Feb 15 2009

Call out for Members to Volunteer as STEWARDS

Category: Point of Information — jonnyj @ 1:48 pm

One of the important goals of CUPE 3903 Stewards’ Council is to strengthen our role and presence within York University. Some of the actions to achieve this include:

  • Recruitment of 1 designated, active, and knowledgeable steward in every York department with 3903 employees for 2009-2010
  • Have representation from all 3 units on Steward Council; Unit 2 especially needs more presence since Units 1 & 3 have carried a major portion of this responsibility on our behalf in the past 
  • Have a diversity mix, where sufficient interest exists
  • Reactivate or fom standing committees and ad hoc sub committees to address special topical issues as a 3903 collective or in conjunction with other York constituencies
  • Develop a series of comprehensive teaching and training sessions to support Stewards in their role (eg what constitutes a grievance, how to assist members to file a grievance; provision of orientation for all new department hires each term re employee rights and the Collective Agreement; encouragement of active member connections within your department; develop a Steward buddy system)

Who are current Departmental Stewards? Visit this website and review the Departmental List for Stewards (left hand index under Unon Central) but remember that lists can be outdated, curent members may choose to withdraw, and most importantly we are missing Steward reps from a number of York departments
http://cupe3903.tao.ca/?q=node/19

If you are interested in volunteering or want to know more info there are lots of resources: come to a meeting listed below; contact Roxanne, Chief Steward Unit 2 (roxpwer23@hotmail.com); or send an email to one of the departmental stewards or our SC list serve 3903scouncil@masses.tao.ca We have lots of dedicated members who would be happy to respond and welcome new colleagues.

Next scheduled SC meetings**:
Friday, Feb 20
2-4 at EOB

Friday, Feb 27
2-4 in room 430 GSA meeting space
between Vari Hall and York Lanes

**We do anticipate that meeting frequency will decrease over time as we acquire a body of universally confident and knowledgeable reps on Steward Council. Of course anyone can attend SC meetings, raise items for the agenda, and participate in discussion.

WHAT ARE STEWARDS AND WHAT DO THEY DO?
Each university department should have at least one steward who acts as a point person and liaison with the rest of the union. All stewards meet monthly and are trained with the current collective agreements to assist members in their departments. Stewards play an important political role by disseminating information to members and mobilizing within departments, both around specific issues with the employer and also in relation to other social justice struggles within the community as a whole.
1. Stewards Protect the Collective Agreements
Stewards can play an important role in helping to gather information on collective agreement violations and ensuring that all members are protected. We can organize and mobilize support for campus-wide initiatives that aim to fight back against breaches of our collective agreements as well as on basic worker and human rights.
These initiatives will be more successful with an active and representative Stewards’ Council.
On a departmental level the role of stewards can include:

  • clarifying the collective agreement provisions for each unit
  • answering questions from members in department
  • passing on reminders about union meetings and other information
  • attending departmental meetings
  • following through on member’s grievances (including attending grievance meetings with members)
  • organizing departmental meetings or actions when collective responses are necessary
  • informing members about the ways they can participate in and help shape the important political work of the local
  • encouraging member participation in the union’s day-to-day functioning
  • keeping members informed about issues in the local and important struggles in the community

At the union level the role of stewards can include:

  • attending Stewards’ Council meetings (one per month) and GMMs usually once per month
  • participation in Stewards’ council committees
  • participation in union political campaigns

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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 07 2009

Save the National Film Board

Category: Point of Information — jonnyj @ 12:20 pm

From http://cupe.ca/culture/nfb-campaign-launch:

The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) is approaching its 70th anniversary. Sadly, the mood among NFB staff is less-than-celebratory. Successive cutbacks have pared back the organization’s resources so dramatically that employees are starting to question the NFB’s ability to fulfill its mission.

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Feb 07 2009

French Universities are on a Permanent Strike

Category: News — jonnyj @ 12:04 pm

The French system of universities is public, with teachings and research of high quality. It has always enjoyed independence, liberty and recognition. But, within the past few months, the government has decided, brutally and without any concertation, to end this system and replace it by some sort of marketplace model of research where arbitrary decisions and instability prevail.

  • The previous statute of the academics has ended and their teaching duties are now decided on face value.
  • Permanent positions are being cut dramatically and being replaced by temporary, insecure and dependent positions.
  • PhD students can now be fired without any justification during the first six months of their PhD, and are now made available to private industries without any recognition of their rights.
  • The training of teachers is in distress.
  • Universities are autonomous (but in fact, they compete with each other under a reinforced government control) and without sufficient funding, they will soon have to put in place tuition fees and put themselves under the influence of local funding sources.
  • The CNRS is suppressed and changed into a funding agency managed by technocrats.
  • Academic researches are evaluated by inadequate and inept “quantitative means” rejected by all scholar societies.

We, academics and researches from all around the world, assert that these decisions are bureaucratic, financially motivated and dangerous. Similar decisions were or are imposed in other institutions of many countries. As such, we support the French academics in their fight. If, the education and the research of the country of the Encyclopédie, of Voltaire and Rousseau, and of the Declaration of Human Rights, are now reduced to market laws and under the influence of the political powers, then it is the freedom of the whole world that is under threat.

The powers that are imposing this new deal are organizing themselves. To defend our common values, we need to organize ourselves better and in greater number. Therefore, we call for all academics of all political sides, of all beliefs and of all creeds to join to oppose these changes that no humanist scientists of any time ever supported.

http://math.univ-lyon1.fr/appel/

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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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