.
Why is a dues increase important now? That’s where the double cohort comes in. Finally, the Colleges have begun to awaken to the reality of the enrolment flood. But — Superbuilding bigger spaces is NOT going to solve the problem. Add to this the rush of retirements on the horizon, and we have a serious problem. The Colleges have not come to grips with the crises of staffing and workload which are at the heart of quality education concerns. They still think an investment in technology and equipment is the answer! They are asking the government for $62 million for “educational technology,” “instructional equipment,” and “new methodologies.” And only $16 million to hire new faculty! Another $4 million for re-training.
The Colleges will need to compete for quality full-time faculty. They’ll need to offer compensation and benefits packages competitive within the post-secondary sector. They’ll need to provide working — i.e. teaching, counselling and library work — conditions that are respectful of our students’ needs and demands. The next rounds of contract bargaining may well produce the sort of conflict we saw in the 1980’s.
Does this mean a strike soon? Not necessarily at all. We’ll have to wait and see who the government is after the impending election. We’ll have to wait and see where the current high school teacher contract negotiations end up. We’ll have to see how the universities deal with their double cohort issues. But if a strike is necessary, we had better be prepared. Knowing that there’ll be reasonable income replacement in the event of a strike or lockout enables members to be unconstrained in voting on contract settlement offers. They don’t have to swallow a bad deal.
Local 560 members will debate and decide on local dues at our meeting on Wednesday, February 12th. Ultimately, you have to decide whether or not you want to increase dues at this time to enhance the strike fund.
On November 30 and December 1, 2002, OPSEU delegates from each of the Ontario Community Colleges assembled at the CAAT-A Demand Setting Meeting to vote on the priorities for bargaining and to select the team that will represent college faculty at the negotiations table.
At the central demand-setting meeting, voting by delegates from the 25 community college union locals established these bargaining priorities:
As our team will be negotiating at the same time as will the colleges’ Support Staff team, the two will maintain close contact so as to maximize their bargaining power. With both support and academic contracts expiring on August 31, 2003, just as the ‘double cohort’ arrives, there should be considerable pressure on the government to avoid a massive labour conflict.
Representing Local 560 were elected delegates Patricia Clark, Ted Montgomery, Larry Olivo and Josef Stavroff who carried forward the demands established by members at our Local 560 General Membership Meeting in early November.
Here’s a question for Partial-load faculty. If you could sign up for free extended health benefits to cover much of the cost of prescriptions, therapies, dental work, eye glasses, etc., would you do so? Yes? Well, you can, and the College will pay the premiums 100%!
However, despite access to this great benefit plan, statistics from Sun Life (our extended health-benefits carrier) indicate that very few partial-load faculty have signed up to receive these benefits, while almost 100% of full-time faculty have done so.
If you are among the numerous partial-load professors working at Seneca this semester, you may wish to contact Employees Relations at the college to sign on to the benefits plan.
The plan can even
be bridged over employment periods.
In response to an increasing demand for skilled workers and rapidly increasing student enrolment in an era of education-funding cutbacks, Ontario’s college presidents and board members recently issued a report through their association ACAATO (the Association of Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology), calling for increased government investment in the college system to “leverage our strategic community college assets and achieve a competitive economy, one that will maintain and improve the quality of life for which Ontario is renowned.” Unfortunately, the amount requested for full-time staffing is grossly inadequate.
The ACAATO report,
entitled The Competitive Colleges Platform: the Urgent Need for Strategic
Investment, calls for the government to maintain its 2003/2004 funding
commitment of $81,800,000 (for ‘growth’, ‘equipment’, and ‘deferred maintenance’).
and to top it up with an additional $127,100,00 in the same year.
While it’s good
to see the colleges finally speaking up for the needs of our system, instead
of simply struggling to produce good KPI results to prove how successful
they are at doing a great job for less money each year, it is alarming
to see how low faculty and support staff, the critical component of any
good college, rate in their priorities.
A look at the breakdown of this investment reveals a preoccupation with technology and a neglect of staffing needs. For instance, they foresee hiring only 200 faculty for the 24 colleges in the coming year, although they estimate we will need 7,114 new staff by 2006 to replace retirees and accommodate new enrolment.
Here’s the breakdown of the $127,100,000 request:
According to ACAATO (the Association of Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology, representing Ontario’s college presidents and board members), the Ontario per-student college funding support is the lowest in Canada. The association warned, in a press release dated January 21, that the impact of such underfunding will extend far beyond the walls of our colleges to affect the provincial economy which depends greatly on the colleges to produce a skilled workforce.
"Double cohort pressures and demographic changes are pushing even higher enrolments, and with the huge and growing shortage of skilled workers in Ontario - workers that colleges have a mandate to educate and train and on which employers depend to compete and prosper - the College system is facing a crisis that is impacting negatively on our economy," said Don Patterson, Chair of the Committee of Presidents of ACAATO.
Meeting the changing needs of the economy requires that our colleges constantly attract and retain qualified employees, update equipment, and revise programs. Yet, as ACAATO’s figures reveal, federal and provincial government support for Ontario’s colleges has been diminishing. In fact, Ontario has the lowest education funding support of all the provinces — at $4,379 per college student, and about $6,800 per university student and $6,700 per secondary school student.
"Over a 10-year period, college enrolments have risen by 34%, while operating funds have decreased by 42% in per-student terms; that means that funding has dropped from $7,552 per student in 1990-91 to only $4,379 in 2002-03," said Patterson. ACAATO’s latest funding proposal calls for a $1,372 increase in per-student funding, to bring the 2003/2004 total to $5,751.
"Colleges will use this provincial investment to improve the quality of college programs and boost student retention, expand programs that meet the needs of our communities and employers and help address the shortage of skilled workers, and enhance College system accountability," said Patterson.
With provincial elections
on the horizon, and health and education the top priorities identified
by Ontarians, our politicians would be wise to heed the call for adequate
post-secondary funding.
The Canadian Association
of University Teachers [CAUT] represents nearly all the university faculty
associations and confederations in Canada. It also includes some
post-secondary professional librarians and counsellors. CAUT lobbies, conducts
research, and provide forums, and educationals on behalf of and for post-secondary
educators.
Also a member of
CAUT is the British Columbia College Institute Educators Association (the
equivalent of OPSEU for the BC Colleges). Now, we too have joined.
With Ontario colleges now offering applied degrees, the OPSEU Divisional Executive for Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology [CAAT] Academic members has opted to join CAUT. While we maintain our strong relationship with OPSEU, this association with CAUT opens up new opportunities for liaison with post-secondary colleagues across Canada.
CAUT acts as a public
educator and lobbyist on behalf of university faculty, but it takes no
part in contract negotiations, so CAUT will not replace OPSEU as the representative
of college faculty at the bargaining table. Membership rates will be based
on the number of faculty teaching in the applied-degree programs.
Interested in learning
more about CAUT? Visit their website — www.CAUT.ca.
The system of Colleges in Canada has played a major role in the post-secondary and skill-training sectors of our economies. In Metro Toronto alone, there are four universities and four colleges.
One of the qualities cited as what makes Toronto a good place to live in is the availability of post-secondary education. Yet, thirty years after its inception, the College system is in some trouble, and a head-in-the-sand, “I'm alright Jack” mentality is part of the problem.
Ontario’s competitive economy is grounded on producing a highly skilled workforce. But that takes investment. A focus of this newsletter has been the need to invest in the College system.
Regrettably, funding has been diverted from the Colleges, and universities too, into private training operations.
Let’s look at the national picture briefly. In Newfoundland, five community college campuses were closed. Two hundred and fifty jobs were lost.
In Nova Scotia, the Career Academy opened in 1995, offering private training in aviation. Tuition fees were $43,000 for a two-year program. Although a private company, Career Academy received huge sums of public investment — that is, until it closed in 1998, leaving hundreds of students in the lurch with no diploma. This certainly has not been the only private post-secondary educator to go under.
Some long-term private providers can and have provided an alternative; however, for-profit institutions are frequently unstable. And as the governments have diverted money from the public sector, more and more private operations have chased those dollars with shaky foundations.
We need an accountable post-secondary system. True accountability is provided only in the public system. Post-secondary education and training is too precious to privatize.
Afraid of the competition of private trainers, some college leaders have actually tried to mimic their claims to be more “flexible” and “accessible”.
Sadly, that leadership faction has failed completely to comprehend or acknowledge that the advantages already resident in the College system are their stability, their track record of success.
Obviously, the colleges cannot control the platform of a government bent on an agenda of privatization as a tenet of ideological righteousness. But, they can and must stand up to a regime that wilfully, or in ignorance, undermines the college system. There are, of course, many ways to do that, not all of which are confrontational.
The unionized faculty and staff of the Metro Toronto colleges and universities have formed a coalition to focus public attention on the importance of the post-secondary sector as a factor in our economy. We represent one of the largest employer sectors in Metro.
Support staff, teaching,
counselling, and library staff are united in their recognition of the need
to properly fund and staff the colleges and universities. You may be sure
that the needs of the sector will be an issue in the upcoming provincial
elections.
The hotel is located at 7095 Woodbine
Avenue, on the east side,
just north of Steeles Avenue.
Free parking is available.
The agenda will include:
| THE LOCAL
is a publication of OPSEU Local 560, the faculty union of Seneca College.
Please feel free to copy any original material with appropriate credit.
We welcome submissions and correspondence which should be sent to Patricia Clark, Secretary, OPSEU Local 560, at Newnham Campus or at 2942 Finch Avenue East, Suite 119, Scarborough, Ontario, M1W 2T4, or by fax to (416) 495-7573, or by e-mail to union@opseu560.org Call us at
(416) 495-1599 or visit the Local 560 Web Site at:
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