Mar 04 2009

Report Back from Board of Governors

Category: News,Post-strike Discussion (2009) — Bob Hanke @ 3:42 pm

By Ben Nelson

Opening business concerned VP Academic Embleton’s replacement, Patrick Monahan, effective July 1. It is not mentioned that the installation of Mr. Monahan (Dean of Osgoode Law School) brings about an all-male slate of VPs. At this point, Shoukri ominously observed that the new appointment would be a change in leadership dynamics from the outgoing Embleton. Then he made a weird remark, i.e., how he  “hasn’t changed his mind about York and its enormous potential” (who was?).

The rest of the meeting was broken down into a three part presentation by Shoukri, Gary Brewer, and Rob Tiffin.

Shoukri’s remarks had three topics: post-strike healing, the FLAPS appointment controversey, and the effects of the global financial recession on York. I’ll concentrate on the CUPE related stuff, though I have notes on the other stuff too.

Shoukri’s main concerns about the post-strike environment were with the effects of the strike on students. A generous anonymous donator has given 2.5 million to the school, to be spent on five hundred 5000$ scholarships. Though he acknowledged that relations between everyone on campus need to be improved, including labor relations,and that he plans to set up a “task force” to look at labor relations after the settlement has been reached. Later on in answer to questions, he continued to stress that “he does not do labor relations”, evidently without any intended irony.

Shoukri recognized that there is a wide perception that the admin didn’t do anything in the strike period by saying, “Whether or not we agreed that work was done during strike, the most important job to do is after strike”, i.e., to build bridges. He cited the example of the two town hall meetings post-strike (one on remediation, the other an open forum). He recognized that there were a lot of repeated questions and bitterness, given the way those meetings went. Still, he believes that he has arrived at mechanisms to heal the  community, though I’m not sure what mechanisms he had in mind.

Shoukri stressed that he has consulted widely with full-time faculty, and “will not give up on” open competition hiring. Threats to that (sp. our early-October proposal to grant automatic tenure by seniority) will be vigorously opposed.

Everyone in the room was surprised when Shoukri gave a presentation on the makeup of contract faculty to the university. He indicated that contract faculty do 30% of the teaching at the university. (I have no idea where the 30% figure comes from, since the York Factbook says more than 50%. There may be funny business with these numbers). Anyway, he showed a graph that displayed the breakdown of Unit 2 by seniority: there are many people who have just joined, and many people who have 8+ years. He described job security as a “valid concern”, and that when presented with the figures on the high number of contract positions, that he had “never seen anything like that”. He also indicated, however, that many contract workers have “little day to day interaction with York”, since they work elsewhere: i.e., 226 are teaching only one half course. However, 295 teach 1 full course, 119: 2 courses, 61: 3 courses, 43: 4 courses, 28: 5 courses, 8: more than 5 courses. With respect to those teaching at the higher course loads, he
went so far as to agree that they are doing full-time work, or “beyond full-time work”, at the university. Although none of this is especially surprising to our members, there were widespread o-faces around the table, with exclamations like “I can’t believe it!”, etc. The fact that this is happening only now should probably tell you something about how invested these people are in the university as such.

Finally, he indicated that replacement of retirements needs to be done, which may involve cutting entire programs. It should be noted, though, that I personally asked Sheila Embleton to find the rates of hiring for tenure-track positions and compare them to retirement rates. I had to look it up because nobody on Senate has bothered to look up the rates. Surprisingly, it turns out that our tenure-track appointments have more than kept up with retirements — they have actually been surpassing retirements in some years by a significant amount (in 03-04, they were more than double the number of retirements).

I’ve asked Sheila to take a look at the departmental composition of the retirements, so that we might see if there is covert job shifting between faculties.

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Mar 02 2009

List of Candidates and Statements for 2009-2010 CUPE 3903 Executive Elections

Category: Point of Information,Post-strike Discussion (2009) — jonnyj @ 12:18 pm

RECORDING SECRETARY (Greg Flemming and Graham Potts)

Greg Flemming

Though the current labour action may appear to be over, the struggle continues: binding arbitration has yet to come to a conclusion; the issues we raised with our collective efforts are being actively concealed by our employer (see the recent insert in the Globe and Mail and the administration’s lack of desire for union involvement at ‘remediation’ events for students); and in one way or another we will be involved in the sector-wide bargaining that will happen in 2010. This is not the time to ratchet down our efforts, but to double them.

To this end I am coming forward with my abilities and experience for the position of recording secretary. I have a year’s worth of communications experience as an officer of public information with the city of Ottawa, and have also lent my expertise to the National Gallery of Canada as a volunteer copy-editor.

I have been active in 3903 since early June of last year as the steward for Social and Political Thought. I have done a lot of work with the Stewards Council in our pre-strike efforts to mobilize our strength, and much more in the day-to-day running of the strike. I have been active in debates and meetings, and will continue to do so.

I aim to work closely with the communications officer, the rest of the executive and the other bodies of the union to help build activist momentum in the directions I have mentioned. Effective internal communications demand that our own materials, including research – the co-ordination and compilation of which is also the purview of the Recording Secretary – are clearly organized and readily available. This means ensuring that minutes, up-to-date collections of bylaws and policies, the collective history of our local and current efforts are documented, well presented, and accessible. Effectively doing this work will help us, our sector and our community as we move forward.

I encourage every member of 3903 to come out and vote, and will continue to work with many of you either as a newly minted member of the executive or a rank-and-file activist. Continue reading “List of Candidates and Statements for 2009-2010 CUPE 3903 Executive Elections”

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Feb 21 2009

Bargaining Update, Feb 16th, 2009

Category: News,Post-strike Discussion (2009) — jonnyj @ 12:50 pm

From Matthew Hayter:

And now it’s time for everyone’s favourite update… – a bargaining update!

There is not much new to report. The Bargaining Team has met only a few times in the weeks since the State bailed out the capitalist infrastructure and forced us back to work. The main news is that we have a more concrete timeline for arbitration.

The binding arbitration process works like this: We have a “mediated-arbitration” date – where the arbitrator acts like the mediator previously did, trying to get the parties to agree voluntarily on the remaining issues. This mediated-arbitration date is set for February 25th. After that, when/if the parties cannot resolve the remaining issues, we have a month or so to prepare a brief on each of the outstanding issues. These briefs include any and all arguments we can make, comparisons to other sector locals, histories of the situation at York, information about York’s operating procedures and budget, etc. The York administration will do likewise, and then we will trade briefs so that both parties have the opportunity to produce counter-arguments based on what the other has said.We  have tentative dates for this process to be completed around the end-of-March/beginning-of-April. The arbitrator will eventually make a final decision based on this exchange.

The main criteria that the arbitrator will use has been set out in the Back-to-Work Legislation – it basically states, in four or five different manners, that “money” is the determining factor: Can York pay? – What is the climate of the economy? – What is the normative standard for capitalist wage-slavery? – What counts as “acceptable poverty”? – etc… Then next main criteria is based on maintaining the normative standard for equivalent unions in the University sector: If our demands would bring us up to a standard level, then it is much more likely the arbitrator will rule in our favour. Arbitrator apparently are loath to award anything that involves new language or break-through gains – this is at least because they must continue to work in an environment where their jobs depend on perpetuating the status quo, and they don’t want to intrude on the employer-worker determination of their own Collective Agreement. sic: we can see in this process how the labour-relations machinery operates selectively to intrude/not-intrude, depending on whether it supports the capitalist system:

e.g.  intrude when the employer-worker relationship is not reproducing normative standards, as in – The State says: “the strike has gone on long enough…, Collective Bargaining has failed, yada yada yada…”
do-not-intrude when the employer-worker relations are self-perpetuating of the mechanisms of capitalist-reproduction, as in “the Collective Bargaining process is sacred and should be relied upon to resolve the sticky issues, we won’t determine anything for the parties as long as they determine things for themselves within the acceptable boundaries, yada yada yada…”

At some point in the near future we may try to get some research help with creating these briefs. There maybe should be some committee work that we will organize for this.

That’s the update (along with impromptu some op-ed)… yada yada yada…

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Feb 12 2009

Former Dean of Education Misses Academic Labour History Lessons of York Strike

Category: Post-strike Discussion (2009) — Bob Hanke @ 10:19 am

From: Y-File, Wednesday, February 11, 2009

CUPE’s solution would be unacceptable to all universities, says Axelrod

Universities’ heavy dependence on part-time faculty merits serious attention, but CUPE 3903’s proposed solution would be unacceptable to every university in Canada, argued Paul Axelrod, a professor in York’s Faculty of Education and its former dean, in an opinion piece published Feb. 9 on the University Affairs Web site.

Two Contract Faculty Suggest Otherwise For the Academic Labour History Record:

I respect Paul Axelrod’s book — Values in Conflict: The University, the Marketplace, and the Trials of Liberal Education — because, as a social historian of education, he defended York’s liberal arts education tradition and critical thinking against commercialization, commodification, and corporatization. However, he completely misses the academic labour history lessons of the 2008-09 York University strike/lockout. On the issue of “job security,” he omits how the Employer’s bargaining team demanded a 75% cut to a successful, 20-year old affirmative action Conversion Program from CUPE to YUFA for long-term, eligible, qualified, faculty who already teach, do research, and perform professional and community service. For a significant minority of contract faculty who aspire to have full academic careers, the sessional treadmill has become a sessional trap. After more than two decades of working in media studies, the only difference between me and tenured scholar-teachers is job security. The problem is that the declining security of university employment is turning many academics into precarious academic labourers. Contingent inequity is what damages the viability and integrity of academic programs and the reputation of York as a workplace for social justice and social change. Due to the “contract shuffle” for short-term, per course contracts, contract faculty are also disadvantaged in terms of teaching resources and internal/external research support. Overall, over the past decade, undergraduate and graduate enrollments have increased, the number of contract faculty have exploded, and tenure-track positions have been shrinking. Unlike the 2000-01 strike, this strike put the issue of job security for contract faculty front and center. York’s April 30, 2008 financial statements showed, even before bargaining talks began, that the problem would not be to cover the costs of CUPE’s priority proposals, only a problem in the direction and use of funds (symbolized by the $81,000 first-year bonus for President Shoukri and the average salary increases of Deans). In retrospect, the CUPE 3903 pan-unit victory in the forced ratification vote was short-lived and no match for a two-pronged attack against the democratic right to collective bargaining. Internally, anti-CUPE tenured professors, managerial intransigence and a president advised by union-busting lawyers, breached the duty to bargain in “good faith.” Outside the neoliberal university, premier McGuinty, under pressure from the opposition party and public opinion primed by the dominant framing of the strike in the mainstream media, sent in his “top” mediator–for one day. With the passage of Bill 145– the York University Labour Disputes Resolution Act–on January 29th, the “education premier” helped President Shoukri “redefine the possible” by completing the attack on collective bargaining begun by York’s academic managerial class. The lesson is that a dangerous precedent for the university sector has now been set.

Posted by Bob Hanke, Feb 12, 2009 9:21 AM

The statement that “CUPE 3903 demanded that a significant portion of new full-time appointments be awarded to part-time faculty exclusively on the basis of seniority” is misleading if not false. It is false if “full-time appointments” is understood to mean tenure-stream positions. (For many years there has been a mechanism in the CUPE 3903 collective agreement to move a limited number of its members into tenure-stream positions, but this mechanism is not based on seniority.) What the union demanded to be awarded to part-time faculty on the basis of seniority were renewable five-year contracts. The union had such a mechanism in its collective agreement for several years until 2005. The York University Faculty Association’s collective agreement now governs the working conditions of those who were awarded these multi-year contracts–known as Special Renewable Contracts (SRCs)–through that mechanism. A mechanism to replace the SRC program was being negotiated in this round of bargaining and presumably will be part of the arbitrated settlement. The new mechanism will not function exclusively on the basis of seniority, but seniority will be an important component.

Posted by Matthew King, Feb 11, 2009 1:16 PM


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Feb 04 2009

Non-Confidence Motion Passes at GMM

Category: Post-strike Discussion (2009) — Bob Hanke @ 11:32 pm

The following motion was passed by a majority of members at the February 4 general membership meeting:

Be it Resolved,

that the general membership recommends that the two CUPE senators submit the following motion in writing in time for consideration by the Senate executive meeting on February 10th, and if such a motion is accepted, that they move and second this motion at the Senate meeting on February 26:

Be it Resolved,

In light of President Shoukri’s failure to recognize that the educational issues that led to the longest strike in English-Canadian university history are issues that CUPE Local 3903 has communicated to the York community since November 6th, 2008, the first day of the 85-day strike, and his failure to lead a much-needed open public dialogue on these system-wide issues and to direct the York bargaining team to return to the bargaining table to reach a negotiated settlement in good faith, as is their duty under Ontario Labour Relations Law – even after 63% of CUPE members voted “No” in a forced ratification vote to the Employer’s last offer and after premier McGuinty asked him to return to the bargaining table – this Senate has lost confidence in this president and is of the opinion that he failed to protect the democratic right to collective bargaining, abandoned principles of academic integrity and fairness, and betrayed the community’s core values of quality, accessible higher education and social justice.

Note: According to the Senate Handbook, this is a hortative motion that expresses Senate opinion on matters lying outside its jurisdiction. The Chair, with the advice of the executive,  is responsible for determining if the motion is in order.  A ruling that that this motion is out of order will be reported to Senate along with a rationale for the ruling.  But any such ruling is subject to challenge.

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International Call of the Week:  French Universities are on a Permanent Strike.

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Commentary of the Past Three Months:  The Segmentation of Academic Labour: A Canadian Example.

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