Bargaining Report -- Annual General Membership Meeting -- 26 November 2010

The following report was prepared by Lawrence Harris on behalf of the Bargaining Committee.

Our collective agreement expired August 31 of this year, but the negotiations with the University began earlier in 2010.
 
Right now, for the 12 months after expiry, we continue with the same with the same arrangements, and we can already put into motion a request for conciliation. In the past two collective agreements, the talks bogged down and we had to go to conciliation. The next step, as you know, is seeking a mandate to strike, which we can do, once the 12 months and conciliation have taken place.
 
You have to be ready for this possibility. In the last negotiations, we asked for a lot, but as the bargaining dragged on, the University did not hand over very much at all. But once we obtained a mandate from our membership to go as far as a strike -- suddenly the University presented us with a wage package that was so good, we signed it immediately.
 
(By the way, we need to collect everybody’s personal email so that we have a way of keeping in touch with you if the University were to cut off our email privileges in the event of a labour action.)
 
In the current round of negotiations, at first, the University seemed to be very anxious to arrive at an agreement quickly. But you must remember that at the beginning of this year the economy still looked bad after the recession, and we felt that there was no point in rushing into a wage settlement when the economy was very week. Around this time, also, the University claimed to have a $25 million dollar deficit, and published its infamous “Optimization Report” where the proposed cuts fell disproportionately heavily on the backs of professors who teach part-time.
 
We believe it turned out to be a wise strategy on our part, hoping that the economy would improve as time goes on -- and it was announced this autumn that the University deficit of $25 million is actually now a surplus of about 5 million, so that takes the wind out of some of their sails.
 
Early in the year, our Bargaining Committee sent all of you a survey asking for your major concerns for this new round of collective bargaining, and, as usual, you told us: salary, job security, and working conditions.
 
Our Committee held internal discussions to plan our strategy, and we also began a chapter-by-chapter re-reading of the collective agreement in order to improve the language and close loopholes.
 
We presented an overview of our position during several meetings with the Employer, and the University also presented us with a list of proposed changes that, in one way or another, reworded the collective agreement to give the University a lot more discretion in many areas -- and clearly we cannot accept this.
 
Our general outlook, especially in view of the University’s concern over its bad student-satisfaction ratings, is to say to the University: there is no difference between the credits for a course taught by a part-time professor or a full-time professor; the students do not distinguish between a part-time professor and a full-time professor. So give us access to all the resources that you give to full-time professors. Give us proper office space, give us full secretarial services and give us everything else that you give full time professors -- give us parity. And, of course, give us the salary that reflects that parity. Pay us for the things we do outside the class -- the mountain of emails, making ourselves available to give extra help to students; pay us to meet with teaching assistants (they are paid to meet with us, but we are not paid to meet with them!).
 
This leads to some dicey issues that arise from the most recent meetings with the employer. They told us that we were paid at the normal rate for this autumn’s semester, but there was one week less teaching time due to the new autumn study break.  Then they said they are reducing the winter term from 13 to 12 weeks of class as well -- and, they will be looking for ways to “get more out of us” officially, to compensate for the reduced class time. (Of course we were still expected to cram the entire course material into the shorter time span.) So this is a big issue.
 
But the other major development, about which the President has given you some background in her report, is that, at our last meeting, the University said outright, that it is going to DIScontinue -- unilaterally, I must emphasize -- DIScontinue the union membership of all of the APTPUO profs who are teaching non-credit courses in the Official Languages Institute and in the Faculty of Education.
 
These people have been in our Union for decades; the University has treated them as union members for decades; the University has collected their Union dues and paid the money to the APTPUO for decades. But now, through a technicality of the wording of the Collective Agreement, the University says it is going to unilaterally end all of this.
 
They said outright, that they want to be able to hire whom they want, pay them what they want ( non-union wages ), with no seniority, no benefits under our collective agreement -- in other words, this is union busting, and it is a huge issue for us right now, and we have to come up with a strong, united, unequivocal response.
 
To conclude: In a few moments, I think we should ask those who’s jobs are on the line to come to the microphone to tell us what they think of this, so that everybody in our Association understands the gravity of this situation.
 
This is not just about ILOB and the Faculty of Education -- it is also about loosing a big chunk of our membership and cutting the power of the APTPUO to advance the interests of professors who teach part-time. This affects everybody. And we need to stand up against all this and say... no!