Feb 27 2009

Senate Reportback

Category: News — jonnyj @ 10:31 am

From Ben Nelson:

Senate met today at 3pm. I figured it would be not unhelpful to give a report of the goings-on at Senate to the executive. Distribute as widely or narrowly as you like.

Probably in response to some of our pointed remarks in town hall meetings, Shoukri announced that 10 million dollars has been cut at the administrative level, and that senior administration have voluntarily frozen their salaries at 2008 levels.  They’ve also done cuts to deferred maintenance.

Shoukri also announced that a project was underway to examine the links between the BoG and academic issues. No idea at all what that project entails, except that they intend to compare to other universities, and examine how much of our budget is allocated to academic related matters.

A professor alluded to the fact that many of our current problems (i.e., irresponsible enrollment growth) are the result of our misadventures with Marsden. He also expressed concerns over the present administration’s unresponsive disposition to the problem of the casualization of labor, and expressed concerns over administrative transparency. The prof phrased his critical comments by calling into question Shoukri’s credibility. Other professors re-enforced the point through the meeting, that the lapse in tenured hiring is a major concern. A prof mentioned that the University academic plan (supposedly the thing that the Governors are meant to pay attention to when allocating money) is largely divorced from meaningful participation of departments. I pointed out that it would be nice enough if the Governors were to implement the 2001 UAC at all, since it mentioned the importance of keeping the growth of tenured positions to retirement, which we’re not. (I’ve asked the VP Academic to give more precise figures on the extent to which we’re failing to even tread water on this issue.)

The 180 million raised for York 50’s campaign, according to the admin, has been allocated in the following way: 24% to student access and achievement, 12% to “academic talent”, 35% to infrastructure, and 29%
to “pioneering programs”. 5 million of that will be going to bursaries for students that need it due to the strike.

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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 18 2009

French University Teachers Strike to Defend Working Conditions

Category: News — Bob Hanke @ 6:01 pm

By Pierre Mabut, February 13 2009 (excerpted from the World Socialist Web Site)

Some 100,000 university teachers and students protested in French cities February 10 seeking to force the withdrawal of the decree issued by the government of President Nicolas Sarkozy on the status of university teachers. The decree forms part of the Liberties and Responsibilities of Universities (LRU) law on university reform against which students battled last year in isolation.

The higher education reform would give autonomy to university governing bodies and open the way for market-oriented policies. The teachers’ determination to continue their fight to defend their working conditions has hardened in spite of an appeal by Minister of Higher Education Valérie Pécresse “to find ways through” the dispute by naming a mediator.

Fifty-seven thousand university teachers have been on strike or have made some form of protest since February 2, when a national coordinating committee of 196 delegates representing 79 institutions met at the Sorbonne in Paris. The delegates rejected the changes in the status of research teachers, teacher training and the content of competitive exams required for teaching in primary and secondary education.

To read the rest of this story and see photos, click here.

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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 03 2009

York University President Accused of Academic Fraud

Category: News,Point of Information — jonnyj @ 10:44 am

York University President Mamdouh Shoukri has perpetrated an outrageous fraud at York University. On January 26, he publicly announced the appointment of Martin Singer as the founding Dean of the new Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies, which will be the largest university Faculty in Canada. Shoukri, who chaired the Search Committee in a secret process, declared that “York University is fortunate to have attracted such a strong scholar,” described as “a renowned scholar of Chinese history.”

In fact, as the attached letter from distinguished historian of China Arif Dirlik attests Martin Singer is neither renowned nor a scholar. He is unpublished and unknown in the field of Chinese history.

President Shoukri’s fraudulent promotion of Martin SInger as the most powerful academic administrator at York University is a scandal and a disgrace to the academic profession. It is an insult to the York community and a threat to the academic reputation of York University. In any reputable university, lying about scholarly credentials is the gravest offence, akin to misleading investors in the financial world. President Shoukri must resign and the search for a credible Dean for York’s largest Faculty must be renewed, to be followed by a search for a credible President.

– York Faculty Concerned about the Future of York University

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To read the Y-File story on “renowned scholar” Martin Singer , click here.

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To read the Excalbur story on “Singer: ‘I am not a renowned scholar’,” click here.

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