OPSEU Local 560

    Both serve the same Harris agenda.  You have heard of the leaked 1997-98 performance contract of Veronica Lacey, the Deputy Minister of Education and Training — the Secret from Veronica's Closet. Under the section headed “Restructuring of Colleges” are five points in the “Results Expected” column.  They are these:

• Permanent changes to funding to reward performance,
• Performance measures that make colleges accountable for student retention and employer satisfaction,
• Greater tuition fee deregulation and institutional student aid,
• Limited degree granting status introduced,  and
• Privatization of college programs … labour relations addressed.

    Under the results expected for elementary and secondary column, her performance contract states: “Plan for 1998-99: $667 million reduction in place.”   Harris and Snobelen, and now Johnson, can try to dupe the public about it all they like.  The truth is there in black and white — the figure established by the inner cabinet as Lacey’s target.

    Why?  Why take money out of the system?  Why cut another 10,000 teachers out of the secondary schools?  It can only diminish the quality of education and training which our schools provide.

    Indeed, that is the government’s very intent.  Make the public system less attractive so that those who can afford private education will be increasingly likely to spend their dollars there.  We have seen this exact model recently in the U.S. The tax cut, by its regressive nature, furthers this initiative: take the money out of the public education system and place it into the hands of those who can turn it over to private educators.  It is a strategy that suits both those who want our public system (like many school systems in the U.S.) left only to those who cannot afford better and Harris’ other friends, the large corporate and small-business private trainers.

To a great extent, Ontario’s colleges lack leaders committed to the public nature of their mandate.  Presidents are all too eager either to privatize indirectly by turning to full-fee programs or to openly emulate the inferior practices and standards of the private trainers.  They are likewise eager to reduce the number of highly qualified professors, to maximize class sizes and workload, slash program hours, reduce student/professor contact and to cut corners on educational quality.  Make no mistake.  The agenda is an attack on quality public education.  It  is manifested in Bill 160, and it underlies college management's bargaining agenda.

Management’s demand to lower preparation and evaluation credits in the workload formula.  Management’s demand to sanction unlimited weekly teaching hours and teaching weeks.  Their demand to open up the Instructor classification and eliminate professor positions from the colleges.  Their demand to hold salaries below those of high school teachers.  Their refusal to provide reasonable job security, to address professorial concerns about curriculum, class size, schedule, etc.  Their attempt to renege on a letter of promise to address salary adjustments. All of these demonstrate the clear commonality of interests between this management negotiating committee and the objectives behind Bill 160.

Our responsibility, like that of our teaching colleagues at the elementary and secondary levels is to be counted against this regressive and destructive agenda.  Our responsibility is to fight to protect the quality of education in the colleges of this province.

 The key change is that members whose years of service and age add up to 85 may retire with an unreduced pension. This is referred to as an 85 factor. Previously,  age and service had to add up to 90.  There is no minimum age or years of service required:  the requirement is simply that age and years of service together add up to 85.

A member is also eligible for an unreduced pension if he or she has reached the age of 60 years and has at least 20 years of credited service.

EARLY RETIREMENT ON A REDUCED PENSION

    Previously, if one took early retirement, pension was reduced 5% for each year retirement preceded age 65. That penalty factor has now been reduced to 3%. The penalty is imposed for each year that a person’s retirement precedes the earliest date that individual could receive an unreduced pension (i.e. the member reaches the 85 factor, or reaches age 60 with  20 years of service, or reaches the age of 65). So, a person 54 years of age who had 30 years of service would be penalized only 3% for the one year he/she was short of the 85 factor.  The previous provisions would have created a penalty of 55%, five percent for every year under the age of 65.

    Members with at least two years of service have been able to retire with a reduced pension at age 55.  As of January 1, 1998, members aged 50-54, with at least  2 years of service will also be eligible to retire with  a reduced pension.

    Please note that these are highlights of the changes. You may obtain further information from the Local 560 Office, the Senior OPSEU benefits counsellor, Shirley McVittie [tel. (416) 443-8888], or Employee Relations.  You may also wish to obtain advice from a financial consultant to see how your college pension ties in with your other financial plans.  Do not make a decision about early retirement without obtaining further advice.

     Here's a list of the pharmacies in our region that charged the lowest dispensing fees ($1.99 to $3.99) in 1997.

The Drug Store Pharmacy:  2670 Erin Centre Blvd., Mississauga (905) 569-3356
The Drug Store Pharmacy: 3501 Yonge Street, North York
The Drug Store Pharmacy:  173 Lakeshore Road West, Oakville (905) 845-4946
The Drug Store Pharmacy:  11 Redway Road, Toronto (416) 425-8433
The Drug Store Pharmacy:  985 Woodbine Avenue, Toronto (416) 421-5727
The Drug Store Pharmacy:  650 Dupont Street, Toronto (416) 588-4973
The Drug Store Pharmacy:  125 Harwood Avenue North, Ajax (905) 427-9748
The Drug Store Pharmacy: 295 Queen Street East, Brampton (905) 452-9011
The Drug Store Pharmacy: 2025 Guelph Line, Burlington (905) 336-1112
The Drug Store Pharmacy:  245 Dixon Road, Islington (416) 614-9175
The Drug Store Pharmacy: 620 Eglinton Avenue West, Mississauga (905) 712-9626
The Drug Store Pharmacy: 6085 Creditview Road, Mississauga (905) 858-1866
The Drug Store Pharmacy:  6220 Yonge Street North York (416) 224-8615
The Drug Store Pharmacy:  1792 Liverpool Road, Pickering (905) 831-6310
The Drug Store Pharmacy:  10909 Yonge Street, Richmond Hill (905) 737-1840
The Drug Store Pharmacy:  1880 Eglinton Avenue East, Scarborough (416) 750-4400
The Drug Store Pharmacy:  1450 Lawrence Avenue East, Toronto (416) 755-9210
The Drug Store Pharmacy:  17 Leslie Street, Toronto (416) 968-7283
Zellers Pharmacy:   6600 Yonge Street, Willowdale (416) 226-3126
Zehrs Pharmacy:  24018 Woodbine Avenue,  Keswick (905) 476-1609
Zellers Pharmacy:   100 Kingston Road East, Ajax (905) 683-6363
Miracle Ultra Mart:  25 Peel Centre Drive, Bramalea (905) 793-0600
Miracle Ultra Mart:   751 Upper James Street South, Hamilton (905) 575-7755
Fortinos Pharmacy:   65 Mall Road, Hamilton

    “It’s part of a global strategy to change the way teaching is done in the classroom,” says Gilbert Boileau, executive dean of student services at Boréal, “We’re getting away from a teaching environment to a learning environment.”

    Boileau contends that the change will mean less direct teacher instruction and more opportunities for students to work alone and with each other in and beyond the classroom.

    Translated into simpler language, this means students will pay more money for less instruction. Trotted out once again is that false dichotomy between “teaching” and “learning” environments.  Administrators use it to rationalize education cuts and shift the blame for systemic inadequacies onto the shoulders of the suddenly obsolete teacher.

    This “strategy” is yet another indication that college administrators are driven primarily by financial motives and not by concern for or knowledge of pedagogy. As Mr. Boileau says, “There will be different ways of doing business in the classroom.”  Business?  What happened to education in the classroom? When last did this administrator visit a class? He displays no realistic understanding of the nature of the learning environment or the pivotal role professors play.

    “It is a glimpse of the future.” This is the disheartening observation of Brian Desbiens, president of Sir Sanford Fleming College and spokesperson for Ontario’s 25 college presidents: He says that about half a dozen colleges are considering a similar plan.

    When you retire, will you be getting  the maximum pension benefits to which you are entitled? Did you know, for example,  that you may be able to  purchase benefits for prior service at another educational institute or as a sessional professor?

    All continuous full-time faculty must join the CAAT Pension Plan when hired by the College.  During periods of full-time employment, both you and the College contribute equally to your indexed pension.  However, other  options exist if, for instance, you take a leave of absence or  pregnancy/parental leave or if  you have accumulated prior service as a professor at another educational institute or as a sessional.

Leaves of Absence & Pregnancy/Parental Leaves
    If you take a leave without pay, or a pregnancy/parental leave, the College should automatically provide you with an election form on which you can indicate your choice regarding your pension payments. During a leave of absence, you  normally will pay both the College's share and your share of the pension contribution. During a pregnancy/parental leave, the college continues to pay its share of the pension contribution. In any case, be sure to respect the deadlines for payment election and pension contributions. For instance, if your leave ends in 1997, you must pay your contribution by December 31, 1998.

Prior Service
    If you have accumulated prior full-time service with another educational institute with which there exists a reciprocal arrangement, you may elect, at any time, to purchase pension benefits for some or all of this period, by transferring all the funds in the other employer’s pension plan to the CAAT plan. If you took a refund of pension contributions, you may purchase service for this period only if it was earned after December 31, 1991.

Prior Sessional  Service
    If you became a full-time employee at Seneca College within 18 months of completing a sessional term at the College, you are eligible, at any time, to purchase pension benefits for earlier periods of sessional employment.  Send your request to Kim McGann of Employee Relations, including the  years (and exact dates, if possible) during which you were a sessional employee. Note, however, that periods of part-time and partial-load employment are not eligible for pension purchase.

Optional Service
    You can purchase pension benefits for previous service with other Canadian public service employers. As well, if previously you didn't elect to purchase benefits within the deadline prescribed for a situation such as a leave, you can elect to buy optional service for this period. However, you will pay the full actuarial cost of the benefit you are buying. The CAAT Pension Plan will calculate the cost, which will include factors such as interest payments which generally make this "delayed-purchase" option more expensive.

Disability Waiver
    If you are receiving LTD (Long-Term Disability) benefits,  you remain a member of the CAAT Pension Plan, accumulating credited service, but you make no contributions during this period.

How to Apply for a Pension Purchase
    If you are considering any additional pension purchase, you should contact Kim McGann in Benefits at Employee Relations. Denise Chan of Employee Relations is another source of information on pension benefits.  The College will investigate the possibility of your purchasing this service and, where applicable, will provide you with a "Request to Purchase" form which indicates all your options. You will be copied on all subsequent related correspondence between the plan administrators and the College.

    Remember that past-service pension adjustments will affect the limit of your RRSP contribution.
Before you make your final decision, we advise that you also consult with the OPSEU Staff Benefits Counsellor, Shirley McVittie at 443-8888, Ext. 657. You should also read the pamphlet entitled CAAT Pension Plan Member Handbook which explains our pension plan in more detail.

    By January 1996, however, it was pretty obvious to about eight of us, who had been appointed to the English Department in 1990 and '91, that we'd soon be joining the growing roll-call of laid-off teachers. Sure enough, on February 27, of about 1,000 employees at George Brown College, 260 (half academic and half support staff) lost their jobs. I was one of them. Because of funding cuts, my lay-off notice informed me, my position as a professor had been "made redundant," effective May 27.

    I wasn't  shocked that I was laid off. What shocked me was seeing teachers with as much as 17 years' seniority get dumped. I was 35 years old, with a degree in English: if push came to shove, I could perhaps fall back on my bartending experience. (An amazing number of bartenders have degrees in English, history and philosophy.) It was hard, however, to imagine the future career options of a 55-year-old math teacher.

    Determined to land on my feet, I took advantage of a college-offered retraining package and submitted a proposal. (It would pay my salary and benefits for 90 days while I worked for an agency that agreed to take me on.) By May 10, two weeks to go to my official lay-off, I had taught the last of my classes and finished submitting final grades. Normally these two weeks of non-teaching days would have been used for doing such tasks as revising courses and selecting textbooks. It's been my experience that teaching staff generally negotiate with their chairs about how such time is to be spent. This time, however, nothing happened. The semester came to a quiet, unceremonious end. I packed up my desk and went home.

    As my retraining date neared, I still hadn't heard if my proposal had been approved. Four days before my retraining was to begin, a human resources manager had some good news for me: my proposal was approved. However, unbeknownst to me, I had been released from my non-teaching duties as of the May 10 deadline for submitting grades. In other words, I was supposed to already be two and a half weeks into the retraining that I had not yet begun. My grievance is now with an arbitrator.

    Soon after my retraining was over, I submitted my resignation and collected my two-months-plus vacation pay and severance pay. By this time I held no hope of recall, and my partner had been laid off the previous spring.

    At the end of August, just as I was planning my first visit to the unemployment office,  I got a surprise phone call. Another campus wanted to know if I would like a sessional (non-union) contract position. The job would be guaranteed until just before Christmas. However, there would be no sick days. No vacation days. No health plan. Most significantly, no restrictions on workload. I took it.
As a unionized employee, I had never taught more than five three-hour classes a week, the rest of my time being spent on preparation and evaluation. Non-unionized sessional teachers, however, are apparently supposed to prepare their classes and evaluate students in their sleep.

    In pre-Mike Harris days, I taught five classes a semester to between 120 and 140 students. In my first semester after the Tory landslide, my student roster swelled to 180 students. Now as a sessional employee, and 18 months into the Common Sense Revolution juggernaut, I had 300 students in six classes. In other words, I was doing a lot more work for a lot less money.

    Although I had only been guaranteed employment until Christmas, I was told that the job might last until this spring. That was not to be. As I sat hunched over my desk on December 23, entering final grades into bubble sheets, my chair entered the office. "I just wanted to thank you," she said, "for helping us out this semester."

    I packed up my desk and went home.

    I had hoped never to turn this column into a personal diatribe about the difficulties of my life as a teacher. After all, many workers in Canada have seen harder times than mine. But now, as the anniversary of my lay-off approaches -- and as I work my way through the pain and humiliation of that time -- my thoughts come to rest upon my students, many of whose names I never learned since the cuts began and their numbers became impossibly large, many of whose lives I never learned about.

    A sick feeling comes over me about what they are really being taught.

    Dr. Ceci taught his first-semester developmental-psychology class using the same methodology as he had for 20 years. When he repeated the course in the second semester, he kept everything the same, with two exceptions: he changed the pitch of his voice and used more gestures. Then he compared the student ratings for each semester.

    The second-semester ratings showed Dr. Ceci to be more knowledgeable, tolerant, fair, organized, and accessible than did the ratings from the first semester. Moreover, the second semester students claimed to have learned more, although they performed no better than the earlier group on the same examination. Dr. Ceci concluded that “the highest marks go to the most enthusiastic — not necessarily the best — teachers.”

•  The future of "I give" is "I take".
• The parts of speech are lungs and air.
• The word "trousers" is an uncommon noun because it is singular at the top and plural at the bottom.
• Syntax is all the money collected at the church from sinners.
• A census taker is a man who goes from house to house increasing the population.
• A scout obeys all to whom obedience is due and respects all duly constipated authorities.
• The inhabitants of Moscow are called Mosquitoes.
• Oliver Cromwell had a large red nose, but under it were deeply religious feelings.
•  In spring, the salmon swim upstream to spoon.
• A virgin forest is a forest where the hand of man has never set foot.
•  Water is composed of two gins. Oxygin and hydrogin. Oxygin is pure gin. Hydrogin is gin and water.
• The blood circulates through the body by flowing down one leg and up the other.
• The four seasons are salt, pepper, mustard and vinegar.
• The climate is hottest next to the Creator.
• One by-product of raising cattle is calves.