Long, hot day.
8:54 a.m.
Yesterday turned out to be extremely eventful. Hubby got the score to the printshop and was able to pick up the enlarged and bound copies after his tennis game with Walter. I continued to sit at the computer and make pdf files of everything, then email them to him with my gmail account so that there would be copies on the server. I also did something I’ve been meaning to do for ages, photograph my sculptures and post the pictures online. You may view them here. These are all pieces that I created in the context of some sculpture class or other and I haven’t made anything new in several years. If I only had a studio...
Hubby took me to a jazz bar which was nice but too loud. The bassist in his trio plays there regularly on Tuesdays, as well as the keyboard player who joined us for our blues concert last fall. A live radio show was being taped (which meant there was incessant blah blah in French while I ate my vegetarian quesedillas) and there were guest musicians present, a group from Australia called Oka with a very talented didjeridoo player. Afterwards we walked over to the coffee store for a latte and dessert before heading home and trying to sleep in the heat.
Earlier we attended an emergency meeting of the union at Bushop’s. They didn’t waste much time getting to the point. The negotiations between management and staff have been going very badly. The university administration is systematically trying to undermine the collective agreement, trying to force concessions in the dismantling of certain clauses which effectively guarantee employment and the right to bargain. They are engaged in “union busting”. Their latest tactic in terms of staff is to announce that there will be 15 to 20 “redundant” positions terminated over the next year. They want to privatize things like the golf course and the football team (which means the employees would not be Bushop’s staff and would not be union members, in the same way that food services is contracted out). In the meantime, they have mismanaged the university’s finances so badly that the vice principal financial said that cheques will start bouncing.
The negotiators are handing management an ultimatum this morning: Either give us an offer we can talk about or staff strikes at 11:59 p.m. tonight. This brought a resounding positive response from the staff. They haven’t had a strike yet. The profs struck four years ago (I chronicled that here and in the succeeding several entries) when the last administration wouldn’t concede to our demands in the last collective agreement (it’s always security and pension) and the staff had only just voted to join our association, but they were still at work. This time, it is they who will be walking the line: carpenters, plumbers, electricians, secretaries, janitors, lab technicians, ETS, and security; and we will show our solidarity by joining them when we can.
This will bring the university to its knees. There are very few actual classes being taught right now, but there are lots of other things going on. Every summer the campus is busy with events. Right now there are tennis, football and music camps. There are ESL classes. While these things will continue to happen, the garbage cans will not be emptied, toilets will not be cleaned. The business office will be vacant (no one will be getting paid), no one will be distributing Canada Post mail or courier packages in the porter’s office, no one will be operating the switchboard.
Quebec has the toughest anti-scab legislation in all of Canada and possibly in North America. The administration may not hire independent workers to come in and do the jobs of striking employees. They also may not get other people who are working there, non-union people like students and contract employees hired by different departments as summer help, to do the jobs of striking employees. That would be illegal and they would be opening themselves to prosecution.
The profs are not striking at this time for several reasons, mostly because they are not really providing an essential service to the university and striking would be ineffectual. But, there is a possibility that the administration will lock them out anyway. For this reason I went to my office yesterday and cleared out all my belongings. If I am locked out, I want my stuff at home with me. But because I’m only part-time and not teaching right now, I wouldn’t be eligible for strike pay were I to walk the line (like last time), so if I join my non-teaching colleagues, it will be just to show solidarity.
It’s going to be a hot summer, methinks.
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