Vote “Yes” for Student and Faculty Futures, Oct 15-17: Bargaining Update

Yesterday, College Faculty and their Locals organized events all across Ontario to promote awareness of bargaining, faculty proposals, and the importance of the upcoming strike vote mandate. You responded to the call for solidarity – now, we are asking  to come together once more. 

A high-participation, strong YES vote will support the bargaining team at the table with the full strength of the membership behind them. A strong strike mandate is a powerful tool to fight back concessions and advance members’ proposals at the bargaining table.. 

On October 15-17, vote YES in a province-wide strike vote (details and FAQ forthcoming).

Faculty are invested in a quality College system for students

We train Ontario’s future in the communities we live and serve. We value students’ education, and we care about our Colleges – that’s why we’re fighting for a quality system. Change starts at the bargaining table. Our proposals invest in hands-on, job-ready education. The graduates we train have an integral role in Ontario’s economy. They deserve nothing less.

We know that our working conditions are intimately tied to quality education and student learning conditions. Any parent or student knows that this goes beyond just what happens in the classroom – it includes professional development, adequate time for preparation and evaluation, supporting students outside the classroom, including student needs (e.g. accommodations and language proficiency), curriculum review, and more.

Our proposals give more dedicated time to students, increasing their quality of education and combating the turn to a for-profit, corporate education model that views teachers, librarians, and counselors as widgets and learning as transactional.

The Colleges may shift the blame on international student constraints to prop up their proposals – which fail to even meet recommendations of the Workload Task Force Report – but their arguments must be weighed against the current context: a period of historic profits for the Colleges. The accumulated surplus of $1 billion this year alone across the College system, on top of the recent $1.3 billion provincial investment, tells a different financial story. These funds should be readily invested in quality education.

There’s money for more managers, yet three quarters of faculty are on 14-week contracts with little to no benefits or job security. Students deserve quality education that comes with a stable workforce.

Our proposals are focused on quality education, not just the CEC’s narrow conception of teaching, and will provide students with the quality training they deserve – benefiting future employers and the Ontario as a whole. Our proposals give faculty a little more time for student feedback and support, more opportunity to stay up to date in their field of expertise, and better ability to support students regardless of how courses are delivered.

Bargaining Recap: Vote “yes” to fight concessions and advance proposals

Yesterday, we received counter-proposals from the CEC and the Colleges on our Workload (U1), Partial-Load (U2), Monetary (U8), and Article 8 (U15) proposals. Four days out from our contract expiry, the employer’s proposals are a step backward – rife with concessions.

The employer’s monetary offer is substantially less money over twice the contract length. It would lock us into sub-par contract terms for four years. If we want to keep pace with the rising cost of living, our wage increase shouldn’t be less than an annual rent hike. 

The employer also continues to table unacceptable concessions, tabling proposals which:

  1. Drastically reduce evaluation and feedback time for computer/LMS-supported grading for the majority of faculty (M12);
  2. Remove the teaching contact hour assigned to asynchronous delivery, leaving with faculty with only a fraction of an hour to prepare materials, evaluate and provide feedback to students, and meet one-on-one with students (M12);
  3. Create more employment instability with broader layoff provisions and more restrictions on full-time hiring (M1);
  4. Reassign Professor work to management, encroaching on bargaining unit work (M8);
  5. Introduce a two-tiered approach to workload protections which divides our membership, sidelining faculty already facing inequitable workload pressures by increasing work assigned to them (M12);
  6. Eliminate five consecutive professional development days, an important way for faculty to deepen quality of education (M2);
  7. Extend the length of the academic year, encroaching on collective agreement protections (M2);

Read our complete remarks at the table, including a full list of the employer’s concessions.

Despite the Workload Task Force Report indicating that workload has increased globally for faculty, the employer’s proposals decrease the assigned time for most of us to teach.

Moreover, the CEC and the Colleges continue to sideline Partial-Load Faculty. Despite the report’s findings that partial-load members are doing work without contract coverage, the employer has refused our proposal of a Partial-load Assignment Calculator (PLAC) to record partial-load workloads.

We do not bargain backwards – in other words, we do not accept concessions because our rights are not ours to give away. Gains in previous years were fought for by members that came before us and they belong to members who will come after us. Our job is to look to the future and bargain members’ demands, secure improved wages and working conditions, and reduce precarity system-wide.

A strong “yes” vote – or strike mandate – is an invaluable tool to push off concessions and advance members’ proposals. It clearly tells the CEC and the Colleges that faculty are behind their bargaining team.

Student and faculty futures are intertwined. Talk to your colleagues and make sure that from October 15-17, we all turn out to vote “yes” for quality education and a better College system

In solidarity,

Your CAAT-A Bargaining Team:

Ravi Ramkissoonsingh, L242, Chair (he/him)
Michelle Arbour, L125, Vice-Chair (she/her)
Chad Croteau, L110 (he/him)
Bob Delaney, L237 (he/him)
Martin Lee, L415 (he/him)
Sean Lougheed, L657 (he/him)
Rebecca Ward, L732 (she/her)

Stay Informed, Stay Engaged, Get Involved