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Interrobang issue for the week of Monday, February 08, 2010
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Interrobang issue for: Monday, February 08, 2010
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College faculty will vote on final offer, strike looms
Jessica Ireland
Interrobang
Click to read more Interrobang articles written by Jessica Ireland
Published: Monday, February 08, 2010
In the last week and a half, the issues between the faculty union and colleges has seen more action than it has over the past year.
Most recently, the colleges have gone to the Ontario Labour Relations Board to prepare for faculty members at all 24 colleges to vote on the colleges’ final offer. The vote will happen on Wednesday, February 10 with results expected to be announced around 8 p.m. If the faculty union rejects the offer the Ontario Public Service Employees Union announced they would move back their strike deadline date to February 17 allowing for another week of bargaining and a potential settlement.
This decision came in response to the OPSEU’s choice to call for binding arbitration on February 1.
Binding arbitration would involve bargaining between both sides until midnight on February 10, and anything unresolved would go to a third party arbitrator for a binding resolution. If that final offer were refused, the union would have struck February 11.
However, the colleges felt binding arbitration was the wrong method.
“We believe the faculty should have a democratic choice,” said Dr. Rachael Donovan, chair of the college’s bargaining team, in regards to why the college chose to put the offer to a vote. “We hope faculty members conclude the offer is fair.”
Paddy Musson, president of OPSEU Local 110, supports the vote – but adds it does not guarantee a favourable outcome from faculty for the college.
“If the college wants to put it to a vote – that’s great,” she said. “(But) if it’s the position they’ve currently tabled, I cannot advise my members to vote for it.”
The final offer from the college was a three year deal that included a 5.9 per cent salary increase – which means a new maximum salary of $102,186 by September 1, 2011 and therefore an increase of about $5,650 over the previous collective agreement maximum amount. It also focused on workload – another area that’s been in contention since the last strike in 2006 – with enhanced protections based on the recommendations of the Joint Workload Taskforce.
Some of the workload provisions involve out-of-class assistance for faculty with a large number of students, and the opportunities to speak with supervisors over evaluative methods for the class – which also involves getting two-thirds of the faculty involved in a vote if a proposed change is made to the methods.
However, Musson has said that the reason for the rejection of the final offer two weeks ago was due to the union bargaining team believing that the college had actually made concessions in workload provisions.
But the college stands firm that due to its current economic position, it cannot budge on its position.
“The union asked for more salary than we are able to provide them and more adjustments to workload than we can afford,” said Donovan.
For students, the waiting game of will-they-won’t-they-strike is getting tiresome.
Meaghan Ingleby, who is part of the corporate communications and public relations program at Fanshawe College, finds the prospect of a strike frustrating as she’s close to being finished her one year program.
“A lot of us have already done four years of university, and (these) last three months – it’s really discouraging,” she said. “It puts everything at a standstill.”
“It’s not like we can do anything or have any say. (We’re) kind of helpless.”
Tara Woods, a second year business marketing student also at Fanshawe, finds the faculty’s requests for more money unfair.
“Most students can barely afford to go to school let alone live,” she said in an email. “Teachers asking for more money is not fair to us, the students that pay their wages, when most students live off of OSAP.”
The classroom plans to keep students’ caught up in case of a strike are not necessarily effective either, she added. It leaves out students’ who have difficulty just learning from a book on their own, and it negates the “hands-on” reasons why people attend college, she said.
On a personal level, she decided that if the strike occurs – she will likely go to university despite being almost finished her program at Fanshawe.
“Sure, I was almost done college,” she said. “But where will that get me in life? Procrastinating...it seems to be what the teachers are doing.”
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