President's Update: Nov17,1999


	OPSEU Local 560
To:	All Members of OPSEU Local 560
From:	OPSEU Local 560 President Ted Montgomery
Date:	November 17, 1999
Subject:	Updates

EMPLOYEE ATTITUDES SURVEY

By now, each of you should have received your copy of the Employee Attitudes Survey Data. Copies of Part II which includes the comments of respondents have now been circulated as well. Because this booklet is 130 pages long, we have not reproduced copies for every employee. Copies have been made available throughout the College in staff rooms, central offices, lunch areas, the libraries and resources centres, etc., and via stewards. Everyone should take some time to look at the comments.

While this booklet can be looked at on its own, you might want to have the data report, Part I, handy to cross-reference some questions and responses.

Several points emerge. Seneca respondents have a lot to say about the College. They want to be heard. While no serious analysis has yet been done on the comments, you should be able to make some simple observations which are interesting. It is important to remember that these are simply a listing of the comments that were made and to get better understanding of the employee views, one needs to consider the data contained in Part I as well.

Preparing these documents has been a major undertaking. It has been a joint endeavor between the academic and support staff Local. Interestingly, a system-wide survey was conducted by the Centre for Research on Work and Society, associated with the Faculty of Arts at York University. Some of the findings of that study are reported in this update, and you will be hearing much more about this over the next few months.

Local 560 Website We finally have our website up and running in a format that we think is useful and informative. We hope that the Local 560 website will become a valued source of information for you in the future. You’ll find it at:

http://webhome.idirect.com/~opseu560

Special thanks go to Steve Rakus who helped us get started and to Patricia Clark who really has set up the site.
On the site, you’ll find the latest updates and information, as well as links to other labour and education-oriented sites. As with any website, this one is work in progress.

We very much welcome feedback and suggestions. Please add the site to your favourites list and visit often. If you know of links that you think we might add, please let us know.

VOICES FROM THE CLASSROOM:
THE ONTARIO COLLEGES AND THE QUESTION OF QUALITY This is the title of a paper prepared by the Centre for Research on Work and Society (CRWS), York University. The study was led by Dr. Jerry P. White, of the University of Western Ontario, and jointly funded by the CRWS, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU).The OPSEU funding was "an arms-length research grant."

I attended the press conference Monday, November 15th where the study and paper were released.
The analysis of the system provided by Dr. White is based on a study of trends in enrolment, expenditures and revenue and the conducting of a survey with a reliable representative sample of those delivering the education. That sample was drawn from a stratification of the complete list of all professors, counsellors and librarians at all colleges. Seven hundred potential interviewees were identified, and 517 full interviews were conducted by telephone between March 3rd and April 24th 1999. Two interviewees with less than five years’ experience were removed from the data.

I will circulate the report and will announce further follow-up soon. Here are some of the findings as outlined in the Executive
Summary:

78% of respondents report an increase in class size
3% report a decrease
Of those who reported an increase, nearly half stated that class size had increased by over 20%
More than 2/3 of the faculty reported that they had more students to teach
46% saw increases of over 20% in number of students
60% report that there are sometimes too few chairs for the number of students
Almost 86% responded that changes in class size have negatively affected the quality of education
71% report a decline in the quality of the curriculum covered, due to the reduced number of weeks per course.
Nearly half of the faculty report that they use fewer essays and assignments because there is simply no time to grade the work.
88% of the respondents – across all disciplines – report an increase in the workload of an average work week
More than 78% of faculty noted that their level of stress has increased
Almost 64% report a decrease in job satisfaction
Almost 81% report that the practice of hiring fewer full-time contractually protected professors and more substitutes, had negatively affected the quality of education at their college.

More than 86% of faculty surveyed report a decline in the morale at their college.

Ted Montgomery, President OPSEU Local 560

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