“Just because I don’t care doesn’t mean I’m not listening.”
7:05 p.m.
Labour problems abound at my place of employment. As a part-time contract employee, yea as a music tutor, I am really nothing. We count for very little there, we are not part of the pension plan (which is of paramount consideration in the present contract negotiations), and have very little say in what policy is eventually decided. However, a recent email has informed everyone in the Association that the administration is not playing nicely with the other negotiators. The union president wrote: “Today the Association placed on the negotiations table one package representing unprecedented concessions from all three bargaining units [full-time faculty, librarians and staff]. Corporation responded by offering to reiterate their previously stated position.” That position means clawing back all the things we won in the last contract, including changes to the pension plan (corporation keeps saying it is in deficit, but our auditors have shown that it is actually in a surplus), the reduced teaching load encouraging professor research time, and pay raises. They basically want to return us to the position we were in before the last strike, three years ago, the one where we picketed in the freezing cold so that we could get what we deserved.
The membership has already given the Association a green light to strike if need be. That would be a worst case scenario, but now it looks like it may come to pass. Unfortunately, the truly crippling strike that would close the university down completely cannot come to pass at this time. The staff joined our Association three years ago, but they are just now negotiating their first contract. Until they have that contract, they cannot strike, and that is a bummer. Imagine it: all the professors, librarians, contract faculty, secretaries, maintenance workers, electricians, plumbers, janitors, even the security staff, all on the picket line. We would bring the administration to its knees.
And yet, here’s my problem with all this: It is so unnecessary. It is always about us against them. The administration acts as though it has to punish the professors, the very people without whom there would be no university, by keeping them on shaky turf where their security and future are concerned. They treat the matter of education as a business, looking at cost effectiveness, where they can trim corners, make money. It shouldn’t be like that. If they really want to reduce costs, they should all cut their own salaries, which are much higher than any professor earns, men and women who spent years in school themselves obtaining the education that has brought them to this place. Many of the people earning the big bucks do not have advanced degrees of any kind, and have shown themselves to be superbly incompetent. Witness last year’s convocation fiasco as parents and graduands sat in the pouring rain because the registrar did not have a Plan B in place for just such an eventuality. Stupid. And yet that guy was appointed to his job because he is a crony of the principal.
I really don’t want to go on strike. The last one was an ordeal, even if it did bring the faculty closer together. Students are already making groups on Faceb00k voicing their concerns that they may lose their semester. We don’t need this. What we do need is for the administration to stop acting like an autocrat, to start dealing with the Association as a collection of people with very real needs and concerns about their profession and future retirement, and to bargain in good faith. Up till now, that hasn’t been happening.
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