Bargaining team update for April 20, 2022
Dear CAAT-A Members,
As the semester winds to a close, we wanted to reach out to keep you posted on the latest developments related to the conclusion of a new Collective Agreement.
Mediation/Arbitration Scheduling
In March, both sides agreed to go to interest arbitration before Arbitrator William Kaplan, who will oversee a process of mediation before arbitrating all issues that the parties cannot resolve. The law firm Goldblatt Partners will represent us in that process, led by labour lawyer Steven Barrett.
While no dates have been confirmed yet, current indications suggest that this process will commence in early September. A media blackout has been imposed by Arbitrator Kaplan which limits the detailed communication that we are able to provide.
Bargaining Team’s JP Hornick Elected New OPSEU President
At OPSEU/SEFPO’s Convention in April, JP Hornick was elected as OPSEU/SEFPO’s new President, with Laurie Nancekivell elected as the new 1st Vice-President Treasurer. JP ran on a platform of transparency, accountability, equity, and member engagement, and received a majority of the delegates’ votes in the first round of balloting.
Because of the considerable responsibilities of the OPSEU President, JP will be stepping down as chair of the CAAT-A bargaining team, but will remain involved. In her place, team Vice-Chair Jonathan Singer will now serve as co-Chair, alongside team member Ravi Ramkissoonsingh.
Non-Teaching Periods reserved for mutually-agreed-upon work
Until bargaining concludes under Arbitrator Kaplan, CAAT-A faculty are currently working under the Terms & Conditions that were imposed by the Colleges in December. Significantly, those Terms & Conditions are identical to our former Collective Agreement regarding workload, including SWFs and non-teaching periods. Although we are no longer under work-to-rule, individual faculty still have the right to refuse to work beyond what is provided for in their SWFs or contracts.
According to Article 11.08, non-teaching periods are not weeks when managers can assign work to full-time faculty. Rather, the Article states:
In keeping with the professional responsibility of the teacher, non-teaching periods are used for activities initiated by the teacher and by the College as part of the parties’ mutual commitment to professionalism, the quality of education and professional development.
Such activities will be undertaken by mutual consent and agreement will not be unreasonably withheld.
If your manager attempts to assign duties to you during a non-teaching period, you have the right to withhold your consent, if you believe that those duties do not reasonably represent a commitment to your professional development or the quality of the education you provide. You may also initiate your own appropriate activities, and file a grievance if your manager prohibits you from doing so.
We have all come a tremendous way since our first strike authorization vote in December – our sector and our Union have both been impacted by the power of our standing together for our demands and our colleagues’ and students’ needs. We need to build upon this solidarity as we face the prospect of our new Collective Agreement, an upcoming provincial election, full-time support staff bargaining this summer, and a possible conclusion to the part-time/sessional union certification drive of 2017.
Yours in Solidarity,
Your CAAT-A Bargaining Team
Media blackout issued ahead arbitration
Arbitrator William Kaplan has imposed a media blackout on the upcoming voluntary mediation-interest arbitration between the Colleges’ and College Faculty bargaining teams. There will be no further communication from the team until Arbitrator Kaplan lifts the blackout. We thank all faculty for their continued support and solidarity.
What happens next? A message from the Bargaining Team on the upcoming arbitration process
Greetings Faculty:
A huge thank you to each of you for standing strong during a long and difficult round of bargaining. As you know by now, facing pressure from student organizations and the resolve of faculty, on Thursday evening–just one hour before the strike deadline–the College Employer Council (CEC) agreed to send matters to binding interest arbitration.
As a reminder, the faculty team had offered to go to binding interest arbitration over four months ago. Instead, the CEC, and the College Presidents who direct them, left it till the 11th hour to agree, causing profoundly unnecessary stress on students and faculty alike. This is characteristic of the bullying and disrespectful behaviour we have seen from them for almost one year–union-breaking strategies that are much more common in the private sector.
Further, the CEC has been trying to muddy the waters for months, either by insisting on final offer selection–a type of arbitration almost unheard of in our sector–yet by also stating that they saw the issues as too important and nuanced to be sent to an arbitrator.
What kind of arbitration are we going into?
We are entering into voluntary binding interest arbitration–exactly what we’ve been proposing for months. The structure of the arbitration is set out in the Memorandum of Settlement [MOS], with William Kaplan as the agreed-upon arbitrator. The Bargaining Team believes that Arbitrator Kaplan (who arbitrated our agreement after we were legislated back to work in 2017) is the best neutral choice. We also believe we have a strong position entering arbitration.
It is up to the arbitrator to establish the process. Most importantly – the MOS does not set final offer selection as the method of arbitration, which is what the CEC has been clinging to for months.
Now, the CEC is trying to claim that this is somehow different, because this is “unconditional” arbitration. To be clear, they have been insisting on conditions to enter arbitration for some months. We are very pleased that they have finally agreed to drop their conditions and join us in binding interest arbitration to avert a strike. We are completely unclear, however, why the CEC feels a need to continue the toxic and hostile tone in their communications after an arbitration agreement has been reached.
What happens at binding interest arbitration?
While we are pleased that an agreement to go to arbitration has been reached, arbitration was always a compromise that faculty offered to avert the possibility of a strike. Over the last several days, the CEC has been spending a fair amount of time on social media saying that they intend to put their (twice rejected) concessions forward at arbitration. This is part of the MOS, as is our ability to put forward our original proposals as well. We would note, however, that it is up to Arbitrator Kaplan to determine the process for and shape of what goes forward. Typically an arbitrator’s role is replication: to determine what would likely have been the outcome following negotiations, our votes, and the near-strike. All of this, however, is at the discretion of Arbitrator Kaplan.
In the coming weeks, both sides will be preparing “arbitration briefs” to present to Kaplan and are seeking arbitration dates. This process will likely take some months. In the meantime, we continue to operate under the imposed terms and conditions, until a new collective agreement is awarded.
Work-To-Rule (WTR)
WTR is now officially over; however, in many ways, work-to-rule will never be over and has opened our eyes to the sheer volume of unpaid overtime work that faculty do–often at great personal cost to our own well-being. Although we are no longer on strike, we can all individually recognize the limits of our contracts and allocated time, and choose to work within it.
It is also important to note that there is no requirement to “make up” work during WTR. With the exception of our grades, which we should now submit as per usual, managers cannot ask you, or schedule you, to do work that you did not complete during WTR. Please contact the Union if you experience pressure to do additional work without recognition on your SWF or through your contract.
Going forward, let’s not lose sight of the tremendous solidarity built over this year. Together, we can celebrate each other and continue the fight for respect, decent working conditions and a quality college system.
In solidarity,
JP, Jonathan, Katie, Michelle, Ravi, Rebecca, Shawn
Strike averted in last-minute deal for binding arbitration!
The parties have reached an agreement to enter binding interest arbitration and the strike that was scheduled to commence at 12:01 am on March 18, 2022, is called off. This also concludes all work-to-rule strike activities.
Sample letters to educate and encourage student agency in requesting a quick settlement
Below, find two possible letters that you might want to share with your students in order to explain the upcoming strike deadline, and to solicit their help in trying to pressure the College Presidents to resolve negotiations without a strike. Please encourage your students to write to their College Presidents today to encourage them to negotiate, or if that fails, to agree to voluntary binding arbitration.
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Sample letter A (feel free to revised as needed to personalize if desired)
Dear Students,
As you may know, professors, librarians, and counsellors at Ontario’s 24 public colleges have been negotiating a new collective agreement with the Colleges since last July. Although the two sides are at the table this week, the faculty union has set a strike deadline for Friday, March 17.
The faculty union has done this because negotiations have not gone well, and the two sides have been at impasse since approximately November. The 16,000 faculty members have twice rejected management’s offer, but management refuses to change its offer, saying they will not negotiate faculty’s proposals.
Normally, salaries are a major issue in a round of bargaining, but that’s not the case this time – The Ontario government’s Bill 124 has limited salary increases to 1% by law, and both the faculty union and the college management have come to an agreement about salaries in this round of bargaining.
Instead, the dispute centres on issues like faculty work being outsourced to private colleges for profit; the amount of time that faculty are attributed to prepare online classes or to grade students’ essays and projects; the use or sale of faculty teaching materials without their consent; and the way that Counsellors are able to do the work of helping students.
Another major issue concerns the treatment of the thousands of professors who spend years on 14-week “Partial-Load” contracts, with little job security and no pay or benefits between semesters.
Faculty understand that this is a tough time – even a scary time – for many of you, and that the last thing you want to experience is classes getting cancelled because you’re caught in the middle of somebody else’s fight. We honestly did everything that we could to prevent that from happening – we started bargaining last July, and we also spent three months in “work to rule”, where we tried to put pressure on management without cancelling classes.
We’re doing one more thing to try to resolve negotiations without a strike: We’ve offered since November to have a neutral third-party arbitrator resolve all of the areas where both sides disagree, and decide what the next Collective Agreement should look like. That kind of arbitration often happens following a strike, and faculty are offering to skip straight to arbitration to end our dispute, without a strike. The College management refuses.
So now faculty will be going on strike unless management agrees to negotiate our issues or refer unresolved issues to interest arbitration. The current deadline for striking is Friday, but we hope that the 500,000 students in Ontario Colleges can persuade the 24 College Presidents to come to an agreement with faculty. Faculty’s working conditions are your learning conditions, but even if you might not care what our next Collective Agreement looks like, you probably would like to avoid a strike. We encourage you to reach out to Durham College President Don Lovisa at don.lovisa@durhamcollege.ca or by clicking https://www.collegefaculty.org/write-your-college-president/ , and ask for the College Presidents to either negotiate a deal that both sides can live with, or let an interest arbitrator make decisions where the two sides can’t agree.
We hope that students and parents will be able to accomplish what 16,000 faculty couldn’t do: Convince the College Presidents to resolve negotiations without a faculty strike.
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Sample letter B (adapted from a letter shared by a faculty member at Confederation College)
Hi Everyone,
This week, the College Faculty union announced a deadline of Friday March 18th for a strike. You can find the announcement here: https://opseu.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Letter-to-College-Presidents-English.pdf
I have written this to hopefully provide some more information for you. I know it won’t settle your nerves entirely, but hopefully it will provide some more information that will help.
What does this deadline mean?
Although the two sides are currently at the bargaining table, the deadline means that if they cannot come to an agreement, or if the College Employer Council can’t agree to binding arbitration, then all of our faculty will begin a strike on Friday March 18th.
This means that all programs, classes, placements will cease.
This means that the CEC refuses to acknowledge that our demands matter.
This means that the CEC refuses to acknowledge that our students’ semester matters.
Why a strike?
Our union has been legally able to strike since December. We have been working tirelessly under a Work to Rule approach, to limit our impact on students and to prevent a full picket-line strike. Unfortunately, with the looming risk of a full lock-out (in which the College Presidents could lock out all faculty so that faculty go without wages for an extended period of time) and the provincial government elections (meaning they may not be able to be in session to intervene), our union has no choice but to act and issue a strike to protect our members and students.
The two sides are meeting this week: our goal is to get the College management to negotiate faculty priorities at those meetings, to prevent a strike. If this does not occur, a strike is set to commence on Friday March 18th. A strike is scary. I am scared personally. I do not want to be on the picket line. I do not want my wages impacted. I don’t want my students negatively impacted either. I want you guys to succeed. BUT, I know what we are asking for through this process is REASONABLE.
What does a strike accomplish?
A strike tells the College management we are standing in solidarity and are serious about our demands. Faculty voted to reject management’s offer twice–but they still have refused to negotiate faculty’s proposals. There is no disagreement about faculty wages right now; the two sides agree on how to deal with that issue. Instead, we are asking for the necessary tools to do our jobs effectively (reasonable workloads) to support our students (increased time for marking) and strengthened Intellectual Property rights (I have taught you all, you know how much time and effort I put into my lectures), Indigeneity with a commitment to change (we are all responsible for reconciliation), and better job security for contract faculty, to name a few.
What happens to the semester?
This is ultimately up to the College Employer Council and our College President. It depends on how long this strike carries on. The last time, a strike ended with the government forcing faculty to return to work. That outcome also forced both sides to send the remaining areas of disagreement to binding arbitration: The faculty union has already offered this as one way to settle the current negotiations without a strike.
What can we do as students?
You can write a letter to Durham College President Don Lovisa using either the template provided at https://www.collegefaculty.org/write-your-college-president/, or by e-mailing don.lovisa@durhamcollege.ca. I am not saying you have to support the union. I am not saying you have to support the College management. I know you are caught in the middle. Just know that I will support you. Please reach out with questions.
Strike Q&A for members and students
What are some of the outstanding demands?
- More time for feedback on student work and to prepare quality online courses
- Making sure every College has full-time librarians and in-house counsellors
- Getting faculty’s consent before the College sells or reuses their course materials
- Ensuring contract faculty have better job stability and access to benefits
- Committees on equity, Indigenization, and workload that require the Colleges to actually implement change
What happened to work-to-rule?
Although the work-to-rule was having some effect, it was a first attempt at this type of labour action and did not ramp up the pressure fast enough to have an impact on the impasse created by colleges and their bargaining agents at the CEC. We are now eight months without a contract and the employer is still refusing to meet or agree to arbitration.
Why the need to set a strike deadline now?
The Bargaining Team has learned that the CEC may be preparing to lock out faculty at the end of the semester, setting the stage for what could be a very protracted and financially draining experience for members (and a big windfall of savings for the college).
Why would they do that?
We know that the CEC strategy all along has been to divide and weaken the union. Despite faculty approving strike action and rejecting the forced offer, they know that the majority of both votes was not large. They sense an opportunity to exploit that weakness and drive us apart by forcing us out when the winter term is finished, but we are still months away from vacation. If we fail to rally together and stand against the colleges, they will have successfully avoided collective bargaining and simply imposed their will on us all. If they succeed at that, they will have no incentive to ever improve the working conditions of full-time and partial load employees and we will see our rights and benefits eroded year after year.
The colleges have reiterated that they would not call for a lockout. Why does the union believe they would not keep their word?
Certainly that would be an abrupt about-face, but throughout this round of bargaining the CEC has proven that they are more than willing to spin, deceive and even outright lie about the negotiations. More worryingly, the CEC has been asked by the union to sign a binding memorandum of understanding to promise they would not lock us out or escalate the imposed terms and conditions, but they have so far refused to do so.
Why is a lockout worse than a strike?
As most of us know firsthand, a strike is very stressing, both mentally and financially, but there is always an end point at which there is either a negotiated settlement or we are legislated back to work and an arbitrator is appointed.
In past strikes, that has typically been a maximum of 3-4 weeks, but in 2017, the CEC asked for a forced offer vote at the last possible moment and extended the strike to a record fifth week. To no one’s surprise, that offer was soundly rejected by more than 90% of the membership, but that didn’t stop the colleges from depriving us of another week’s salary.
The union fears a lockout at end of term could be far worse than a potential strike for two reasons. Firstly, the union would have very little leverage with the winter semester over and vacation still months away. Secondly, a provincial election is coming in June, and if the government dissolves the legislature early to begin campaigning, they are unlikely to recall it in the middle of an election to send us back to work. In that scenario, we could be on lockout well into June until the next government is sworn in.
If a lockout extends to June, won’t they still have to give us our vacation pay?
Technically yes, that pay will have already been earned throughout the year and is owed to us, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t prorate it or attempt some legal manoeuvrings that could tie up the issue in legal proceedings.
But how is a strike better?
The hope is that there won’t be a strike at all and that the threat of one at this time may prompt the colleges to reconsider their position. With the school year threatened, a strike now would exert maximum pressure on the colleges to renew bargaining or agree to binding interest arbitration.
Didn’t the college already agree to arbitration?
The CEC has at various times said they would agree to send the dispute to a rare type of arbitration called final offer selection that is seldom used in bargaining because it uses a “winner takes all” approach. In this type of arbitration, both sides present offers to a neutral arbitrator and that person chooses one offer or the other in its entirety. There is no give and take or consideration of issues on their individual merit. Only one side can win.
What is the union proposing?
Failing a return to the bargaining table, the union has, since November, been offering to send all outstanding issues to binding interest arbitration, which has a neutral third party look at all the issues and judge each on its own merits.
This standard style of arbitration is what has almost always been used to settle labour disputes at the college level when bargaining fails. It is what took place at the end of the strike in 2017 and what was just used to end the strike by OUITFA at the university. It is not radical or one-sided, it is the standard practice and almost certainly where we would end up at the end of a strike or lockout.
Why won’t the CEC agree to binding interest arbitration now?
We wish we knew. It makes zero sense since arbitration is the likeliest scenario given the CEC’s absolute refusal to bargain. Arbitration isn’t a win for either side, but it will preserve the school year and end all the uncertainty we have been living with for eight months. We can keep working and caring for our students while a settlement is worked out by a government-appointed neutral third party.
What do we tell our students?
We need students, parents and the public to increase pressure on the college presidents to do the right thing and tell their bargaining agent (the CEC) to end this dispute now.
We will almost certainly end up in arbitration one way or the other, but only the CEC can choose to do that now and avoid a strike that will negatively impact the entire college community.
Students can help by being outspoken and demanding that Don Lovisa direct the CEC to end this impasse now, avoid a strike or lockout and save their school year.
Students can use this link to support the call for arbitration to resolve this dispute:
Students can also email Durham College president Don Lovisa directlty at don.lovisa@durhamcollege.ca if they wish to send a message with their own wording.
A letter and PDF explaining the dispute to students can be found on the Bargaining Updates page of Local 354’s website here: https://opseu354.ca/bargaining-updates/
As well, we are encouraging students to contact the DCSI to ask them to advocate on their behalf to avoid a strike.
CEC accepts union invitation to return to bargaining table ahead of Friday’s strike deadline
Greetings all:
Yesterday, the faculty bargaining team invited the CEC to join us back to the table today and tomorrow (see attached letter) with no preconditions, and they have agreed to meet on Thursday. Both parties will meet on Thursday to attempt to reach a negotiated settlement prior to the strike deadline at 12.01am Friday, March 18. As we indicated in our invitation, if real progress is being made, then we are willing to extend the strike deadline.
Further to our update yesterday, and following additional consultation with our legal team, we have also included the memo from the Treasury Board to the CEC regarding our workload proposals (see attached below).
As we stated in our reply, it is clear that the CEC greatly misrepresents the Treasury Board’s views concerning the application of Bill 124 to our workload proposals. The Treasury Board never characterized our proposals as illegal. It is also clear that the information they provided to the Treasury Board does not accurately describe the application of the collective agreement provisions regulating workload and their effect on compensation.
We will keep you posted on further developments or changes.
In solidarity,
JP, Jonathan, Katie, Michelle, Ravi, Rebecca, Shawn
Your CAATA Bargaining Team
Letter to the college presidents from the Bargaining Committee re. possible strike Friday
Dear College Presidents:
College faculty have agreed to go to voluntary binding interest arbitration to save the school year, and are asking you to do the same.
On February 17, 2022 faculty across the province rejected your final offer, after spending months attempting to find a middle path between your proposals and ours to avoid escalation.
While we believe that the best deals are reached through continued negotiations, you have told us from the outset of bargaining that you are unwilling to negotiate unless we drop our proposals that you find unacceptable. That’s your choice, and we take you at your word.
We also know that it is time to find a solution that does not jeopardize the school year through lockout or strike.
Faculty have done our best to limit the impact of our strike action on students and to avoid a picket line. Now, however, you have again ramped up your threats against individual faculty and appear to be moving toward a lockout instead of negotiating a deal.
That’s why we’ve agreed to send all issues to binding interest arbitration, for a neutral third party to decide. We propose immediately ending this impasse by asking a mutually-agreed arbitrator to step in as William Kaplan did in 2017, and has been done in recent strikes in the post-secondary sector. This would end the negotiations without a strike or lockout.
All you have to do is AGREE.
Binding interest arbitration has been the usual way for labour disruptions to be settled in the past when we have not been able to negotiate an agreement. It is the common way for labour disputes in the post-secondary sector to get resolved – common enough that it’s written into several collective agreements. Faculty are offering to do this BEFORE a lockout or strike.
Binding interest arbitration is not a win for faculty. It’s not a win for College Presidents. It’s a win for students.
Your claim that arbitration simply “splits the difference” is false. What you want is “final offer selection”, which means one side wins and the other loses. It has been nearly universally rejected as an effective means of resolving labour disputes. It’s just another way for College Presidents to force their position on faculty.
Faculty want to support students: we will not strike if you agree to binding interest arbitration.
The deadline for this offer is Friday, March 18, 2022 at 12:01am, after which point faculty will have no choice but to withdraw our services fully and escalate to a full strike because you refuse to negotiate or arbitrate.
Labour relations is just that: a relationship between partners. It requires mutual respect and compromise. We are willing to preserve that relationship and do what’s best for students by settling through arbitration. We hope that you will meet us there and provide the certainty students need.
The College Faculty (CAAT-A) Bargaining Team:
JP Hornick, Chair
Jonathan Singer, Vice-chair
Kathleen Flynn
Michelle Arbour
Ravi Ramkissoonsingh
Rebecca Ward
Shawn Pentecost
Strike deadline called for Friday, March 18th
Dear Faculty,
Today, three months after commencing work-to-rule action, we are setting a strike deadline in an effort to compel the College Employer Council (CEC) and the College Presidents to do either of the two things they have refused to do since bargaining began:
- Complete negotiations on faculty’s priority issues, or,
- Refer outstanding issues to binding interest arbitration.
If neither of these things happen, the 16,000 CAAT-A faculty will stop all work and commence picketing, on Friday, March 18th.
The Bargaining Team did not arrive at this decision lightly. We have remained committed to completing negotiations with the least amount of disruption, including our offer to send all outstanding issues to arbitration. However, since July, we have faced an Employer that has simply refused to negotiate. Despite our two provincial votes that rejected their offer and a work-to-rule campaign, the CEC and Presidents continue to say that they will not negotiate. And worse, the chances are very good that they will escalate negative actions against faculty.
Why now?
Scheduling a strike deadline now ensures management cannot lock us out with no salary for a prolonged period after we submit our grades, which would have disastrous consequences for all members. Once the grades are submitted, we lose bargaining leverage. Our deadline also prevents the Presidents from disciplining faculty for work-to-rule, and prevents the Colleges from imposing worse Terms & Conditions at a time when strike action would be considerably less effective.
A strike deadline now means that the provincial legislature is still in session, and that the government–and opposition parties–will be acutely aware of a potential strike, leading up to June’s election. This is our only window for resolution. Once the government dissolves, there will be almost no opportunity to place pressure on the CEC to resolve the dispute.
Setting a strike deadline does not mean there will be a strike. The College Presidents still have a clear choice: negotiate, arbitrate, or put the students through a work stoppage. Based on CAAT-A’s history, and the experience of other post-secondary institutions across the country, strikes are often resolved through binding interest arbitration. Why would the Colleges choose to harm thousands of students and faculty when they can choose arbitration before a strike rather than after?
What’s next?
Student groups support our position that binding interest arbitration can bring an immediate end to this impasse. The Canadian Federation of Students-Ontario wrote that “the CEC has continuously refused binding arbitration, demonstrating to workers and students that the CEC only has their own interests at heart – not the interests of instructors, professors, counsellors, librarians, and especially not students”. As well, the College Student Alliance, “the only college student-focused advocacy group in Ontario”, has announced that “Interest Arbitration is the best solution that puts college students first”.
We encourage you to reach out to students to put further pressure on the College Presidents to resolve this dispute immediately. They can write personal letters or use this easy form: https://www.collegefaculty.org/write-your-college-president/. We also encourage faculty to write personal letters to College Presidents telling them they have the ability—and responsibility—to end this now.
In the coming days, your Local Union will reach out to you to begin preparations for potential strike action on Friday, March 18th. We hope these preparations will not be necessary and that the College Presidents will do the right thing.
In solidarity,
JP, Jonathan, Kathleen, Michelle, Ravi, Rebeca, and Shawn
Your CAAT-A Bargaining Team
Students encouraged to turn up the pressure on college presidents
The email and attachments below were sent to student associations Thursday. Please feel free to share with other faculty and your students.
Dear Students:
College faculty have agreed to go to voluntary binding interest arbitration to save the school year, and have asked the College Presidents to do the same.
While we believe that the best deals are reached through continued negotiations, we know that the College Presidents will not engage with faculty about our proposals. That’s their choice.
We also know that it is time to find a solution that does not jeopardize the school year through lockout or strike.
That’s why we’ve agreed to send all issues to binding interest arbitration, for a neutral third party to decide. We propose immediately ending this impasse by asking a mutually-agreed arbitrator to step in as William Kaplan did in 2017, and has been done in recent university faculty association strikes. This would end the negotiations without a strike or lockout.
All the College Presidents have to do is AGREE.
Binding interest arbitration has been the usual way for labour disruptions to be settled in the past when we have not been able to negotiate an agreement. It is the common way for labour disputes in the post-secondary sector to get resolved – common enough that it’s written into several collective agreements. Faculty are offering to do this BEFORE a lockout or strike. Binding interest arbitration is not a win for faculty. It’s not a win for College Presidents.
It’s a win for students.
The College Presidents have refused this offer for months. Their claim that arbitration simply “splits the difference” is false. What they want is “final offer selection”, which means one side wins and the other loses. It has been nearly universally rejected as an effective means of resolving labour disputes. It’s just another way for College Presidents to force their position on faculty.
To learn more, or to send a letter to your College President asking them to save your school year, go to https://www.collegefaculty.org/write-your-college-president/
Faculty want to support students: we will not strike if the College Presidents agree to binding interest arbitration.
In solidarity,
The College Faculty (CAAT-A) Bargaining Team:
JP Hornick, Chair
Jonathan Singer, Vice-chair
Kathleen Flynn
Michelle Arbour
Ravi Ramkissoonsingh
Rebecca Ward
Shawn Pentecost
Phase 3 “virtual coffee talks” continue with two more meetings hosted by Local 354 president
In case you missed the first two, Local 354 President Kevin Griffin is hosting a further two “virtual coffee talks” in order to answer your questions about Phase 3 of the work-to-rule campaign. The new dates are:
Wednesday, March 9, from 1-2 and Friday, March 11 from 1-2.
Log on to the Zoom sessions using this link:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/96797957588…
Phase 3 of work-to-rule actions announced
Greetings faculty:
The Colleges’ team, via the CEC, continues to assert that they will not return to the bargaining table, nor agree to refer outstanding issues to interest arbitration, despite faculty having clearly rejected their final offer. Typically in bargaining, following a failed final offer vote, the employer concedes that they need to move on workers’ demands. As this Employer team continues to stonewall instead, we have no choice but to increase pressure through the next phase of work to rule.
This phase (see Phase 3 uploaded below) has been reviewed by our legal team, Local Presidents and Bargaining Advisory Committee, and is designed specifically to increase that pressure and to limit the likelihood of a lockout. It centers on three areas: online course delivery, evaluation and grade entry, and non-teaching activities/weeks. These are described in detail in the Phase 3 document; here we provide a bit of context on why these are now struck work. We will also forward a letter from our legal team reinforcing the importance and lawfulness of our work-to-rule activities.
We have also created a letter you can share with your students that explains what faculty are doing and why. Feel free to adapt it to your needs.
We have also created letters that you can send to your manager, including one for coordinators specifically, should your manager try to pressure or direct you to engage in any struck work. Please cc it to your Local union so that we can track and support you fully.
REMEMBER: work-to-rule is a temporary situation intended to bring enough pressure quickly to avoid full labour disruption. The more faculty respect the struck work criteria, the more protected we all are, and the quicker this will be done. In order for this to be successful in getting the Colleges back to the table or into arbitration, it has to be difficult for the colleges.
Mode of Delivery
We are asserting that faculty have a right to decide the mode of delivery for the courses that we teach. Under our work-to-rule action, faculty have the right to stay online if they wish to for the remainder of the Winter Term for the benefit of our students.
Whether we choose to teach online, in a hybrid format, or entirely face-to-face, we are still completing our teaching contact hours, associated preparation, evaluation and feedback, and complementary functions (i.e., performing the work that we have been contracted
to do).
Changing the mode of delivery of a course midway through the term may not be good pedagogically for our students and may make for additional workload that is not accurately represented on our SWFs. Further, we are hearing complaints from many students that they are unable to make the switch from fully online to face-to-face learning in the middle of the term because they already have family and job commitments that were made based upon being completely online. Additionally, some are experiencing challenges finding short-term accommodations for the final seven weeks of the term.
Grading and Data Entry of Evaluation
This phase will continue to see faculty completing all weekly evaluation and feedback for student work in the time attributed for that task on their SWFs, which is a continuation of the previous phases. As we know, this demonstrates the extra volunteer work that faculty put into grading and the inadequacy of our current factors, but it does limit the detailed individual feedback that faculty can provide to students.
This phase will also see faculty providing assignment grades to individual students upon request, rather than posting them to the College’s LMS. Additionally, when we submit final grades to the College, we will not do so in the way currently designed by the Colleges, which places all of the work on faculty rather than supervisors. These protocols also respect the principles of work-to-rule by ensuring that faculty – particularly Partial-Load faculty – do no work beyond what is recognized and compensated.
This is going to cause some inconveniences to faculty and students, but nothing we are doing is intended to hurt students. There is a simple reason for this action: we are trying to avoid the need to escalate further, and to limit the College’s ability to engage in a lockout, by reducing easy college access to student grades to date.
To make this part easier, we have created videos to help you understand how to download your existing grade books from your LMS, along with tips about how to make this process simpler.
Non-teaching activities/weeks
Non-teaching activities are those activities that are undertaken by counsellors and librarians (as well as professors who are not currently teaching). Non-teaching weeks cover those periods that are not covered by contracts for PL faculty, or by SWFs for FT faculty. Non-teaching weeks include the “spring break” week, also known as reading or intersession week. We have extended the struck work from Phases 1 and 2, and asked that faculty not participate in college-initiated activities, such as Town Halls, meetings, and college PD and training.
For counsellors and librarians, this means prioritizing your work so that it fits within your 35 hours. The same is true for professors who are assigned work that does not involve teaching. It means no extras, and no volunteer work. It also means not running college-initiated activities during the spring break week, nor asking other faculty to participate in these sessions. It also means no evening or weekend work—this is about limiting your work strictly, and setting boundaries. The Colleges run on the volunteer overtime you put in, rather than having appropriate staffing levels.
Program coordinators do not have SWFs for this period, and are not assigned any time for coordination activities during this week, including examples such as student recruitment, meetings, and planning. We have also asked that coordinators refrain generally from participating in contract faculty hiring throughout work-to-rule. For coordinators during SWF’d time, you should stay within your attributed time and specifically assigned tasks. If you have time assigned, but only broad tasks, then it is up to you (not your manager) to prioritize your activities and stay within your assigned time. For coordinators, supervising any faculty members is always against the Collective Agreement, and offering any input whatsoever into the hiring or rehiring of potential contract faculty is struck work in Phase Three.
Professors and instructors should not engage in preparation and evaluation during reading/intersession week/Spring Break. The time we need to do our prep and eval should be fully recognized on the SWF. Most of us play catch up during reading week, and we really shouldn’t need to. The fact that we’re now all accustomed to doing prep/eval during reading week reinforces the fact that our current SWF factors are insufficient.
It is not our responsibility to spend our own professional development time to make up for the College’s failure to provide sufficient time during the SWF period to complete preparation or evaluation. In normal circumstances, non-teaching periods are used for activities initiated by the faculty member or by the College. During work-to-rule, non-teaching periods are used for activities initiated only by the faculty member.
This extends to academic integrity and dishonesty processes, as well as supplemental assignments/exams. Again, these processes take well beyond the attributed time on your SWF or contract. These protocols ensure that academic integrity issues are identified and
addressed, without unloading time-consuming College processes onto faculty in
the form of unrecognized and uncompensated work. Furthermore, if faculty are given no “additional attributed hours for evaluation/feedback” on their SWF, then preparing and grading supplementary exams is purely volunteer work, which we do not do during work-to-rule.
Solidarity works
We hope that this helps provide enough background and rationale to demonstrate the importance of these activities. If you have questions about your specific circumstances, or the process, please reach out to your Local union. Together we will work to get you the information and support you need.
And the work-to-rule process is working: every day we are sent stories of faculty exercising their legal right to strike and successfully pushing back against managers who ask them to violate the work-to-rule guidelines. Many colleges are rescheduling activities and cancelling meetings as a result of faculty solidarity. Reports from across the system tell us that the pressure on frontline managers is trickling up to Deans and VPs, and that the College Presidents are starting to get the message.
Faculty solidarity works: your team is doing everything we can to protect the year for students, and to achieve a fair settlement that addresses faculty needs. It is up to the College Presidents to do their part.
In solidarity,
JP, Jonathan, Katie, Michelle, Ravi, Rebecca, Shawn
Your CAAT-A Bargaining Team
Work-to-rule reminder following forced offer rejection
Greetings faculty:
We just voted down the CEC’s forced offer again and sent a clear and resounding message to the College Presidents and the CEC team that they must negotiate faculty’s key issues. The Colleges’ team is clinging to a fear-mongering campaign —one sanctioned and supported by the College Presidents. The Colleges’ team has once again stated that they will not negotiate such “unacceptable” faculty demands as:
- a more reasonable attribution factor for time for student feedback;
- the ability to discuss with your manager additional time for online course preparation;
- better job security and access to benefits for partial-load faculty;
- preventing the outsourcing or privatization of counsellor, librarian, and professor or instructor work;
- reasonable workloads for coordinators;
- explicit faculty consent to the college for the sale or reuse of course materials;
- equity, Indigenization/decolonization, and workload committees that require the Colleges to actually implement change.
The faculty team has met with the conciliator to discuss a path toward resolution, either through negotiation or immediate voluntary binding interest arbitration as a way to provide the certainty that the CEC claims to want. We certainly hope the CEC will lessen their inflammatory rhetoric and do what’s best for students and faculty alike by choosing one of these simple solutions, rather than force an escalation to the Phase 3 work-to-rule labour action.
In the meantime, as many of you enter the Reading/Intersession/Study/Engagement Week or Spring Break, here is a gentle reminder of the activities that you should continue as part of the Phase 1 and Phase 2 work-to-rule. It’s important to note that faculty are withdrawing their volunteer labour from the Colleges in order to demonstrate the essential value of what we actually do.
It is clear that the CEC team and the College Presidents are not connected with the daily frontline functioning of the Colleges they oversee. We are undertaking work-to-rule to avoid a full picket line. With that in mind, work-to-rule MUST impact the functioning of the Colleges in order to work as a strategy to bring the Council back to the table to discuss faculty’s needs. The College Presidents, Boards of Governors, and the CEC have CHOSEN to abandon negotiations, and they can choose NOW to go to binding interest arbitration. They are choosing escalation over resolution, and it’s hurting our system.
So what should you do? Focus on your students’ needs and support their learning—keep yourself and your students informed about what faculty are doing and why using either information from collegefaculty.org–or better yet–based on your own experiences. Talk to your Union Local about any questions or concerns you have, and definitely talk to them before following directions from your manager that may conflict with the work-to-rule.
Also, our list of struck work is determined by the union, not your manager. They may pressure you to cross the picket line or break solidarity by saying that something doesn’t count as struck work, or isn’t work-to-rule. That is not their call to make. We ask that you don’t do any struck work from the earlier phases of our work-to-rule actions: standing together is our greatest strength and provides the best protection for all faculty. It sends a message that we are serious and willing to take these actions. It builds the pressure we need, and best of all: IT’S WORKING.
We hope that the CEC agrees to either negotiate or go to binding interest arbitration, rather than escalate. If they continue to refuse, then we will go to Phase 3, and the bargaining team will send out detailed information later this week.
For now, here’s a reminder of current struck work, from Phases 1 and 2:
READING/INTERSESSION/STUDY/ENGAGEMENT WEEK OR SPRING BREAK
This is an 11.08 period and therefore not included on most SWFs or partial-load contracts—in other words, the activities you do for the college during this time are entirely volunteer work.
- No college-initiated PD, meetings, student orientations (professional development or extracurricular activities, town halls, school/divisional/department meetings, recruitment, orientation, etc.)
- No evaluation or preparation
- Faculty-initiated activities only
- FT faculty inform college of 10 PD days they are taking (if they are taking them)
- FT faculty Coordinators: no coordinator duties.
COURSE DELIVERY
- No recordings of live/synchronous classes unless it is your choice. If you choose to record, do not use the College’s platforms to do so or to host the recordings, and do use the “Bargaining for Better” background
- Remember that it is up to the professor or instructor to determine the best pedagogical method for running their classroom
- Avoid entering information or uploading content to your College’s LMS or through their servers.
COORDINATORS, LIBRARIANS, COUNSELLORS
- If you are not assigned specific tasks or are only given broadly defined duties, then prioritize your own work according to your needs and hours (for coordinators: only do this work during weeks covered by your SWF, not during the break)
- Do not work beyond the time you are assigned. This is 35 hours/week for counsellors and librarians, and will vary for coordinators
- If you are NOT assigned any time for your work as a coordinator, then you should not do ANY of the tasks you have been assigned.
Stay strong and we will keep getting through this together. Stay tuned in the coming days for any developments and additional ways we can show our solidarity. We are working with the Local Presidents and Bargaining Advisory Committee to ensure faculty have the information you require if we need to move to Phase 3 of work-to-rule. We do know that the College Presidents and the CEC team did not plan to lose; as such, we do hope that this gives them the incentive they need to do the right thing and provide stability for all involved.
In solidarity,
JP, Jonathan, Katie, Michelle, Ravi, Rebecca and Shawn
Your CAAT-A Bargaining Team
Forced Offer Vote Rejected, Union Calls on for Return to Bargaining Table or Binding Interest Arbitration
Greetings faculty:
Ontario college faculty have rejected a contract offer from their employer and are calling on the College Employer Council to either come back to the table and finish the job of negotiating a collective agreement, or enter into voluntary binding interest arbitration. In voting this week, 62% per cent of you voted to reject Council’s January 17 offer.
It is no surprise that college faculty rejected the Council’s forced offer. You sent a clear message that this offer failed to address your concerns around time for students, fairness for all faculty, and education quality. We stand with hundreds of thousands of our students when we say ‘enough already.’
We are inviting the CEC team to come back to the bargaining table and complete these negotiations. If they continue to refuse to negotiate, then we ask them to at least provide certainty for students by agreeing to go to voluntary binding interest arbitration.
The forced offer vote was a one-time option allowed under the Colleges Collective Bargaining Act. It is unfortunate that Council caused further stress to students and faculty by calling for this vote rather than negotiate, but now that it’s over, it’s time to provide the certainty they claim they want.
Calling for this vote was a bully move by Council, but faculty have stood together against their aggressive tactics throughout this round of negotiations. With any amount of cooperation from Council at the bargaining table, we can settle this. Faculty deserve better after doing their best to support our students during the pandemic. And students need to know the colleges will support them in their learning.
We encourage the CEC’s bargaining team to either settle this immediately at the table or agree to go to binding interest arbitration. It’s time for them to put students first.
We congratulate all faculty for taking the necessary steps to help ensure a fair and reasonable settlement by standing up for yourselves and your students.
In solidarity,
JP, Jonathan, Katie, Michelle, Ravi, Rebecca, Shawn
Reminder of forced offer voting Feb. 15-17th
Just a friendly reminder that the CEC-requested forced offer vote starts tomorrow, February 15 at 9am, and runs through February 17 at 3pm.
Results will be shared by the Ontario Labour Relations Board (OLRB) on February 18th.
The faculty team is encouraging faculty to REJECT the CEC’s offer as it does not address faculty’s key demands on workload, online teaching, contracting out, consent for use of faculty materials, equity, and processes around Indigenization, decolonization, and Truth & Reconciliation.
While accepting the CEC offer may result in an immediate end to this round of negotiations, the only certainty it will provide is that our workloads will continue to increase with online and hy-flex learning, our work will continue to be outsourced, precarity will continue to increase, and there will be no incentive to make concrete improvements around equity.
Voting to reject the CEC’s offer not only protects our work now, but also demonstrates faculty’s repudiation of the CEC’s strategy of circumventing negotiations by imposing terms and conditions. It means continuing to bargain for improvements to our system, both for ourselves and our students.
What happens next
A strong REJECT vote sends a clear message to the CEC directly from faculty that their offer is not good enough, and that they must either bargain or go to binding interest arbitration on outstanding faculty issues. If the CEC refuses, we will continue building pressure through escalating work-to-rule actions.
How to vote
If you are a partial-load or full-time faculty member, you are eligible to vote and should receive your PIN and instructions from the OLRB today (Monday). As a reminder, partial-load faculty who teach at more than one college should only vote once.
If you do not receive your voting information, please check out the faculty FAQ, or contact the OLRB directly at their helpline:OLRB Help Desk Telephone:
French – (416) 434-6748
English – (416) 326-7432
OLRB Help Desk Hours of Operation:
February 15 (9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.), February 16 (1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.), and February 17 (11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.). All times listed are Eastern Time.
A dose of positivity: faculty and student voices
Faculty and students have created a series of videos explaining, in their own words, why faculty love what we do and the impact we have on our students. These have been rolled out province-wide in a broad public awareness campaign as well.
In solidarity,
JP, Jonathan, Katie, Michelle, Ravi, Rebecca, Shawn
Local 354 president hosting drop-in sessions ahead of forced offer vote
Feb. 14, 2022 – Local 354 President Kevin Griffin is hosting a series of “Coffee Drop-In” sessions” starting today at 1 PM and for the next two days to answer any questions faculty may have regarding the upcoming vote.
Local 354 is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.Topic: Coffee Drop-In
Time: Feb 14, 2022 01:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Every day, until Feb 16, 2022, 3 occurrence(s)
Feb 14, 2022 01:00 PM
Feb 15, 2022 01:00 PM
Feb 16, 2022 01:00 PM
Please download and import the following iCalendar (.ics) files to your calendar system.
Daily: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/tZ0pf-ipqzwsG9YFrLAHYYifno4o1Ltu4P2H/ics?icsToken=98tyKuGhqjMrG9GSthiFRpx5Boqgd-vwmGZdjfpkug3JIghqWwrwOO0WPeNTBM2E
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89481157612?pwd=Z2hNOWczb045QmdudldwSm83eGZJZz09
Meeting ID: 894 8115 7612
Passcode: 588706
One tap mobile
+13126266799,,89481157612#,,,,*588706# US (Chicago)
+13462487799,,89481157612#,,,,*588706# US (Houston)Dial by your location
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Meeting ID: 894 8115 7612
Passcode: 588706
Find your local number: https://us06web.zoom.us/u/kdw8TvBcdi
Bargaining Team responds to CEC email campaign claims
Dear Faculty:
We know that many of you have been receiving a constant barrage of information from the CEC, and that it is difficult to sift through the information, both in terms of volume and legitimacy of the content. The faculty bargaining team has truly appreciated the ability to meet with and hear from many of you at your Local meetings, as well as the Province-wide Town Hall. We are seeing an amazing show of faculty support and commitment for a strong REJECT vote, further evidenced by the phone and text trees conducted by the Locals.
Below, we’ve tried to capture, explain, and correct some of the key messages circulating over the past week for ease of reference.
The CEC’s Long-term Vision for the System
In his blog post here, team Vice-chair Jonathan Singer succinctly and incisively outlines “where the Colleges — through the CEC — truly want to take staffing at the Colleges”. His analysis concludes that management’s workload proposals in this round — including management’s current offer — “paint a picture of new faculty having way fewer rights than established faculty, and of faculty in some areas having way fewer workload protections than faculty in other areas.”
Correcting and clarifying CEC claims this week
As the CEC has certainly ramped up its captive audience communications to faculty and students through the college email systems, there remains a constant thread of fear-mongering and the misrepresentation of faculty’s actual proposals. Many faculty are pushing back by emailing “opt out” responses to their colleges, or by organizing letter-writing and petition campaigns to challenge the CEC’s claims. We appreciate and celebrate these acts of solidarity.
Below, the team provides a quick overview of recent CEC claims and our response (with special thanks to Jeff Brown, L556, and the L732 LEC for their assistance).
| CEC Statement | Faculty Bargaining Team Response |
| On Bill 124 and Workload: “Both teams have obtained legal opinions.” “Bill 124 prohibits us from accepting the workload demands put forward by OPSEU. The Union demands breach Bill 124 and we cannot violate the legislation. The proposed workload committee will review all of these issues before the next round of bargaining when Bill 124 will no longer constrain us.” | If this is true, then the CEC team has never shared any legal analysis they have obtained with the team.* This is false. To be clear: the Bargaining Team has been advised of the legality of their proposals all along. On February 9th, a formal legal brief was issued (by the law firm Goldblatt Partners LLP) clearly stating that nothing in the faculty proposals violates Bill 124. This included an analysis of section 10. The Goldblatt brief does indicate that, given the CEC’s disagreement, the most effective way to deal with things would be with binding interest arbitration. This is exactly what the faculty team has suggested. |
| On Partial-Load: “We will not create greater uncertainty for partial-load faculty by allowing longer serving faculty to bump other partial-load faculty out of assignments.” | If two partial-load members have taught a course before, the one with the most service has to be offered it first. Those seniority rights have not changed. In addition to other improvements for partial-load faculty, the Bargaining Team seeks a transparent and fair application of the partial-load registry (including the proposed Collective Agreement article 26.10F). Bumping rights are not part of the faculty team proposals. |
| On Protecting Faculty Work: “We will not agree to provisions that would strip work away from other employee groups.” | The faculty Collective Agreement cannot include provisions protecting other employees: it can only ensure and/or seek to secure stable and fair working conditions for faculty. This includes not contracting out faculty work that would erode the faculty complement. We respect our colleagues in other employee categories, and ensuring that faculty work is in fact done by faculty is in no way an attempt to ‘strip away’ work from them. |
| On Task Forces: “Arbitration is the wrong way to address workload and to advance EDI and Truth and Reconciliation – we need to move forward together through consensus.” | The CEC has 1) imposed terms and conditions and 2) forced an offer vote, thereby bypassing the democratically elected Bargaining Team. This is not a matter of debate: this is what the CEC has done. These actions do not seem consistent with ‘consensus building’. The faculty team is not proposing arbitration as the way to address workload or to advance EDI and Truth and Reconciliation. Faculty seek to move forward through consensus. The faculty team has agreed to the proposed processes for these issues, but is also insisting on some manner for resolving disputes that arise from them. Without some means of dispute resolution, these committees and task forces are meaningless. |
*The sole rationale that the CEC has provided directly to the faculty bargaining team occurred during the mediation blackout in October. Graham Lloyd relayed that he had called an unnamed person at the Treasury Board directly during the blackout, and had summarized our workload proposals to them as “less work for more money.” The advice he received based on that inaccurate summary was that our proposals would not be permitted under Bill 124. We confirmed that he did not provide our actual proposals to the Treasury Board. Both OPSEU and our outside legal team have maintained that our workload proposals are in keeping with Bill 124.
—
Student support is building: Provincewide student town hall
On February 8, the faculty team held an incredibly successful live Q&A with students, sponsored by the College Student Alliance, in which students in attendance expressed enormous support for faculty in our fight to improve learning and working conditions at the Colleges. You can view and share the recording with your students and colleagues.
The Forced Final Offer Vote
On Monday, you should receive your PIN from the Ontario Relations Board (OLRB) directly, along with instructions about how to vote. The faculty team is encouraging faculty to vote to REJECT.
If you do not receive your PIN from the OLRB, please contact their Help Line:OLRB Help Desk Telephone:
French – (416) 434-6748
English – (416) 326-7432
OLRB Help Desk Hours of Operation:
February 15 (9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.), February 16 (1:00 p.m. to 5:00
p.m.), and February 17 (11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.). All times listed are
Eastern Time.
In solidarity,JP, Jonathan, Katie, Michelle, Ravi, Rebecca, and Shawn
Advice for refusing struck work under current work-to -rule campaign
We know that the current work-to-rule campaign is an entirely new strike tactic for us and there has been an understandable amount of confusion and anxiety around what members should and should not be doing. The local is always willing to answer any questions you might have and the bargaining team has created a number of resources to help us navigate this labour action. One such resource can be found attached at the end of this post. In the meantime, here is some advice from the most common scenarios that have been arising so far.
Progam Information Sessions
Management has sent out emails requiring Program Coordinators and/or faculty to attend upcoming Program Information Sessions. The union’s position, supported by your local and the bargaining team that participation in the Program Information Sessions is participating in “struck work” under the current authorized work-to-rule labour action which is equivalent to crossing the picket line.
These virtual information sessions are new work that was added during the pandemic and should be captured independently on our SWFs, just as the open houses are. If the current work is not explicitly written on the SWF with time attributed, then it is very simply and clearly struck work.
The College may take a different interpretation, but it is not within their rights to determine what the union includes as part of our work-to-rule strike action, nor should they threaten, intimidate, or reprise against a faculty member for participating in such strike action.
The College can issue another SWF subject to the member’s right to consent to the new list of specific duties and attributed hours. For Program Coordinators, participation should only be performed if coordinator duties that have been reduced to writing and agreed to, and only for the time provided each week.
When you have reached the limit of your time, refer all questions, concerns and work to your supervisor. Remember, all workload, including the following examples: research, committees, internal and external meetings, accreditation, hours for coordinator duties – plus your step(s), mentoring, course lead(s), and/or curriculum development/course conversion, shall be represented on your SWF on an hour for hour basis.
Classroom Visits and Faculty Appraisal
It is also the union’s position that Faculty Performance Reviews are similarly STRUCK work. Faculty should not be completing the requested forms or giving their permission for management to attend their classes at this time. The union recommends that you do not give them your permission to attend your classrooms to observe and that you do not complete the paperwork or attend the follow-up meeting. Instead, faculty are again advised to write an email informing your manager that this is struck work. If they push – send an email to the BargainingTeam2021@gmail.com account and they will write a follow-up email telling them to cease and desist.
Faculty and Program Coordinators who are being asked to conduct struck work of any kinds should respond to their managers/supervisors with the following request:
“In order for this work to properly documented, it would need to be added to a revised SWF by mutual consent of both faculty and management”.
You have union support and legal protections if you refuse to do work that you understand to be struck work. If you perceive any potential threat or retaliation from your supervisor, please let your union steward know immediately and fill out the work-to-rule incident form.
Legal Brief Supports Faculty Proposals
Throughout this round of bargaining, the College Employer Council (CEC) has repeatedly refused to negotiate significant issues regarding workload, staffing, or fairness for partial-load faculty. They have justified their obstinacy by claiming that changes to these areas would violate Bill 124, which limits compensation increases to individual employees in the public sector.
At no time has the CEC ever offered a substantial legal analysis to support their position, which they have often repeated.
OPSEU requested a legal brief on Bill 124 as it impacts our bargaining, from Christine Davies of the law firm Goldblatt Partners LLP. The conclusions of this brief, which is attached to this e-mail, are clear:
“In our view, the union’s proposals regarding workload do not offend Bill 124”, since the tabled faculty proposals “…do not result in an increase to salary or compensation, as defined by Bill 124.”
Davies confirms that impacts to Employer costs through changes to workload or staffing are distinct from the changes to employee compensation that are the subject of Bill 124. She writes, ”Nothing in Bill 124 requires employers to limit themselves to 1% increases in the cost of delivering their services[, including] from hiring additional staff or changing staffing models. . . . Rather, Bill 124’s focus is more narrowly on restricting the increases in salary/compensation that flow to employees.”
Davies further explains that disagreements in Bill 124 actually justify referring unresolved issues to arbitration, as the faculty bargaining team has proposed since November. She concludes, “a solution to the parties’ disagreement regarding whether the Union’s proposals are consistent with Bill 124 would be to resolve the outstanding bargaining through binding interest arbitration”.
The CEC has frequently relied upon a report written by Mediator Brian Keller–written following the failed mediation between OPSEU and the CEC–to support their claims about Bill 124. Davies, however, notes that Keller’s report is not a legal analysis, but rather was written, “in a mediation context,”where Keller“did not have the benefit of legal submissions regarding the application of Bill 124 to specific proposals.”
For months, the faculty team has argued that the CEC should either bargain, at the table, the issues that are important to faculty or refer outstanding issues to binding interest arbitration. In her legal analysis, Christine Davies concludes that both of those options are permissible and appropriate in light of Bill 124.
Your bargaining team,
JP, Jonathan, Katie, Michelle, Ravi, Rebecca, and Shawn
UOITFA strike begins Thursday – Q & A
Members of the University of Ontario Institute of Technology Faculty Association (UOITFA), which represents full-time faculty at Ontario Tech University, will be on strike Thursday (Feb. 10). Here are some answers to questions you might have.
Q. Does a rejection of our forced offer vote from the CEC mean college faculty will be on strike too?
A. No, a system-wide strike is not contemplated at this time and the work-to-rule campaign will continue following the forced offer vote.
Q. Will we have to cross picket lines at the Oshawa campus in order to enter the college?
A. Yes, if you are currently coming to campus or are required to during the strike, you are expected to respectfully observe the picket lines and then come in to work as usual.
Q. What would happen if I refuse to cross the picket lines on moral grounds?
A. Management could discipline employees who refuse to work.
Q. How should I approach the university picket line?
A. If picket lines are in place, you should approach slowly, offer your support to our colleagues and patiently wait for your turn to go through.
Q. How can I help or show support for the striking university faculty?
A. Any way you can support is appreciated. Spending some time on the picket line, bringing warm drinks and high calories foods or simply showing your support on social media and encouraging others to understand the issues.
Q. Is their strike about money?
A. No, like us, they are restricted by Bill 124 to a maximum pay hike of just 1%. Their issues are nearly identical to ours: workload, precarious employment and equity issues.
You can learn more here: https://www.uoitfa.ca
Bargaining Team applauds member engagement in ramp up to forced off vote Feb. 15
Many thanks to the 700+ faculty who turned out to the province-wide Bargaining Update webinar on February 2nd, and to the additional hundreds of faculty who’ve been attending local bargaining Q&As. There has been incredible engagement at these events, along with fantastic questions and feedback from those who have been able to attend. The message has been clear: faculty are voting to reject management’s forced offer. The online vote is scheduled to take place February 15 @ 9:00 am – February 17 @ 3:00 pm. For more information, click here.
Info from the Faculty Webinar
If you weren’t able to attend the webinar on February 2nd, we have made available to faculty a recording of the presentation and Q&A.
Work-to-rule: Principles and Protocols
The bargaining team has created an overview document of the principles guiding faculty’s work-to-rule labour action (see attached). You can also check out detailed lists of struck work activities for Phase One and Phase Two here. You have union support and legal protections if you refuse to do work that you understand to be “struck work” according to those principles and lists. If you perceive any potential threat or retaliation from your supervisor, please let you Union Local know immediately, and fill out the work-to-rule incident form.
Instructing Students: Student Q&A Webinar
The College Student Alliance is hosting a LIVE Q&A with the faculty bargaining team on February 8 from 7-9pm. All students are welcome. Please circulate this information to your students. It is appropriate to use College e-mail or Learning Management Systems to do so.
CAAT-A Radio Campaign
Please keep your ears open next week for a new series of five radio spots produced and promoted by OPSEU Campaigns in support of our efforts leading up to the forced offer vote. The spots emphasize the importance of College faculty for the success of our students and our communities.
As you can see above, we are collectively reaching out to members and students and the broader public. Please join in this effort by sharing your own stories and messages on social media, and by reaching out to your colleagues to ensure that they vote to REJECT the CEC’s forced offer.
Only by rejecting the effort can we continue our unified effort to improve our working conditions and our students’ learning conditions.
Yours in Solidarity,JP, Jonathan, Kathleen, Ravi, Rebecca, Michelle, and Shawn
Five reasons to reject the CEC’s forced offer
Bargaining Team hosting town hall Feb. 8 for students
Please share the following with your students:
On February 8 at 7pm, the faculty bargaining team, in conjunction with students, will be holding a LIVE Q&A Webinar to talk with students about what’s happening in bargaining, what faculty are asking for in order to better support students, and to answer questions that students may have.
Faculty are fighting for:
- More time to support students
- Job protections for contract faculty, counsellors, and librarians
- Binding action on equity, Indigenization, and decolonization
- Faculty consent on the sale or reuse of their work
Here’s the registration link for the live student webinar on Feb 8th (starts at 7pm)
When: Feb 8, 2022 07:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Topic: Student Town Hall on Bargaining
NOTE: French translation and ASL interpretation will be provided.
Register in advance for this webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_FCyOkYe9QGG2Nke4aNEztA
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.
In solidarity,
JP, Jonathan, Katie, Michelle, Ravi, Rebecca, and Shawn
Why you should reject the CEC’s forced offer
As you likely know, the College Employer Council has called for a forced offer vote on their most recent offer. The vote will be conducted by the Ontario Labour Relations Board, from 9:00 A.M on Tuesday, February 15th until 3:00 P.M. on Thursday, February 17th.
Their offer is virtually unchanged from the offer they presented in November, and the bargaining team encourages you to reach out and tell your colleagues to vote to REJECT the offer, so that the CEC will finally be forced to negotiate faculty issues, meaningfully.
The Employer’s Offer
Why reject the offer? Because it still ignores vital faculty issues, including job security / contracting out, needed changes to workload measurements, improvements for partial-load faculty, and effective processes to improve equity and decolonization.
This week, the CEC distributed a chart that tries to make an attractive offer that offers negligible improvements in some areas and no improvements in others. Attached to this post please find the Bargaining Team’s chart analyzing the CEC’s offer, and an explanation of some of the consequences that faculty will suffer if we vote to accept that offer for the next three years.
Above all, if we vote to accept the CEC offer, negotiations will end immediately, and the Employer will have succeeded in disregarding faculty’s voted-upon priorities and the faculty’s elected bargaining team. If we vote to reject and the CEC refuses to return to the table, we will continue our phased in work-to-rule, and increase pressure on the Colleges. Our current offer to refer all outstanding issues to voluntary binding interest arbitration will remain on the table.
Rejecting the offer means that we will end up with a Collective Agreement that is better than what the CEC is currently offering.
Videos
Bargaining Team chair JP Hornick has completed two short videos explaining the fiscal health of the College system (a reported $1.6 billion in surpluses over the last five years) and an analysis of the stark differences between the two sides’ offers.
You can see the videos here:
Video One – “Costs”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8w-ucW0oCEU
Video Two – “The Issues”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGQ9TCjt8Qc
Provincewide Town Hall
The CAAT-A Divisional Executive will host a third provincewide Town Hall with the Bargaining Team. These town halls have proven extraordinarily popular so far; thousands of members have attended and hundreds of member questions have been answered.
You can attend by registering here (French translation and ASL interpretation will be provided). We urge you to bring a colleague who may not have attended a previous event:
When: Feb 2, 2022 06:30 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Topic: Faculty Town Hall
Register in advance for this webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_u4oEp5JLRC6QTqY0mayguA
Please register using a non-college (private) email address.
Work-to-Rule Update
Phase Two of Work-to-Rule has proven so impactful upon managers that the CEC has resorted to a forced offer vote. In an upcoming message, the faculty bargaining team will provide guidance on how to apply the protocols of Phase 2 to our mid-semester workload, including how it applies to issues around evaluation/feedback, academic integrity, coordination, and Study Week. Faculty have shown great solidarity in standing up and refusing to cross the work-to-rule picket lines by boycotting college-initiated activities such as Presidential Town Halls and PD sessions. As a reminder, faculty- and union-initiated activities are absolutely fine to attend.
Together, we are standing up to an inflexible Employer, and insisting that our needs be addressed and our work be respected. We have done this by democratically selecting demands for bargaining; we have done this by voting to authorize strike action (including work-to-rule); and we will do it once again on Feb 15-17, by voting to REJECT an offer that puts management’s needs ahead of what’s best for faculty, our students, and the public College system.
Yours in Solidarity,
JP, Jonathan, Katie, Michelle, Ravi, Rebecca, and Shawn
Bargaining Team denies CEC fear mongering that a rejection of the forced offer will lead to a full strike
Dear Faculty,
As you may be aware of by now, a forced offer vote will be held online from 9 am on February 15th to 3 pm on February 17th. You are being asked to vote on the last offer presented by the College Employer Council (CEC), which is virtually unchanged from its November 23rd offer. Faculty have already rejected this with the strike mandate we handed down in December.
The upcoming vote is a critical one that will have both short- and long-term consequences on collective bargaining in the college sector.
In the short-term, voting to REJECT means that we will end up with a new collective agreement that is better than what the CEC is presently offering. The CEC offer does not meaningfully address faculty demands around key issues:
-more time for students
-partial-load job security
-preventing contracting out
-to protect the work of counsellors
-librarians and all other faculty
-faculty consent for how the colleges use our course materials
-equity and decolonization.
Once we reject this offer, the CEC will have no tactics left to avoid bargaining faculty issues.
For the second consecutive round of bargaining, the CEC has demonstrated little willingness to negotiate our demands, and instead continues to stoke fear of a full strike and threats of reprisal to try and divide faculty. After a five-week long strike in 2017 that resulted in significant gains for college faculty (e.g., academic freedom, increased seniority rights for partial-load members, and the creation of new full-time positions by removing a moratorium on Article 2 grievances), the CEC gambled this round that faculty would not stand together again, even after experiencing significant changes to our working conditions over the past four years.
But we are, and we are telling them that their strategy isn’t working for faculty.
Let’s continue to prove them wrong – not just for our own good but for that of our students. If the CEC is successful in having faculty accept their offer, there will be no incentive for them going forward to change their negotiation strategy of delay, defer, deny, and do nothing.
Why would they change their approach if it works for them this time? Taking a forced offer vote–rather than negotiating or agreeing to faculty’s offer to refer unresolved issues to voluntary binding interest arbitration–demonstrates little respect for faculty. If the CEC can routinely avoid negotiating in good faith, our needs and the needs of our students will not be met and our system will suffer as a result.
Voting to REJECT the CEC offer in mid-February does not mean a picket line–it means a better resolution for all. We will send an undeniable message to the CEC, and the college presidents who direct them, that faculty issues must be taken seriously.
In solidarity,
JP, Jonathan, Katie, Michelle, Ravi, Rebecca, and Shawn
Dates confirmed for the College Employer Council’s forced-offer vote
The College Employer Council (CEC) filed an application with the Ontario Labour Relations Board (OLRB) yesterday for a forced-offer vote.
Their latest offer includes only a slight change from the offer they tabled on November 23, 2021. It also follows its decision to impose working conditions on faculty, rather than bargain a collective agreement that addresses faculty concerns around additional time with students and for online teaching, equity and precarious work.
The forced-offer vote will run online from 9 a.m. on Tuesday, February 15 through to 3 p.m. Thursday, February 17, 2022. Details on the voting process will be shared as soon as they have been confirmed by the OLRB.
The faculty bargaining team is strongly advising college faculty vote to reject the forced offer and send the CEC a strong message that faculty are bargaining for better for our students, our colleges and each other.
OPSEU/SEFPO calls on college faculty to reject Employer’s forced offer deal
TORONTO – OPSEU/SEFPO President Warren (Smokey) Thomas says a better deal can be achieved and is advising college faculty to reject the employer’s latest offer, after the College Employer Council (CEC) filed for a forced offer vote Monday.
“It’s still possible to reach a deal at the bargaining table,” said Thomas. “Ramming through a forced agreement won’t be helpful to labour relations at the colleges, and it certainly won’t improve the quality of education. It’s important to try to reach a negotiated settlement – one that puts students first.”
But instead of negotiating, the employer has walked away from the table and imposed terms and conditions on faculty as of last December. Their latest offer, which they will put to a forced offer vote, has not changed since their offer from November 23, 2021.
OPSEU/SEFPO College Faculty bargaining team Chair JP Hornick says the CEC has shown complete disregard for the bargaining process by bypassing the bargaining team, and calls their latest move an attack on collective bargaining rights.
“For months, college faculty have been bargaining for modest, realistic and much-needed improvements to Ontario’s public college system,” said Hornick. “The CEC and the colleges refuse to address these issues, and as we predicted, they’ve now called for a forced offer vote to try and ram through an offer that’s out-of-touch and unacceptable.
“This offer is virtually identical to the one that faculty already rejected in December,” added Hornick. “It wasn’t good enough for faculty or our students then, and it still isn’t good enough now. Apparently, we need to reinforce this message even more loudly and clearly, which is why we’re urging all faculty to vote to reject the forced offer deal.”
Labour law stipulates that the employer can take a forced offer vote only once. If faculty vote to reject the offer, the college faculty bargaining team is hopeful it will be the signal needed for talks to resume. But, if the employer continues to refuse to bargain, the team remains open to voluntary binding interest arbitration to avoid further strain on students and faculty.
“Rejecting this forced offer vote is the best path forward for faculty,” said Thomas. “It takes away the CEC’s last tool, and it ensures that any final agreement will be better than this one, which is exactly what has happened in previous rounds of bargaining.
“We can only go up from here,” added Thomas. “It’s time to get back to the table and bargain a deal that’s good for faculty, students and the entire public college system.”
Bargaining Committee urges no vote to forced offer
Dear CAAT-A members:
For months, CAAT-A school staff has been negotiating to obtain modest, realistic, but indispensable improvements to the college system. CEC and colleges refused to address these issues, which led to the success of our December strike vote.
As we predicted, the CEC has requested a forced vote on the offer (which should take place in February). The CEC offer is practically identical to the one the teacher already rejected in December.
The CEC short-circuited the negotiating team and our negotiator and called for a forced vote on a bid that, once again, refuses to address school staff issues.Nothing has changed since their last bid on November 23rd.
As a reminder, here’s what’s wrong with their offer:
it allows for the sub-treatment of all school staff work and contains no protection for part-time teachers, counsellors, librarians or coordinators.
it contains no change to the workload factors, which have remained unchanged since the ’80s
it does not recognize the need to obtain the consent of the professor before the reuse or sale of its teaching material
the workload working group they offer is looking to expand a system to two levels of teachers’ workload (including learning, aviation, school catch-up, investments and “other programs”)
the equity and the round table on truth and reconciliation they offer are only for appearances and guarantee no change over the next three years and beyond
there is no commitment to improving the ability to expand social benefits of part-time dependents – a group that no longer benefits the same as FT members.
Teachers have already told CEC that this offer is not good enough for us and our students. Apparently we need to strengthen this message loud and strong. They can only vote on a forced offer once, and this is another attempt by the CEC to impose its position on school staff.
If, following the rejection of their forced offer, the CEC continues to refuse to negotiate the demands of the faculty, the faculty team will leave the door open to voluntary and compelling arbitration of interest. CEC could have chosen this path at any time to avoid any additional pressure on the faculty and students.
Rejection of their offer takes away their last tool, and ensures that any final understanding will be better than this.
Vote to REJECT the employer offer. We negotiate for better: time for our students, quality education for all.
In all solidarity,
JP, Jonathan, Katie, Michelle, Ravi, Rebecca, Shawn.
OPSEU files unfair labour practice complaint against the College Employer Council
Today, in response to escalating rhetoric from the College Employer Council and a number of colleges, OPSEU/SEFPO has filed an unfair labour practice (ULP) complaint regarding union interference with the Ontario Labour Relations Board.
The filing of the ULP follows a week in which several colleges–including Niagara, St. Lawrence, Humber, and Fanshawe–have directed faculty to stop sharing bargaining information via their email signatures or LMS. Many colleges, however, continue to use college resources in order to circulate their own bargaining information from the CEC to all faculty, staff, and students.
Specifically, the complaint centres on the ways in which the CEC team and certain colleges “…have blatantly interfered with the rights of OPSEU’s members to choose to demonstrate support for their bargaining agent’s position during contract negotiations” and have attempted to silence support for the union to gain “an unfair advantage in bargaining.” The ULP also asserts that they “have also interfered with the Union’s right to seek support from its members, and to engage in strike activity that is free from undue influence and threats of reprisal.”
While Graham Lloyd, CEO of the CEC, issued a letter yesterday asserting that faculty bargaining messaging is “anti-college”, he also included a set of his untested opinions about whether work-to-rule is a form of strike, and whether faculty SWFs are a reflection of our workload. His letter is a deliberate, if clumsy, attempt to distract and confuse faculty about their legal right to participate in work-to-rule.
Lloyd also states that the CEC will only come back to the table on the condition that faculty drop any demands the CEC is unwilling to consider.
The two questions that both Lloyd and the colleges do not answer or address in their communications are quite telling:
1. Why won’t the colleges address faculty demands on workload, partial load issues, contracting out, intellectual property rights, equity and decolonization?
2. Why won’t the CEC/college team agree to go to voluntary binding interest arbitration on outstanding issues, which the faculty team first offered on November 18 and which remains on the table as an option?
Instead, the CEC–and the college administrators who direct their team–continue to engage in a fear-based campaign that doesn’t even pretend to counter the merits of faculty concerns and proposals.
We have not undertaken the filing of this ULP lightly; we strongly and simply believe that faculty have the right to communicate with our students and the public about our bargaining, and to be able to do so in an environment free from reprisal or threats of reprisal.
In solidarity,Your CAATA Bargaining Team
Bargaining Team provides new work-to-rule resources for students, partial load and program co-ordinators
Student Information and FAQ
The Bargaining Teams encourages all Locals to adapt the following documents (or sections of them) into different media and formats, for distribution on different social media platforms.
Attached to the bottom of this update please find a FAQ for Students that has been adapted from the FAQ that was generated by Local 556 (George Brown). We hope that faculty will share it to students who have questions or are experiencing frustrations with work-to-rule.
As well, you might choose to share the following brief overview of bargaining and work-to-rule, which was targeted to students:
Lastly, we continue to encourage all faculty to use the following text in the signature of their College emails:
In response to the College Employer Council’s decision to impose employment conditions following the College Faculty voted to support strike actions (https://www.collegefaculty.org/2021/12/17/opseu-sefpo-stands-in-support-of-college-faculty-members/), Ontario college faculty are now following work-to-rule guidelines established by the Faculty Bargaining Team.
Faculty have chosen to focus on our students’ needs and not interrupt College courses with a strike at this time, while demanding that our employer negotiate a fair resolution to this labour dispute. Work-to-rule means that we will be working only the time outlined by our current contract and workload assignments, or job descriptions. This means that we may not be available for additional, volunteer work that we may normally do, or work outside of regular work hours. Therefore, we may take more time than usual to respond to emails or other forms of communication and any additional work-related requests.
Currently we are in Phase 2 of the planned work-to-rule job actions. For more information on these actions including a work-to-rule FAQ, please visit: https://www.collegefaculty.org/work-to-rule/. We appreciate your patience and your support in our efforts to improve working conditions for Ontario college faculty and the learning conditions of Ontario college students.
Information for Partial-Load Faculty
One question that has been asked recently is how, specifically, Partial-Load faculty should address the issue of insufficient time to complete their week’s work, when speaking with a supervisor.
We propose the following language as a draft, to be modified to suit the circumstances at your own college, or the needs of each particular faculty member:
“Hello __________,
As you know, in response to the imposition of terms and conditions by the CEC and the colleges, CAAT-A members are now engaged in a legal work-to-rule labour action. Under this action, all faculty members are to work to the letter of their job description or contract.
According to the CEC, the total workload hours per week for a ___-hour partial-load contract is ____ hours. I have now reached [am approaching] this total. Please advise on where I should direct the remaining work that exceeds the amount of time I have been attributed.
Thank you.”
The teaching hours and workload hours can be filled in, based upon the following chart:
| TCH | Total Workload Hours incl. Teaching |
| 7 | 15.19 |
| 8 | 17.36 |
| 9 | 19.53 |
| 10 | 21.70 |
| 11 | 23.87 |
| 12 | 26.04 |
Information for Coordinators
We’ve also heard that coordinators remain targeted by management attempts to get them to “cross the line” and violate work-to-rule protocols. While the bargaining team is happy to respond to your college’s senior management upon request, we also provide the following message that Local Presidents may consider adapting for use at their colleges, as they see fit.
Dear ___________,
We are in receipt of communications directed to faculty from their Chairs regarding the College’s directing faculty to perform coordinator responsibilities beyond what has been approved by our current work-to-rule labour action.
We would like to note that the college faculty bargaining team (OPSEU/SEFPO) gave notice to strike on December 12, as required by the Colleges Collective Bargaining Act, and has been in a legal strike position since December 18.
For clarity, college faculty are engaged in work to rule, which is a form of strike action. This is known to both council and the employer, given that the council has responded to OPSEU’s strike action on its website.
The college faculty bargaining team and OPSEU have been clear about the scope of the current stage of its work to rule campaign, and has clearly communicated that its members will not be performing tasks outside of the strict letter of the requirements of their SWFs – as a result, such tasks are considered ‘struck work’ and the performance of such work is analogous to the crossing of a ‘picket line’.
Any direction by the employer to members not to engage in strike activity, or any threats or reprisal to members for engaging in strike activity, will be considered interference with the union and OPSEU will take any and all appropriate steps as may be required.
Sincerely,
Public Awareness Campaign
We are also hearing concerns that the current efforts around bargaining are gaining little attention in the news media, in the face of issues around the pandemic and the closures of elementary and secondary schools.
In light of this, the Bargaining Team has asked OPSEU to organize and fund a public awareness campaign on our work-to-rule action and the issues that have led up to it. We have requested a campaign similar to the one that our division had in 2017, but with radio and social media tailored for the current remote learning/work from home landscape.
Letter from OPSEU President Smokey Thomas to College Employer Council (CEC) CEO Graham Lloyd
January 7, 2022
Graham Lloyd
Chief Executive Officer
College Employer Council
Dear Graham,
Faculty members represented by OPSEU/SEFPO working at Ontario’s 24 public colleges have now begun Phase 2 of the work-to-rule campaign, as part of a legal strike action, which began on December 18, 2021.
As you know, work-to-rule is a legally recognized form of strike action, as per the Colleges Collective Bargaining Act (CCBA). The CEC is aware of this, and has responded to OPSEU/SEFPO’s strike action on its website. Clearly, there is no confusion about whether our members are engaged in strike activity.
There should be no confusion about the scope of that strike activity either. OPSEU/SEFPO has been abundantly clear about the scope and has clearly communicated that our members will not be performing tasks outside of the strict letter of the Collective Agreement, and where applicable, the requirements of their SWFs, including participation in orientation events. Such tasks are considered struck work, and performing them would be equivalent to crossing a picket line.
Any direction from the employer to faculty to not engage in strike activity – or any reprisal, or threat of reprisal for doing so – will be considered interference with the union and OPSEU/SEFPO will take any, and all, appropriate steps required. We will not allow our members to be intimidated, coerced or retaliated against.
You can imagine how disheartening it has been to hear that our members are receiving threatening communications through the employers’ communication system across the 24 colleges. This is classic union busting, Graham. I’ve been around long enough, and I’ve seen it all. We’ve had members being targeted by the employer, and threatened with discipline.
I write to you today demanding an end to these harmful intimidation tactics, and to remind you that such tactics are in potential violation of the CCBA. Our union will continue to support college faculty members, and we will proudly defend any, and all members who face disciplinary retaliation.It’s time to lower the temperature and get back to the bargaining table.
Sincerely,
Warren (Smokey) Thomas
President, OPSEU/SEFPO
Standing strong against CEC fear mongering
Greetings faculty:
You may have received a message from your College, “Your Right to Choose Regarding Work-to-Rule.”
We appreciate the College Employer Council’s latest update, in which they remind faculty members that every college employee “has the legally protected right” to engage in work-to-rule or other labour action without fear of reprisal.
As the CEC correctly identified, faculty are in a legal strike position, and the protections of the Colleges Collective Bargaining Act (CCBA) and Collective Agreement apply. Faculty should, therefore, not experience reprisal from the colleges for participating in the work-to-rule action.
From a union perspective, solidarity is the foundation of our strength, and participation as a union member in job action is required to demonstrate that strength. While the CCBA allows individual faculty the ability to cross a picket line by performing struck work, doing so undermines the very solidarity required for successful job action.
Today’s message from the CEC was clearly intended to stoke fear and division among faculty, and is likely attributable to the incredible strength and solidarity faculty are currently demonstrating during our first ever work-to-rule job action.
In one key respect, we agree: no college should reprise against faculty for exercising their rights, or participating in their union.
In solidarity,
JP, Jonathan, Katie, Michelle, Ravi, Rebecca, Shawn
Zoom meeting for program coordinators this evening at 6 p.m.
ATTENTION PROGRAM COORDINATORS at Durham College, there is an important Zoom meeting scheduled for this evening at 6 p.m. to discuss additional demands and concerns that affect you. Sorry fo the late notice but please plan to attend if you can. The link for the meeting is: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/96797957588?pwd=bTZLSWFpZlpzc3ovSTVZclVmeXN0dz09
Answering your questions about Phase 2 of the work-to-rule job action
Greetings faculty:
As we enter into the Winter semester, as well as Phase 2 of our work-to-rule job action, we know that you have many questions. The Locals and Bargaining Team have received common questions in regard to start-up meetings, orientation, and coordinator work in particular.
We address some of these below, and will provide further details at our provincewide Zoom webinar on January 5th (see details below).
We have also created a series of videos about how to read and understand your SWF, so that full-time faculty can understand the limits of your assigned workload. Specific information relevant to partial-load faculty can be found here, and your Local can also address questions and concerns, or forward them on to the bargaining team.
Many questions have arisen regarding pandemic health and safety in the return to face-to-face classes for labs/shops/co-op and field placements, particularly in the face of many colleges’ refusal to institute physical distancing measures, provide appropriate PPE, install HEPA filtration units, or provide paid sick time to contract faculty. We encourage you to ask questions of your college regarding their commitment to the health and safety of students and faculty as it relates to the current wave of the pandemic. Similarly, we remind all faculty that you have the right to refuse unsafe work. If you are unsure if your working conditions are safe, please contact your faculty representative on the Joint Occupational Health and Safety Committee (or your Local Union). You can also contact your local public health authority or the Ministry of Labour.
- Work-to-Rule Provincewide Information Meeting
The CAAT-A Divisional Executive is organizing a Provincewide Town Hall, as we enter into Phase Two of Work-to-Rule at our Colleges. The Bargaining Team will be discussing work-to-rule and answering common questions we’ve received. In addition, attendees will also have the chance to submit questions.
When: Jan 5, 2022, 6:30 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Topic: Faculty Town Hall
Register in advance for this webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_2UQs9M8ySmG0x7X87wi2bg
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.
We are currently attempting to provide simultaneous translation at this meeting.
Local Meeting also offered
In addition, Local 354 will be hosting its own Coffee Hour Drop-in on Zoom this Friday at 4 p.m. for just our members to connect and ask questions about the ongoing work-to-rule campaign. Here is that information:
Local 354 is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: Local 354 Coffee-Hour Drop-in
Time: 4 p.m.
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/96797957588?pwd=bTZLSWFpZlpzc3ovSTVZclVmeXN0dz09
Meeting ID: 967 9795 7588
Passcode: Local354
One tap mobile
+16475580588,,96797957588#,,,,*19679391# Canada
+17789072071,,96797957588#,,,,*19679391# CanadaDial by your location
+1 647 558 0588 Canada
+1 778 907 2071 Canada
+1 204 272 7920 Canada
+1 438 809 7799 Canada
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Meeting ID: 967 9795 7588
Passcode: 19679391
Find your local number: https://us06web.zoom.us/u/kbE8KoLb1x4:56
- Should I attend meetings and orientation sessions during the week of January 3-7?
Do not participate in the following pre-semester activities: professional development, town halls, school/divisional/department meetings, recruitment, orientation, etc.
To be clear, between January 3-7 (a non-teaching/11.08 period), any work that is assigned by managers should not be undertaken. Article 11.08 does not give managers the right to assign work during non-teaching periods; these periods are instead reserved for mutually agreed-to activities. While the Collective Agreement says that agreement shall not be unreasonably withheld by either faculty or managers, we are currently in work-to-rule, and it is therefore reasonable for faculty to refuse the tasks that managers attempt to assign them during non-SWFed periods.
- What activities should I avoid, starting on January 3?
- No unassigned college meetings
- No unassigned and agreed-to professional development
- No unassigned extracurricular activities
- No holiday gatherings
- No town halls.
Do not engage in any tasks that are not explicitly recorded on your SWF or (if partial-load) your contract, including volunteer meetings or committee work, extracurriculars, informal assistance to managers, programs, special projects.
- What if I’m a program or course coordinator?
The same applies to program and course coordinators. The colleges have chosen to impose terms and conditions, including that “Coordinator duties will be reduced in writing before an employee accepts a coordinator-ship. Such acceptance will remain voluntary.” Coordinator duties are included on your SWF, and take place during the period covered by your SWF. The colleges have not changed those terms and conditions, and have said that they will not be imposing further terms and conditions. For the time being, that means that coordinators are not to participate in the struck work listed above.
While you should have been provided a written list of assigned coordinator duties and a clear number of hours on your SWF for the performance of those duties, that would only apply during the SWF period. During the non-teaching period before or after the SWF, you are not obliged to perform those duties.
- How can I respond to my supervisor this week?
You are invited to adapt either of the following messages, to suit your purposes:
“Unfortunately, I am not in the position to attend any meetings this week, as CAAT-A faculty are currently in Phase 2 of the work-to-rule campaign. Engaging in struck work at this point would be equivalent to crossing a picket line. I hope that this work-to-rule job action will demonstrate the value of faculty work, get the employer back to the table to negotiate the issues important to faculty, and make a full strike unnecessary.”
“In accordance with the work to rule plan, I will not be attending college meetings or activities this week, nor any that are not specifically recorded on my SWF with appropriate time attributed. While It gives me no joy to refrain from campus activities, I believe in the collective bargaining process and the rights it has provided me and countless others. Until the bargaining team directs otherwise, this is my position.”
- What should I tell my students about work-to-rule?
You are invited to adapt either of the following messages, to suit your purposes, depending :
“Thank you for your email.
At the moment, all college faculty (Librarians, Counsellors, Professors and Instructors) are engaging in labour action – ‘Work to Rule’. Under our current contract, I am allocated 6 hours of administrative time during the week. This includes emails, meetings, and regular contact with students and external stakeholders. I am also attributed no more than 5.4 minutes to grade each student’s work and provide feedback, weekly. The workload formula which gives these numbers hasn’t changed in almost forty years!
Any work/emails which take longer than the times that I have been attributed for those tasks each week will be deferred to the following calendar week. Please encourage the college president to direct the College Employer Council to return to the bargaining table to resolve these issues. If this is urgent, please contact [provide your chair’s name and e-mail].”
or
“In response to the College Employer Council’s decision to unilaterally impose employment conditions after college faculty voted to support strike actions (https://www.collegefaculty.org/2021/12/17/opseu-sefpo-stands-in-support-of-college-faculty-members/), Ontario college faculty are now following work-to-rule guidelines established by the Faculty Bargaining Team.
Faculty have chosen to focus on our students’ needs and not interrupt College courses with a strike at this time, while demanding that our employer negotiate a fair resolution to this labour dispute. Work-to-rule means that we will be working only the time outlined by our current contract and workload assignments, or our job descriptions. This means that we may not be available for additional, volunteer work that we may normally do, or work outside of regular work hours. Therefore, we may take more time than usual to respond to emails or other forms of communication and any additional work-related requests.
Currently we are in Phase 2 of the planned work-to-rule job actions. For more information on these actions including a work-to-rule FAQ, please visit: https://www.collegefaculty.org/work-to-rule/.
We appreciate your patience and your support in our efforts to improve working conditions for Ontario college faculty and the learning conditions of Ontario college students.”
In solidarity,
Your CAATA Bargaining Team
Work-to-rule info sessions planned for January
On Wednesday, Jan. 5th, the Bargaining Team is inviting all faculty to a Zoom update on bargaining and the work-to-rule campaign. The meeting will run from 6:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. A Zoom link will be distributed by email and our digital channels later.
And on Friday, Jan. 7th, your local executive will be hosting a Zoom drop-in session for our members only to offer advice and answer any questions about the ongoing work-to-rule campaign. Timing and invitation to that virtual meeting will come in the new year.
In the meantime, if you are interested in becoming a work-to-rule captain to aid in our efforts to kickstart bargaining again, please contact Local 354 President Kevin Griffin at president@opseu354.ca for more information.
If you have any immediate questions or concerns please feel free to reach out to your school steward or email the local office at office@opseu354.ca. Please be aware that we are also on holidays and the office will not be staffed at all times.
WORK-TO-RULE: PHASE 2
Starts 12:01am, January 3, 2022
(if no settlement or no agreement on extension of existing terms and conditions before then)
FOCUS
● Imposition of terms and conditions prevents the possibility of good labour relations.
● It is a choice by the colleges and the CEC to abandon negotiations and to force faculty to work only under the conditions the colleges and CEC want.
● All actions below specifically target administrators, not students.
CONTINUE TO…
● Focus on needs of students and supporting their learning
● Maintain contact with students and keep them informed
● Maintain contact with Local and attend union activities and meetings
● Follow explicit written direction from your manager (and talk to your Local about how to file a grievance if necessary).
● Not perform any of the tasks from PHASE 1 [insert link here].
● Take part in ongoing solidarity actions.
ACTIONS
REMEMBER:
● We are in the midst of job action which entails limiting our work to the letter of the collective agreement. This is not voluntary.
● The list below is struck work, and must not be undertaken by any bargaining unit member. Engaging in struck work is equivalent to crossing a picket line.
● If you have any questions, contact your union local for assistance.
FOR PARTIAL-LOAD FACULTY:
1. According to the CEC during this round of negotiations, the total number of hours of compensated work for partial-load faculty is 1 Teaching Contact Hour (TCH) x 2.17. Therefore, during work-to-rule action, you should track and record your work and only perform the following total hours of work each week (based on the number of TCH assigned in your contract):
7 TCH= 15.19 total workload hours/week, including teaching hours
8 TCH= 17.36 total workload hours/week, including teaching hours
9 TCH= 19.53 total workload hours/week, including teaching hours
10 TCH= 21.70 total workload hours/week, including teaching hours
11 TCH= 23.87 total workload hours/week, including teaching hours
12 TCH= 26.04 total workload hours/week, including teaching hours
What this means during normal teaching periods is that any work you do beyond these maxima is volunteer work. During this period of job action, do not go above these maxima.
2. During your contract, record all of the time you spend on the different parts of your work, such as evaluation, preparation, meetings, student email, etc. We recommend using Toggl, a free and easy to use app that you can use from your computer or phone. When you are approaching the maxima for the week, email your supervisor and let them know. ○ Preparation: Time yourself and do not exceed the weekly maxima.
○ Evaluation/feedback: Time yourself and let your supervisor and students know when you are nearing your maxima for the week and stop doing the work once you have hit the limit. Direct your students to your supervisor for follow-up questions and concerns.
○ Availability to students: Set clear boundaries and stick to them. Announce your hours of availability (both in terms of virtual meetings and email communication) to students and strictly adhere to them. Set a turn-around time on replying to student messages (e.g. 24-48 hours) and how much time will be spent on correspondence each day. Set clear expectations and communicate these to students. If asked why you have set limits on your availability, explain why very clearly.
3. If you do not have a signed contract by the first day of classes, email your supervisor (cc: your union Local) and ask when you will receive a signed contract. ○ Track all work required before your contract is in place: setting up LMS shells, prepping for courses–this is all work that should be credited. Before undertaking any work, send an email to your supervisor outlining the expected time it will take and asking for compensation for this time. Cc: your union Local on the email.
○ Do not answer unsolicited email from your supervisor or institution until your signed contract is in place, except to indicate you have agreed to the contract and intend to begin it on the start date.
○ Do not engage in unpaid meetings or other activities (e.g., orientation, recruitment fairs, etc.) prior to or during your contract. Each time you are asked to participate in an activity, reply to your supervisor with questions about whether the activity is required, and if so, whether it is paid.
4. Availability (re. departmental/College communications): Tell your supervisor that you will respond to institutional communications only within certain identified times
on assigned days of work, and not on evenings and weekends. You are not on-call 24 hours/day, 7 days/week.
5. Additional meetings/ ‘workshops’: Attend no optional faculty/departmental meetings and no additional workshops or departmental/college events (unless explicitly directed to do so by your supervisor). If directed to attend, ask for payment.
6. Health and Safety: Document any concerns, and file complaints with the union Local Health and Safety representative where and when necessary.
7. Academic integrity reports/issues/work: All work related to academic integrity (beyond filing the appropriate paperwork) should be referred to your supervisor directly by email.
*If you have additional support or admin contracts along with your assigned partial-load hours, please contact your union Local for assistance. The struck work above applies only to your partial-load contract.
ALL faculty :
1. Do not participate in pre-semester activities: professional development, town halls, school/divisional/department meetings, recruitment, orientation, etc.
2. Continue recording all of the time you spend on the different parts of your work, such as evaluation, preparation, meetings, student email, etc. We recommend using Toggl, a free and easy to use app that you can use from your computer or phone. ○ Preparation: Time yourself and do not exceed the weekly attributed hours.
○ Evaluation/feedback: Time yourself and let your supervisor and students know when you are nearing your attributed hours for the week and stop doing the work once you have hit the limit. Direct your students to your supervisor for follow-up questions and concerns.
○ Availability to students: Set clear boundaries and stick to them. Announce your hours of availability (both in terms of virtual meetings and email communication) to students and strictly adhere to them. Set a turn-around time on replying to student messages (e.g. 24-48 hours) and how much time will be spent on correspondence each day. Set clear expectations and communicate these to students. If asked why you have set limits on your availability, explain why very clearly.
3. After end of Fall semester and before start of Winter semester: ○ No unassigned college meetings
○ No unassigned and agreed-to professional development
○ No unassigned extracurricular activities
○ No holiday gatherings
○ No town halls.
4. Limit the information that you upload to your College LMS to your course outline and contact information. Where at all possible, host your teaching and course materials on a non-college site and send or post links to those materials to your students. (Password-protecting your materials is even better.)
5. Do not answer emails from college administrators after 5pm, before 9am, or on weekends.
6. Do not spend any additional time on committee work other than what is assigned on your SWF each week.
7. Do not participate in course or program updates or renewal processes not assigned on your SWF.
8. Stop all communication with college after the end of your SWF/contract, except for grade entry.
9. Stop doing any tasks that are not explicitly recorded on your SWF, including volunteer committee work, extracurriculars, informal assistance to managers, programs, special projects.
10. Academic integrity reports/issues/work: All work related to academic integrity (beyond filing the appropriate paperwork) should be referred to your supervisor directly by email.
11. Grieve any direction that contravenes the above, or goes beyond existing conditions of the Collective Agreement.
12. Refer any changes to workload to WMG. Request additional attributed hours for switch to online course delivery.
13. When you reach the limit of the time assigned for a complementary function, course preparation, or evaluation each week, inform your supervisor and stop doing the work.
14. No recordings or synchronous classes, unless it is YOUR decision: If you do record your classes, use the “Bargaining for Better” background in your recordings.
15. Do not agree to or engage in work on weekends.
Counsellors and Librarians:
1. Do not work beyond 35 hours per week. No overtime (except crisis situations for counselling). Do not volunteer to lead additional workshops or works.
2. Librarians – do not attend classes/create workshops for evening classes (or in addition to regular duties) unless specifically directed.
3. If there is a problem you have identified, write to your manager and ask what should be done, and by whom.
Coordinators and Student Placement Activities:
1. Only perform those coordinator duties that have been reduced to writing and agreed to, and only for the time provided each week. When you have reached the limit of your time, refer all questions, concerns, and work to your supervisor.
2. Stop assisting with scheduling and referring/recruiting part-time hires.
3. Do not plan for student placements/co-ops/clinicals etc unless specifically assigned as course prep.
4. Do not enter grades for student placements/co-ops/clinicals unless specifically assigned as a course prep.
Work-to-rule is a legally protected strike action – threats or bullying should be reported immediately
Dear College Faculty:
As you know, the CEC has imposed employment conditions on college faculty following last week’s strike vote. Instead of returning to the bargaining table to hammer out the final details of a contract, they’ve taken a different approach: escalating tensions.
Despite the results of the strike vote, your bargaining team has no wish to compromise student learning. On the contrary. Their demands are designed to improve student success, not harm it. So instead of a strike, the team is recommending work-to-rule for all faculty: full-time, partial-load and probationary.
In a traditional strike situation, the Colleges Collective Bargaining Act forbids any employer reprisals on any members, including partial-load and probationary members, for participating in the work stoppage.
The same principle applies to work-to-rule, which is just another form of strike action.
Your employers would be reckless to think otherwise. It goes without saying, but please know that we will meet any employer reprisals, or threats of reprisals, against any and all college faculty members for participating in bargaining team-coordinated activities with the same vigour with which we would respond during a strike.
Please take this commitment to heart. Because no bully tactics stand a chance against the power of OPSEU/SEFPO.
Should any member – permanent, partial-load or probationary – experience any actions, or threats of action, that you consider punitive because of your participation in bargaining team-coordinated activities, contact your local president immediately.
Finally, always remember that solidarity is the keystone of any labour activity. When your bargaining team and local presidents call for action, don’t hesitate to step up to the plate. The employer will exploit any cracks in the membership. It’s time to close ranks and send a strong, unmistakable message: let’s get back to the table and bargain a new collective agreement – now.
PHASE 1 WORK-TO-RULE CAMPAIGN
Starts 12:01am, December 18, 2021
(if no settlement or no agreement on extension of existing terms and conditions before then)
FOCUS
- The imposition of terms and conditions prevents the possibility of good labour relations, eliminates faculty consent, and is itself a form of labour disruption.
- It is a choice by the colleges and the CEC to abandon negotiations and to force faculty to work only under the conditions the colleges and CEC want.
- All actions below specifically target administrators, not students.
CONTINUE TO…
- Focus on needs of students and supporting their learning
- Maintain contact with students and keep them informed
- Maintain contact with Local and attend union activities and meetings
- Follow explicit written direction from your manager (and talk to your Local about how to file a grievance if necessary).
ACTIONS
All faculty Professors, Instructors, Counsellors, Librarians, Full-time and Partial Load (starting on December 18)
- Many Colleges are in the process of changing their instructional delivery plans in January, as a result of COVID. If your college has made changes to your workload or your instructional delivery mode since you received your SWF:
- Request a meeting with your supervisor regarding any changes to workload and or delivery modes since you received your Winter SWF and ask for additional attributed hours for preparation, to reflect the additional time that you will need to spend preparing as a result of these changes.
- At that meeting, request a written response from your supervisor within 48 hours.
- Follow that meeting up with an e-mailed summary of your meeting and repeat the request for written reply
- If you receive no reply in 48 hours (or if you receive an unsatisfactory reply at any time, including verbally), immediately refer your workload to the Workload Monitoring Group. Contact your union Local for any questions.
- Start recording all of the time you spend on the different parts of your work, such as evaluation, preparation, meetings, student email, etc. We recommend using Toggl, a free and easy to use app that you can use from your computer or phone.
- Change the signature line on your college and personal email to read:
“The College Employer Council and college management have chosen to impose terms and conditions of work on college faculty, rather than agreeing to extend existing terms while the faculty and employer bargaining teams negotiate a Collective Agreement. College faculty have begun a work-to-rule campaign, in protest. For more information, click here [insert collegefaculty.org or local website link].”
- Share the Following Sample Message on your LMS and social media:
| The College Employer Council and college management have chosen to impose terms and conditions of work on college faculty, rather than agreeing to extend existing terms while the faculty and employer bargaining teams negotiate a Collective Agreement. College faculty have begun a work-to-rule campaign in protest. For more information, click here [insert collegefaculty.org or local website link]. College faculty are fighting for the following, for students and the college system. The Colleges are refusing: More time for student evaluationPreparation time for online learningPartial-load job security and seniority improvementsNo contracting out of counsellor and other faculty workFaculty consent prior to the sale or reuse of faculty course materialsJointly-led committees and round tables able to implement changes around workload, equity, and Indigenization, decolonization, and Truth and Reconciliation If you would like to send a letter expressing your concerns to the President of the College and the CEO of the College Employer Council, there is a link to a sample letter at collegefaculty.org. |
- Sign the click-to-email letter at collegefaculty.org and distribute it to students via non-college email. Share it with friends, family, colleagues, other organizations you belong to, and ask for their support.
- Download and use the “Bargaining for Better” Zoom background for all online meetings with college administrators and students.
- Upload as little as possible for the upcoming semester on college LMS platforms.
- Do no work over the scheduled holiday period.
- For Partial-Load faculty, we recommend that you avoid doing any work during any day when you are not under contract.
WORK-TO-RULE FAQ
For CAAT-A Members
This document will be revised and updated as appropriate
Current version: December 16, 2021
1. What is Work-to-Rule?
Work-to-rule is any job action in which employees do their jobs exactly as outlined by the rules of their contract or job description. This may cause a slowdown or increase pressure on supervisors, as faculty stop working beyond the time allotted in their contracts, SWFs, or (for counsellors and librarians) the 35-hour weekly cap.
This is not an unusual tactic, and is often highly successful. Examples in other sectors include nurses refusing to answer telephones, teachers refusing to work for free at night and during weekends and holidays, and police officers refusing to issue citations. Other examples of work-to-rule include refusing to engage in volunteer work such as recruitment fairs or committees, to work during periods that aren’t covered by your contract, or to work beyond the time attributed for course preparation and evaluation every week. In a sense, “work-to-rule” involves applying to the letter rules that are normally set aside or interpreted less literally to increase efficiency, or refraining from activities which are customary but not required by rule or job description. Work-to-rule means doing your job to the letter of the law; it does not mean doing only the parts of the job that you like.
Because work-to-rule is an organized labour action, we will collectively undertake specific activities, in escalating phases. The bargaining team will determine these and share them with Locals and their membership. The list of actions associated with Phase One of our work-to-rule plan has already been shared in a separate document. Consult your union Local with questions.
As any new form of strike action takes place – such as a new phase of working-to-rule – members will be kept informed and up-to-date through local and provincial communication channels. There will be frequent updates provided through print publications, emails, and information meetings about the specific type of strike action that will be taken and how members should proceed.
Will this impact the functioning of the Colleges? It must in order to work as a strategy. We are not responsible for the Colleges’ chronic mismanagement of resources and staffing. We are not here to help management at this juncture, given that they have shown no respect for us, our needs, or our students’ needs at the bargaining table. Work-to-rule is one way of holding management responsible for the negative consequences of their own management decisions. It means that we will stop trying to save the Colleges from their own management.
2. Will I still receive pay during work-to-rule action?
We expect all members to continue to be paid as normal by the employer, since we will all continue to do the work for which we are being paid, according to our contracts. Since a work-to-rule does not involve walking off the job and does not include picket lines, strike pay provisions do not apply.
3. Why a work-to-rule?
We believe that it is a strong choice for a first step in work action, as opposed to a traditional strike with picket lines. A work-to-rule asserts the importance of the work that bargaining unit members perform, and can immediately demonstrate the obvious inadequacies in our Collective Agreement, by showing what happens when we stop volunteering our labour.
Work-to-rule can be combined with other non-strike actions such as rallies and political pressure on College Presidents, the College Employer Council, members of the Colleges’ Boards of Governors, MPPs etc.etc.
In our communications/on our website, we have outlined exactly what the current phase of work-to-rule will look like. As you can see, these actions are designed to target administrators not students, and to demonstrate the amount of extra work faculty engage in every day.
ALL faculty should track their work using an app like Toggl, so that you know when you are at the limit of what you have been assigned for a task each week, then direct further work to your supervisor. If possible, professors and instructors should try to itemize the amount of time they spend on each of the following tasks:
- Teaching (in-person or online)
- Class preparation
- Evaluating or providing feedback on student work
- Out-of-class assistance to students (including office hours, zoom calls, and e-mail)
- Normal Administrative Tasks (including uploading materials, college emails, accommodating students, and completing all College paperwork)
- Coordinator tasks that have been agreed-to and put in writing (if applicable)
- Meetings (if listed on your SWF)
- Other complementary tasks that have been identified on your SWF (committees, program renewal, accreditation etc)
This also allows us to document what faculty actually do vs. how much time they have attributed. Tracking work is perhaps the most important solidarity action for partial-load faculty to engage in, and may help to shape work-to-rule guidelines for Partial-Load in future phases. Similarly, this will give faculty without a SWF, like counsellors and librarians, a good sense of how much volunteer work they are doing.
4. What does imposition mean for our work?
Because the Colleges refused faculty’s offer to extend the existing terms and conditions of the Collective Agreement, and instead imposed their own terms, the College Employer Council can change the terms and conditions of our work at any time with no notice. Just because they have only imposed a limited range of terms now, does not mean that they will stop there. Further, the terms they have imposed are not entirely clear, such as the updated counsellor class definition. No details have been provided to the faculty doing this work, nor to the bargaining team.
The only recourse we have to changes in imposed terms is to escalate our work action plan.
5. Can we give out the Chair’s, Associate Dean’s, College President’s, College Bargaining Team members’, College Employer Council CEO’s and manager’s work numbers and email addresses for student, faculty, or public inquiries, complaints, and feedback?
Absolutely! In fact, they should hear directly about the impact of their choices on students, and the broader college community.
6. What happens if a member does not follow the work-to-rule?
A work-to-rule is considered strike action even if there are no picket lines that can be crossed. If you notice a member who is not following the work-to-rule, speak to them and make sure they are aware of the strike action. All members should understand that the purpose of our work-to-rule is to resolve negotiations without further escalation. The more each member participates in this stage of action, the less likely it is that we will need to escalate to a full strike.
7. What should I do if my manager disciplines me for participating in a work-to-rule?
Both our Collective Agreement and our governing legislation offer protections for all Union members who are participating in lawful Union activities, including a strike.
If your manager disciplines or threatens to discipline you for participating, you can explain to them that you are adhering to the current terms and conditions of employment – that is exactly what a work-to-rule is. If a manager explicitly directs you to do something that is in violation of work-to-rule, you should also ask them to put that request in writing, and make sure to contact your union Local and OPSEU right away to make sure that they know and can intervene.
8. What if I am on a leave when a work-to-rule starts?
You will not be able to take part in work-to-rule activities, but the College could change the imposed terms to cancel leaves if they choose.
9. What are the types of job action/strikes?
There are many kinds of job actions/strikes. Some of them include:
Work-to-rule
A work-to-rule is when workers obey all the laws and rules applying to their work (i.e., through legislation or the collective agreement), but follow “the letter of the law” to stall productivity. Since the colleges and College Employer Council are treating college education like an assembly line producing widgets for the economy, and have refused to bargain items that would benefit students and faculty alike, work-to-rule is effectively our mass refusal to continue to volunteer our labour.
We have the legal right to do this only because a majority of us voted to authorize strike action.
Rotating strike
A rotating strike is a strategic series of work stoppages of all bargaining unit members for fixed periods of time (e.g., one day or one week) at various colleges or campuses.
Targeted work stoppage
Targeted work stoppages feature an organized refusal to perform specific parts of members’ assigned work, or a refusal to work at specific times of the day. A targeted work stoppage at Colleges, for example, could see faculty stop participating in processes related to Ministry approval of programs. Since a targeted work stoppage (unlike work-to-rule) involves the refusal to do a portion of assigned work, it would typically be accompanied by a proportional reduction in salary.
General strike
A general strike is a cessation of work by all members in a bargaining unit. It is typically accompanied by picketing.
10. What’s next?
The work-to-rule strategy is just the first step in our job action activities. Other types of job action, including rotating strikes or a general strike, are all options under consideration for future, escalating phases of our job action. The level of escalation required is entirely determined by the Colleges’ willingness to engage with faculty demands, to refer outstanding issues to binding interest arbitration, to impose further terms and conditions, or to force a final offer vote.
The bargaining team will consult with local leadership to develop a plan and determine when, where, and for how long job actions will happen.
If you have any other questions about the job action, please contact your union Local first.
REMEMBER:
We make tremendous gains when we exercise our right to take job action. It’s one of our most effective tools to ensure that the employer understands we deserve respect and listens to our demands. Keep these things in mind when you speak with your family, with people in your community, and with other union members. We are stronger together. All of us or none of us!
IMPORTANT CONTACT INFORMATION
Bargaining Team:
Web/Social media:
FB: www.facebook.com/OntarioCollegeFaculty
Twitter: @CAATfaculty #BargainingforBetter
Instagram: @caatabargaining
OPSEU/SEFPO:
A letter to Durham College President Don Lovisa from Local 354 President Kevin Griffin
Dear President Lovisa,
I am writing to express my profound disappointment with the College’s decision to unilaterally impose terms and conditions, and to ask you to please reconsider this decision in light of the serious and long-lasting labour relations damage it will cause.
Throughout the process of negotiations between the CEC and CAAT-A, you have sent emails to faculty that asserted the Employer’s respect for the process of negotiations. This act of unilateral imposition belies those assertions, and instead resorts to an approach to labour relations that is authoritarian and paternalistic.
Regardless of any disagreement we may have about the status of proposals, a process has been in place that situated both sides as equal partners in determining labour relations at the Colleges, for the good of the system, the employees, and the students. The Employer has unbalanced that dynamic by repeatedly sending misleading, anti-union e-mails to the membership in the online equivalent of “captive audience meetings” that are a hallmark of American-style union busting.
And now, you have chosen to replace that process with a non-consensual imposition of working conditions. We believe that it will take years for the labour relationship between our Local and the College managers to recover from this heavy-handedness, as it took following the similar imposition in 2010.
Even after obtaining a strike mandate, the faculty offered to leave conditions in place until January, to ensure no labour disruption this semester. I am disappointed at the idea that you have chosen to reject that offer, and instead are taking us – and our students – on the path to acrimony and labour disruption.
There is still a path forward. As President, you have the authority to direct the College Employer Council to return to the table, or, failing that, to send outstanding matters to voluntary interest binding arbitration.
We ask you to act in the best interest of faculty, students and the future of our college system.
Regards,
Kevin Griffin
Local 354 President
BARGAINING TEAM UPDATE TO FACULTY MEMBERS – IMPOSITION AND WORK-TO-RULE
The College Presidents (and their bargaining agent, the College Employer Council) have unilaterally imposed terms and conditions of employment on all of us. They have simply refused to discuss our remaining issues or accept our offer to refer them to binding interest arbitration; this is effectively forcing faculty to work under their preferred terms.
The Employer may present these conditions as benign, and indeed many of them are points on which both teams had reached agreement at the bargaining table. However, these are only the initial terms and conditions of employment that have been imposed by the College Presidents and CEC. They can change these conditions at any time, with no notice, and can also impose different conditions at different colleges. These changes could impact any aspect of our working conditions, including salary, workload, vacation, professional development, and employee rights.
Imposition thwarts faculty’s ability to actually negotiate our working conditions, which requires our consent.
The following imposed conditions are far from positions that faculty had proposed at the bargaining table, and may hurt individual faculty members:
Update the counsellor class definition: The CEC has imposed their own language, which allows for the outsourcing of counsellor work. Individual faculty members – in this case, counsellors – stand very much to be negatively impacted by this imposition despite the CEC’s claims to the contrary.
Coordinator duties will be reduced in writing before an employee accepts a coordinator-ship. Such acceptance will remain voluntary:While both the Union and CEC have agreed to the documentation of coordinator duties, the Union also proposed that such duties be “reasonable”. Without that word, the employer has the ability to make the duties of the coordinator position unreasonable, which could result in no faculty member taking the position and the college assigning those duties outside of the bargaining unit. Additionally, if a coordinator accepts unreasonable coordinator duties because they wish to keep the position, they could be disciplined if they are unable to complete those duties. Yet again, individual faculty members can be negatively impacted by these terms and conditions, contrary to the CEC’s claims.
Medical cannabis coverage prescribed by a licensed physician to a maximum of $4000/year, subject to prior authorization by the insurer:While the Union and CEC have agreed, in principle, to this, the Union was still attempting to gain additional information from the CEC as to whether dental implants or other benefit improvements were a possibility. We expect medical cannabis coverage will only be available to a small number of members, given the restrictions imposed on this benefit by Sun Life.
***
To enable faculty to respond effectively to management’s imposed terms and conditions, the faculty bargaining team has informed the Employer that work action will commence on December 18th.
We envision a process of escalating work action, commencing with a phased-in series of work-to-rule actions.
INDIVIDUAL FACULTY MEMBERS SHOULD NOT CHANGE THEIR WORK HABITS UNTIL DECEMBER 18TH, AND AFTER THAT DATE INFORMATION WILL BE PROVIDED BY THEIR UNION LOCAL LEADERSHIP AROUND WHAT SPECIFIC LABOUR ACTIONS TO TAKE.
This strategy has proven effective in other educational contexts in Ontario. It was ONLY made possible by the fact that faculty voted to authorize work action (up to and including a strike) last week.
In solidarity,
JP, Jonathan, Katie, Michelle, Ravi, Rebecca and Shawn
OPSEU/SEFPO disappointed that college management won’t come back to the bargaining table
Toronto – OPSEU/SEFPO is disappointed that the College Employer Council (CEC) is imposing employment conditions on college faculty following a strike vote this weekend.
The CEC has signalled it intends to impose a series of conditions effective Monday and the faculty bargaining team has given five days’ notice that members can begin working to rule, effective December 18.
OPSEU/SEFPO President Warren (Smokey) Thomas says it’s unfortunate that the situation has reached this point. “We can still reach a settlement at the bargaining table,” said Thomas. “Bypassing negotiations and creating hard feelings will not help students and will sour the labour climate at the colleges – everyone loses.”
Faculty members voted 59 per cent in favour of a strike to back their contract demands, which centre around workload, job security and equity issues. JP Hornick, the chair of the college faculty bargaining committee, says the CEC’s approach is heavy handed, unnecessary and is a huge mistake. “Unfortunately, the CEC has rejected faculty’s offer to extend the existing Collective Agreement until at least January 3 and have opted to impose terms and conditions,” said Hornick. “To be clear, the CEC has chosen their own form of labour disruption over further negotiations or voluntary binding interest arbitration, which are both still on the table from faculty. What’s worse is that the College Presidents are silent on this move. Either continued negotiations or interest arbitration would ensure stability for students and faculty while allowing both sides’ proposals to be considered by an arbitrator.”
Hornick also noted that the terms the CEC and the colleges are imposing are not final and can be changed in the coming weeks and months if they choose to. Some 15,000 college faculty have been without a contract since September 30.
Talks with the College Employer Council (CEC), which represents Ontario college employers, began in July.
CEC rejects further talks and offer of labour stability, moves towards imposition of terms
Unfortunately, the Colleges and CEC team have rejected faculty’s offer to extend the existing Collective Agreement until at least January 3, and have opted to impose terms and conditions of their choosing on Monday, December 13.
To be clear, the CEC has chosen labour disruption over further negotiations or voluntary binding interest arbitration, which are both still on the table from faculty. Either continued negotiations or interest arbitration would ensure labour stability while allowing both sides’ proposals to be considered by an arbitrator.
We anticipate that the CEC will attempt to spin this as faculty attempting to deny improvements to faculty, when the opposite is true: the faculty team has been pushing for and bargaining meaningful and ongoing improvements throughout this process. More will follow as we get the details.
It is important to note that the initial imposition of terms is not necessarily the last. The Colleges and CEC can change the terms they impose at will and college by college.
Faculty will be providing the required 5-day notice of labour action to the CEC as a result, and can begin work-to-rule, which will begin first with the union Locals, as of December 18. Details will follow shortly.
Here is the latest media coverage in regard to our bargaining: https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2021/12/12/faculty-at-ontarios-24-public-colleges-vote-in-favour-of-job-action.html?fbclid=IwAR0KemcNm-she6EAeZ-jTzvxAl9CR40w_78UFr3EwhCEaIZe5zWWZZEM51I
In solidarity, Your CAAT-A Bargaining Team
College faculty hand bargaining team strike mandate
TORONTO – OPSEU/SEFPO President Warren (Smokey) Thomas says a strike mandate shows the union’s college faculty members want a collective agreement reached at the bargaining table.
OPSEU/SEFPO’s faculty members vote 59 per cent in favour of job action to back contract demands in a strike vote that was supervised by the provincial Ministry of Labour.
“Our members are sending a clear message that they want to see a negotiated settlement,” Thomas said. “I’m sure an agreement is in reach, so let’s get back to the bargaining table and get it.”
Some 15,000 college faculty have been without a contract since September 30. Talks with the College Employer Council (CEC), which represents Ontario college employers, began in July. Management refused to negotiate during conciliation and could force a vote on a CEC offer, which is an option as part of the process.
Bargaining Team Chair JP Hornick said faculty members voted on demands that would support students and provide more stability for contract partial-load faculty, noting management had maintained they would never agree to them.
“I hope this strike vote will be the CEC’s incentive to start negotiating for real,” Hornick added. “All of faculty’s demands are extremely low- or no-cost to the employer. Due to Bill 124, we’re not bargaining compensation. So our focus is on what’s needed to support students in classrooms and online, and on their mental health and academic needs.”
The faculty bargaining team has also offered to work under the existing contract with no threat of strike if the CEC agrees to not lock out or try to bypass the bargaining table. The CEC has yet to respond. However, it is threatening to impose terms and conditions.
“This strike vote should be a wakeup call for the CEC,” said OPSEU/SEFPO First Vice-President/Treasurer Eduardo (Eddy) Almeida. “The membership is behind the team in defending workplace rights. Let’s resolve this through constructive dialogue.”
Thomas says it’s time to take a step back and avoid disrupting students’ education.
“The way forward lies in a willingness to negotiate a contract at the bargaining table,” said Thomas. “Let’s take a deep breath, roll up our sleeves and get a deal.”
Strike vote polling closes Saturday at 3 p.m.
Our offer to refer all unresolved issues to voluntary binding interest arbitration remains on the table.
The faculty team asks you to support the call to coordinated work action. As promised, we will use a successful strike mandate to engage in a series of escalating work-to-rule actions to put pressure on the administration of each college, not on students.
We encourage you to review faculty’s proposals and background information on your Local’s website, on our YouTube channel, or at collegefaculty.org.
In solidarity,
JP, Jonathan, Katie, Michelle, Ravi, Rebecca, Shawn
The CAAT-A Bargaining Team
RESPONSE TO THE CEC’S MISLEADING FAQ
As we head into the strike vote, it’s important for faculty to recognize that the CEC’s most recent FAQ document is intended to intimidate faculty and convince them that their voice does not matter. Do not listen: your voice matters. Threats aside, a strong strike mandate signals to the employer that faculty stand behind their demands and support the Bargaining Team.
A strong strike mandate is the only means to effectively respond to further escalation from the CEC—e.g. their promised imposition of terms and conditions. The CEC knows this, which is why it is trying to convince faculty not to vote ‘yes’. The CEC does not want faculty to have a means of responding to what it intends to do.
The faculty Team has made clear the importance and the implications of a strike mandate.
The CEC states the CAAT-A bargaining team has publicly stated that giving them a strike mandate will not lead to a strike. In fact, the faculty Team has stated no such thing. It has stated that a strike mandate does not automatically mean there will be a strike. It has also publicly stated that it will first pursue other labour actions, such as work-to-rule, and that a strike is a last resort. The CEC points out that the 2017 strike vote resulted in a strike. True. 13 previous strike votes in the history of the Ontario College system resulted in 3 other strikes.
There is nothing unreasonable about faculty demands, yet the CEC claims they ‘cannot ever’ be agreed to.
This is obvious hyperbole meant to distract from the fact that the Colleges simply do not want to bargain meaningful change. For decades, faculty have had to fight for their reasonable concerns to be addressed. The Colleges have traditionally resisted any attempts at progress. But solidarity in past rounds has resulted in needed progress nonetheless.
We should also ask: Why can’t the Colleges ever agree to these modest proposals for improvements to faculty working conditions and student learning conditions?
The CEC has failed to explain why they cannot agree to proposals as simple as:
Up to 1.8 additional minutes per student for weekly evaluation and feedback
Additional time for online teaching as needed, following discussion with your manager
Bridged benefits for partial load faculty between semesters with a written offer of future employment (and paid for by the faculty member)
Faculty permission needed for the sale or sharing of the course materials they produce
Meaningful dispute resolution mechanisms in agreed-to subcommittees
The CEC is trying to scare faculty by suggesting that a strike mandate will permit a rogue bargaining Team to do whatever it wants.
The whole point of the strike vote—and the provincewide meetings—is to consult with the membership and confirm their support. Furthermore, even after the strike vote, the Team will continue to consult with Local Presidents and the Bargaining Advisory CommitteeDD (which includes members from each college Local) at every step.
The CEC has made it clear that it will impose terms and conditions.
The terms it states it will impose as of Monday, Dec. 13 include an ‘update’ to the counselor class definition that would allow the Colleges to contract out counsellor work. This directly contradicts the CEC’s claim that it won’t impose terms and conditions that negatively impact faculty.
The CEC continues to repeat that ‘strikes start with strike votes’. But what actually starts a strike is the employer’s continued refusal to acknowledge the legitimate concerns and needs of its employees.
In this light, the CEC’s threat to ignore the collective voice of faculty is reckless and counterproductive.
A ‘yes’ vote in the Dec. 9th -11th is your opportunity to ensure that the voice of educators is heard. Do not let the CEC’s threats and scare-tactics dissuade you from standing up and demonstrating your support for a stronger College system for faculty and students
Strike vote begins Thursday, have you received your notice and PIN?
Your chance to send a strong message of solidarity to management begins Thursday at 9 a.m.
If you have not yet received a notice and PIN to cast a ballot in the strike vote, please contact the Ontario Labour Relations Board (“OLRB”) Help Desk during the hours of operation listed below.
If necessary, leave a detailed message with your full name, contact information, and the OLRB case number 1563-21-VO and a Labour Relations Officer will respond to your message as soon as possible.
OLRB Help Desk Telephone:French – (416) 434-6748English – (416) 326-7432
OLRB Help Desk Hours of Operation:December 8 (12:00 p.m. to 1 p.m.), December 9 (3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.), December 10 (10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.) and December 11 (9 a.m. to 10 a.m.). All times listed are Eastern Time.
Send a message that we put students first
As we inch closer to our strike mandate online vote this week, we are hosting two provincial faculty meetings. While this is unfolding, our click to email your college president initiative is also underway. As well, your Bargaining Team has been busy presenting at local GMM’s! Your engagement and participation in these initiatives could not be more important. There is still room for a negotiated deal without escalation. Together we can make this happen!
1) Click to Email Your College President: A primary responsibility of our College Presidents is to put students first and build community. Right now, that means supporting the option that allows faculty to focus on student success and ensures students continue their studies without distraction or additional stress – we are in a pandemic. They must direct the College Employer Council to return to the table and bargain faculty’s demands in good faith, or failing that, agree to Voluntary Binding Interest Arbitration. Final Offer Selection arbitration (FOS) (which is being suggested as the answer by our employer), is not an option. We are not gambling with our students. A win-lose position (which is what FOS provides) is gambling. We are not gamblers – end point. Click this link to submit your letter to your college president! https://www.collegefaculty.org/write-your-college-president/
2) Provincial Meetings December 7 and December 8: In the past two weeks we have managed to attend more than 15 GMM’s. The engagement has been outstanding and the questions entirely on point. In another attempt to engage faculty, there are two province-wide information sessions with the CAAT-A Bargaining Team happening on December 7th for Partial Load Faculty, and December 8th for All Faculty. Both sessions are from 6:30-8:00pm on Zoom. You can register for these sessions at https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_-L13lwsgSYi3GcKccW1lrA
3) Strike Mandate Vote Online: Voting in support of strike action does not mean that walking a picket line is inevitable. In fact, it likely means the exact opposite! If faculty vote in favour of work action, it provides us leverage – it increases the likelihood of our Employer returning to the table to negotiate a fair deal! Voting in favour of strike action allows us to organize work action, including work to rule. The strike mandate vote will take place online from Thursday December 9 until Saturday December 11 (at 3:00 P.M.). All current full-time and partial-load faculty will be eligible to vote. Ministry details (including a PIN) to be sent along shortly!
4) Auditor General Report: Oversight of Public and Private Colleges in OntarioThis report is scathing and entirely supports the need for the structural changes we are bargaining for! You can find more information about this report at: https://www.auditor.on.ca/en/content/annualreports/arreports/en21/AR_PrivateColleges_en21.pdfhttps://www.auditor.on.ca/en/content/annualreports/arreports/en21/AR_PublicColleges_en21.pdf
In solidarity, JP, Jonathan, Katie, Michelle, Ravi, Rebecca, and Shawn
Strike vote confirmed, to be held online Dec. 9-11
Dear CAAT-A Members,
We wanted to keep you updated on the latest developments around bargaining as we progress towards a scheduled strike vote.
The Ontario Labour Relations Board has confirmed that it will conduct a strike vote online, from Thursday December 9 until Saturday December 11 (at 3:00 P.M.). All current full-time and partial-load faculty will be eligible to vote, and each Local is currently confirming the lists of eligible faculty.
A successful strike mandate is legally required in order for the bargaining team to organize any work action, including work-to-rule, targeted strikes, or rolling strikes at different workplaces. It is made necessary by the CEC’s refusal so far to negotiate any of the core issues raised by faculty in this round of bargaining, including workload, job security, use of faculty course materials, and the conditions of partial-load faculty during and between their contracts.
A successful strike mandate will tell the employer that faculty are standing behind their demands, standing up for each other, and standing behind the bargaining team. It will also give faculty the chance to organize a response if the Employer unilaterally imposes new Terms and Conditions of employment, which it has prepared to do as early as December 13.
Upcoming Province-wide Bargaining Update Meetings
The CAAT-A Divisional Executive is organizing two Province-wide Bargaining Updates, in advance of the strike authorization vote. The Bargaining Team will be presenting bargaining updates at these meetings, and attendees will have the chance to submit questions.
Pre-registration is required, at the links below. All members are invited to both meetings, although the Tuesday meeting will be devoted to partial-load issues.
Tuesday, December 7th, 6:30-8:00 pm (devoted to partial-load issues)
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_UFCTLcHhTPGTTpjaH68hUg
Wednesday, December 8th, 6:30-8:00 pm (devoted to issues of all faculty)
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_-L13lwsgSYi3GcKccW1lrA
Simultaneous translation for these meetings has been arranged.
General Membership Meetings
The bargaining team members are grateful for the opportunity to present at the General Membership meetings at several locals so far this week. We applaud the high levels of member turnout and engagement that continue to attend every step of this bargaining cycle. Member questions so far have helped provide valuable feedback to the team, and helped us to better hone the message that faculty are committed to making necessary improvements in this round of bargaining, in the face of Employer’s threats and efforts to lay the foundation for increased targeting of specific faculty groups. We look forward to the several Local GMMs that we will be attending prior to the provincewide meetings on the 7th and 8th.
In solidarity,JP, Jonathan, Katie, Michelle, Ravi, Rebecca, Shawn
Bargaining Team hosting two new province-wide info meetings on Dec. 7 & 8
The CAAT-A Bargaining Team will be holding two faculty meetings via Zoom (December 7 and 8) to provide an update on bargaining and the upcoming strike mandate vote. This is an excellent opportunity for members to hear the latest news and answers to their questions. Both meetings are open to all members, although the meeting on December 7 will focus on partial-load issues.
Pre-registration is required. Please register for the meeting(s) using your private (non-college) email:
- Partial-Load faculty meeting
Tuesday, December 7, 2021, 6.30 – 8 p.m.
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_UFCTLcHhTPGTTpjaH68hUg - Province-wide faculty meeting
Wednesday, December 8, 2021, 6.30 – 8 p.m.
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_-L13lwsgSYi3GcKccW1lrA
Upon registration, you will immediately receive a confirmation email with the actual meeting link. French translation will be available for both meetings.
Don’t miss this valuable opportunity to chat with the Team as we continue #BargainingForBetter.
Bargaining Team receives notice of no-board report, strike vote confirmed for Dec. 9th-11th
Greetings faculty:We have reviewed the College Employer Council team’s latest offers, including their proposal for Final Offer Selection arbitration, received through various email channels this week.
It is important to note that the faculty team offered Voluntary Binding Interest Arbitration – not Final Offer Selection, which we made clear in our presentation to the CEC on November 18.
Final Offer Selection is when the arbitrator is only allowed to choose one side’s offer or the other’s in its entirety. It allows no room for reasoned consideration around the serious issues surrounding each article. It allows no room for compromise, or for selecting the best proposals in each side’s offer. It chooses winners and losers, and therefore leads to toxic labour relations.
Voluntary Binding Interest Arbitration is a very different process that examines every issue under debate within the collective agreement closely, with the arbitrator issuing a ruling on each.
We are also extremely concerned that the CEC put this proposal to the public and members without having conversations at the table first. In other words, the CEC’s behaviour is the exact opposite of good-faith bargaining.
We have now received notice of the “No Board” report from the Ministry-appointed Conciliator, and have reviewed . As we endeavour to clarify and explore next steps with the CEC team, we continue to plan for the upcoming online strike mandate vote, confirmed to take place December 9, 10, and 11. Detailed instructions will follow, as soon as we receive them from the Ontario Labour Relations Board.
We are also planning two province-wide information sessions for faculty:
December 7 from 6:30-8:00 pm: A session specific to partial-load facultyDecember 8 from 6:30-8:00 pm: A session open to all faculty (including partial-load)
In the meantime, the team continues to be happy to attend Local General Membership Meetings and Information Sessions to address member questions and concerns.
In solidarity,
JP, Jonathan, Katie, Michelle, Ravi, Rebecca, Shawn
Provincial bargaining update meetings Dec. 7th & 8th
Dear Faculty Members,
The Bargaining Team will be holding two Faculty Meetings in the upcoming weeks:
1. Partial-Load Faculty Meeting
- Tues. Dec 7, 2021 – 6:30 pm to 8:00 pm
2. All Faculty Meeting
- Wed. Dec 8, 2021 – 6:30 pm to 8:00 pm
Please Save the Date!The meeting links will come shortly.
In solidarity,The CAAT-A Divisional Executive
Bargaining Team responds to CEC arbitration offer
Greetings faculty:
You have likely received a new update from the CEC, in which they “agree” to arbitration. While the faculty bargaining team will look carefully at their offer tonight and tomorrow, we should caution you that their offer is not what it appears to be on the surface, and clarify that the CEC is not agreeing to a proposal made by the faculty Bargaining Team.
Specifically, the CEC is proposing “final offer selection”–a process by which means an arbitrator would be forced to choose one offer or the other in its entirety. This is different from the more common practice of “interest arbitration” (which the faculty team had explicitly offered at the bargaining table), where arbitrators select which parts of each offer they believe are the most appropriate.
We also note that your bargaining team received this proposal only minutes before it was distributed publicly through College e-mail and the CEC website. We regret that the CEC is choosing to bargain in public in this way, and we feel that it is not conducive to a productive bargaining relationship.
You have also recently received communication from the College Employer Council (CEC) regarding their revised (not final) offer, which was sent by email to the faculty team at 4:40pm on Tuesday, November 23. In both this communication and today’s, the CEC has proposed no further bargaining dates.
Attached, you will find a presentation that includes a comparison of the two offers — including the areas where they agree — as well as a clear infographic about what’s happening now, and what you can do to help.
To be clear:
- The faculty team has offered to go to voluntary binding interest arbitration to avoid labour disruption. Despite the impression they tried to present in their latest announcement, the CEC team still has not agreed to this.
- The CEC’s current offer does not address faculty needs with regard to workload, partial-load issues, contracting out faculty work, use of faculty materials, online learning, equity, Indigeneity, Decolonization and TRC, and the counsellor class definition. Our current offer contains reasonable, lawful, and low- and no-cost proposals which the CEC refuses to bargain.
- The CEC has posted their latest offer and response publicly, and circulated it to faculty directly without first discussing it at the bargaining table.
The faculty team has reached out to the conciliator to invite the CEC team back to the table, to determine whether the CEC team is prepared to continue bargaining or to agree to binding interest arbitration.
Below are some quick answers to common questions faculty have raised about a strike mandate:
Does a successful strike vote mean there will be a full strike?
Despite the CEC’s assertions, the simple answer is no.
A strong strike mandate indicates to the employer that faculty are serious about their demands, and about their willingness to take action to support them.
The faculty team has planned an escalating campaign of labour and other actions to build pressure on the employer, and to be able to respond to attempts by the CEC to impose terms and conditions.
Will we be on strike over the holiday break?
No.
When will the team call a strike?
The faculty team will not call a strike over the holiday break. In fact, the faculty team has planned an escalating work-to-rule and labour action campaign to build pressure on the employer and avoid a strike.
What would a strike look like now?
It’s not about walking around (mostly empty) buildings with signs: it’s about recognizing that our collective power comes from the work that we do. Withholding that work (in various forms) is what will force the employer to recognize its value.
Questions you should ask your College President and the CEC team:
- Why won’t the CEC team agree to voluntary binding interest arbitration to settle outstanding issues and avoid labour disruption? As a college president, will you tell the CEC team to either bargain faculty’s key demands or agree to send outstanding issues to binding interest arbitration?
- If the CEC’s offer is fair and reasonable and represents the best they can do this round, why won’t they call a final offer vote?
- This is something only the CEC team can do, and the results would tell them exactly what faculty think of their offer.
- Why won’t the CEC team tell faculty whether or not they plan to impose terms and conditions and what those terms will be?
Again, we encourage you to read the attached presentation and infographic, to better understand the current bargaining situation, and to get a clear sense of each side’s offer. We look forward to communicating more shortly, once we have had an opportunity to carefully consider the CEC’s latest proposal, as we are similarly reviewing their latest proposed Offer of Settlement.
Your Faculty Bargaining Team,
JP, Jonathan, Katie, Michelle, Ravi, Rebecca, and Shawn
Team calls for strike vote to protect members from effects of CEC-requested no-board report
Dear faculty:
As you may know, the CEC team walked away from negotiations yesterday without responding to our offer for voluntary binding arbitration, and has asked the conciliator for a “no board” report.
It is simply false that the faculty team presented a “take it or leave it” offer. The faculty team offered to refer outstanding issues to binding arbitration, which would see a neutral party issue a binding decision on which proposals make their way into our next Collective Agreement. It is a good faith attempt to avoid additional stress on faculty and students, and to (once again) avoid further escalation. Unfortunately, the CEC has chosen to reject this path forward.
It is also false for the CEC to assert that both mediation and conciliation failed. Mediation did not fail: it concluded, and bargaining continued. Conciliation did not fail: the CEC team walked away while the conciliator prepares the report they requested.
At every stage of negotiations, the faculty team has attempted to avoid labour disruption–by compromising, by incorporating the CEC team’s concerns and ideas with our own, and through creative problem-solving such as voluntary binding arbitration.
The CEC team, by contrast, appears to be employing the same playbook as they have in the past several rounds of bargaining: deny faculty issues exist, delay implementation of changes, and bargain toward impasse.
The CEC team’s decision yesterday to ask the Conciliator for a “no board” report leaves us in a vulnerable position. This report removes the last remaining step before the employer is legally able to lock out faculty (which they say they’d never do) or to unilaterally impose terms and conditions of employment 16 days after the “no board” report is received.
The imposition of terms and conditions is a very real threat, and one that the CEC exercised in 2009. Imposition is a nuclear option: the Employer can literally dictate whatever they’d like to have as their preferred working conditions for faculty. This can include changing compensation, workload, academic freedom, two-tiering conditions (including different conditions for different programs), or the right to file grievances. These are all areas the CEC team has targeted in language they’ve tabled this round.
A successful strike vote is faculty’s only recourse in the face of imposition–our right to resist imposed terms and conditions is limited without it. A strike vote allows faculty to engage in any of a wide variety of coordinated labour actions, up to and including a strike. Recently, we have seen other Unions, particularly in the education sector, adopt a variety of creative labour disruptions to demonstrate the value of their work and the importance of their demands: These include work-to-rule actions (i.e., following the strict letter of the Collective Agreement), refusals to perform overtime, strikes targeting specific work tasks, and/or rolling strikes targeting different workplaces.
Above all, however, the strike vote is a vote for our solidarity as a bargaining unit: It forces management to negotiate our proposals seriously rather than walking away from negotiations and unilaterally imposing working conditions. It states that we as a Union will stand up and stand together in the face of the Employer’s escalation and aggression.
The other option open to the CEC is a forced offer vote. If they believe that their current offer is one acceptable to faculty, they can present that offer directly to faculty for a vote. As we have outlined, however, the Employer’s current offer contains several concessions, including a moratorium for several years on Union Locals’ ability to gain new full-time faculty positions through grieving; language that would threaten the job security of counsellors; and increased limits on which partial load faculty are eligible to exercise seniority rights through the partial load registry.
By refusing both voluntary binding arbitration and by not exercising their option to call a forced offer vote, the CEC team has made it clear that they know their current offer is not a good one for faculty. To obscure this, they’re trying to distract CAAT-A members by painting the faculty team as the ones who are unreasonable and unwilling to compromise.
In response, we encourage you to reach out to your College Presidents, who direct the CEC, to tell the CEC team to come back to the table, finish negotiations on issues where the teams are close, and to agree to refer outstanding issues to voluntary binding arbitration. As we move into the end of the semester, the faculty team has left that option on the table–it is up to the CEC now to demonstrate their stated commitment to labour stability and improved labour relations, rather than forcing their agenda on faculty and students.
In solidarity,
JP, Jonathan, Katie, Michelle, Ravi, Rebecca, Shawn
Employer team rejects voluntary arbitration, abandons negotiations setting stage for labour action
Dear CAAT-A Members,
Today, your faculty bargaining team returned to the bargaining table, to resume negotiations with the assistance of a Conciliation Officer appointed by the Ministry of Labour. It was the first day that we have met with the College Employer Council (CEC) bargaining team in a week, despite our offer for additional days earlier this week.
We commenced the day by providing a new Offer of Settlement that features an attempt to move closer to agreement and which ensures that faculty’s needs are addressed in concrete terms now in the key areas of Workload, Partial-Load, Equity and Indigeneity, and Protections of Faculty Instructional Materials.
Since our latest offer incorporates additional language proposed by the CEC team in their last offer, we believe that the two sides are close on some areas. Indeed, even three of the CEC’s recent publications claim that “CEC and CAAT-A proposals are very similar.”
Noting how close the two sides are, and noting that there is very little room for the faculty team to compromise further, we made a formal offer to the CEC, to have both teams agree to voluntary binding arbitration to avoid escalation leading to labour disruption.
Unfortunately, we regret to inform you that our efforts to find common ground and achieve a settlement through negotiations or a mutually-agreed process were unsuccessful. Specifically:
The CEC team rejected our latest Offer of Settlement;
The CEC team rejected our offer to refer all outstanding issues to voluntary binding arbitration;
The CEC team requested that the Conciliator file a no-board report, which is a legally required step towards labour disruption, including lockout, strike or Imposed Terms and Conditions of Employment.
While the CEC’s conduct is regrettable, it is nevertheless typical of their behaviour throughout the bargaining process, which has been marked by tactics that escalate towards labour conflict. These tactics include requesting conciliation—a first necessary step on the legal path to labour disruption—and filing legal complaints in the middle of the bargaining process.
The CEC team’s request for the Conciliator to file a no-board report is dismaying, as it indicates that the CEC team is unwilling to counter the faculty team’s compromises with compromises of its own. We note that the CEC team’s current Offer of Settlement fails to meet our members’ needs and our students’ needs in its current form, since;
It fails to include any necessary increase in time attributed for evaluating student writing or projects
It fails to include any necessary increase in time attributed for teaching classes with an online component
It fails to provide the necessary transparency for the Partial-Load faculty
It creates new limits on which Partial-Load faculty are eligible for inclusion in the Partial-Load Registry
It proposes three committee structures to address issues including workload; Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion; and Indigenization, Decolonization and Truth & Reconciliation, but the lack of adequate dispute mechanisms in these structures means that the CEC will be able to effectively veto any effective change that might otherwise come out of them
It proposes language that would permit greater contracting-out of Counsellors’ work.
It prevents Union Locals from filing staffing grievances to create new full-time positions and replace retirees, for the next three years.
Since the CEC team has effectively turned its back on negotiations, and the faculty team has used every tool we can to avoid escalation, it is now up to all of us to stand together for our priorities. To demonstrate faculty power at the table, the team needs you to show your support– to show this Employer that faculty need change now and that faculty are willing to stand up for ourselves, for each other, and for our students.
The faculty team’s current Offer of Settlement includes concrete proposals to address the immediate needs of faculty and students related to online course delivery, additional time to evaluate student work, along with no-cost improvements to better the working conditions of partial-load faculty. These are balanced with other proposals for effective structures to address longer term needs in the areas of Workload (including Partial-Load workload); Equity, Diversity and Inclusion; and Indigeneity, Decolonization, and Truth & Reconciliation.
We believe that management’s current offer is designed to ensure that necessary change does not occur now or in the next three years. The faculty team’s offer is designed to ensure that necessary change begins now, and grows through the life of our next Collective Agreement.
Now that the CEC team has walked away from negotiations and rejected the faculty team’s offer for voluntary binding arbitration, they have left faculty with literally no choice than to organize in favour of the faculty offer. We ask that you prepare for this by ensuring that your Union Local can reach you at a non-College email address and phone number, and that you participate in upcoming solidarity actions, digital pickets, and local events. We will be in touch very soon with next steps.
Together we are strong; together we can demand that the Employer agree to reasonable improvements needed by faculty and students.
In solidarity,
Your CAAT-A Bargaining Team
JP, Jonathan, Katie, Michelle, Ravi, Rebecca, and Shawn
Talks enters conciliation, CEC rejects proposal for a media blackout and agreement not to escalate
Dear Members;
Attached below please find a document from the faculty bargaining team that compares the current offer of each bargaining team, as we enter into the process of conciliation, starting Thursday.
Additionally, we have offered the College Employer Council (CEC) team a blackout for those dates that we are at the bargaining table together, along with a voluntary agreement not to escalate via a no-board report or strike vote until we have exhausted attempts to reach a negotiated settlement. We have been informed that both of these suggestions have been rejected by the CEC team, so the Faculty team continues work on a counter-proposal ahead of our Thursday meeting, which is the first scheduled meeting since Nov. 11.
We look forward to continued negotiations throughout this process, assisted by the Ministry-appointed Conciliation Officer.
In solidarity,
JP, Jonathan, Katie, Michelle, Ravi, Rebecca, Shawn
Bargaining Team responds to latest CEC claims and well-attended provincial town hall
Dear Faculty,
It was a pleasure to meet last night with over 1,500 members at our Provincewide Bargaining Update. It was our first chance to provide an update and talk with members after several weeks of mediation and bargaining and we welcomed the chance to field member questions.
The meeting occurred following the mutually-agreed scheduled ending of a communications blackout during this week’s negotiations between the teams. The faculty bargaining team has also proposed three additional dates for negotiations next week, and we hope to build upon the momentum of this week, which saw both teams table new offers. The team has yet to meet with or hear from the Ministry of Labour-appointed conciliator requested by the CEC team, and has not received a request from the conciliator to continue a blackout.
Attached, please find our latest offer of settlement, on behalf of faculty. It represents many significant compromises from the last offer that we made available to you. While these compromises were very difficult for us to arrive at, they represented our best effort to achieve a settlement at the table, without abandoning the priorities that faculty tasked us with negotiating. These priorities include workload (including work associated with online teaching), Partial-Load, Equity and Indigenization, and the Counsellor class definition. While Bill 124 has limited our ability to negotiate salary and benefits, both parties’ offers currently have language that would see our compensation negotiations reopened in the event that Bill 124 is overturned or replaced.
Despite any compromises, however, we believe that this offer maintains our principles, enhances stability in the college system, and provides a balance between modest short-term changes that faculty need immediately in workload, coupled with proposals that would create bipartisan structures for researching and effecting long-term structural changes needed in the system: to workload; to Equity, Diversity, and Inclusivity; and to Indigenization, Decolonization, and Truth & Reconciliation.
In short, the faculty proposal maintains that some immediate changes are needed, and longer-term changes will require careful consideration and research. It also maintains that this round of bargaining is an appropriate place to establish a strong framework for that future work, to ensure that it actually produces concrete results.
We have also attached a summary chart challenging some of the claims made by the CEC team in regard to our proposals. We hope you find it helpful, and will keep you updated on any developments. If you haven’t already, make sure that your Local has your non-college contact information to ensure you are able to receive those updates.
In the meantime, here’s how you can show your support:
- Download your very own CAAT-A Zoom background
- Add union content to your photo on your College’s LMS
- Subscribe to your Local’s and CAAT-A’s Social Media
- FB: https://www.facebook.com/OntarioCollegeFaculty (locally https://www.facebook.com/Local354OPSEU)
- IG: @CAATAbargaining
- Twitter @CAATfaculty (locally @354Local)
- Actively involve yourself in your employer’s social media campaigns, using their hashtags and introducing bargaining issues (e.g., #CentennialFam, #ExperienceGeorgian, #LaCitéEnsemble)
In solidarity,
JP, Jonathan, Katie, Michelle, Ravi, Rebecca, Shawn
Provincial town hall postponed until Nov. 11 at 6 p.m. to respect latest media blackout
The CAAT-A Bargaining Team will be back at the bargaining table with the Management Bargaining Team on Monday, November 8, 2021. We are pleased that discussions will be resuming. Both parties have agreed to a communication blackout until Thursday, November 11, 2021 at 6 pm, to allow frank and open discussions to take place.
In light of the communication blackout, we will need to postpone the highly anticipated Province-wide Faculty Meeting scheduled for Monday, November 8 at 6:30 pm. However, it will not be postponed for long: please join us on Thursday, November 11 at 6:30 PM, when the blackout will have been lifted.
If you have already registered for the meeting, you do not need to re-register. You may use the same meeting link received in your original confirmation email. If you have not registered yet, you may register here:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN__AEsdUgOTmi6BZdGxl3q7g. Please note that you will receive a confirmation email with the meeting link immediately upon registration.
This bargaining landscape is continually changing, and we are adapting with the process. Our Bargaining Team is deeply committed to reaching a negotiated settlement at the table.
Talks resume Monday after CEC accepts invite
Nov. 5, 2021 – Negotiations are now scheduled to continue Monday through Thursday under an agreed media blackout.
Both the CAAT-A and CEC Bargaining teams have agreed to return to the bargaining table on Monday November 8. They have also agreed to schedule additional bargaining days up to and including Thursday November 11.
During this time, it has been agreed that there will be a communications blackout and the teams will not be issuing any further information until 6:00 pm on Nov. 11 or at an earlier time if both parties agree.
The Bargaining Team reports they are eager to return to discussions that foster a focused, frank and productive dialogue. They also remain committed to negotiating a settlement and securing labour stability for students and all members of the college community.
Nov. 4, 2021 – There is some good news to report. Today, the faculty team invited the CEC back to the table to continue bargaining. The CEC team has agreed, and we are heading back to the table on Monday, Nov. 8.
Town Hall Meeting Called to Discuss Latest Bargaining Developments
Dear Faculty Member,
Over the last week, the bargaining landscape has changed dramatically: the communication blackout was lifted, the mediator’s report was released, and the College Employer Council (CEC) has filed for conciliation and an unfair labour practice complaint against OPSEU/SEFPO as the bargaining agent.
Any one of these changes would merit questions and uncertainty, let alone all of them together. Therefore, we would like to address your questions and discuss next steps.
We are inviting you to a virtual Province-wide Faculty Meeting to be held on Monday, November 8, 2021 from 6:30 – 8:30 pm. Please register at the link below. Please note that the link below is for registration only; the actual meeting link will arrive in the confirmation email following registration.
We are looking forward to seeing you at the meeting.
In solidarity,
JP, Jonathan, Katie, Michelle, Ravi, Rebecca, Shawn
You are invited to a Zoom webinar.
When: Nov 8, 2021 06:30 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada) Topic: Province-wide Faculty Update
Register in advance for this webinar:https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN__AEsdUgOTmi6BZdGxl3q7g
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.
Bargaining Team responds to CEC claims and conciliation filing
update for Nov. 2, 2021
Greetings Faculty:
As you may have heard, the College Employer Council bargaining team has chosen to file for conciliation, and filed an unfair labour practice (ULP) complaint alleging bad-faith bargaining with the Ontario Labour Relations Board.
Shortly after, they also issued a press release that states: “Though conciliation has been requested, the CEC remains ready to bargain…”. We are confused by this claim, in light of their decision to escalate earlier the same day.
To review what has happened recently:
The mediator’s report was released last Thursday, October 28.
After we received the mediator’s report, the faculty team invited the CEC to meet on Monday, November 1 to discuss the next steps, once each team had a chance to consult with their principals. We also asked that neither team escalate further until we had a chance to meet.
On Monday morning, the CEC filed for conciliation and filed an unfair labour practice complaint against OPSEU/SEFPO as the bargaining agent.
Conciliation is a process by which a trade union or an employer can ask the Ontario Ministry of Labour for help in resolving their differences so that they can reach a collective agreement. If parties are in negotiations, they must use the government’s conciliation services before they can get into a legal position to engage in a lock-out, imposition, or strike.
If the conciliation officer determines that no collective agreement is achievable through the conciliation process, they inform the Ontario Minister of Labour. The Minister then generally issues a “no board” report, which is a legal precondition for lockout, strike, or the imposition of terms and conditions by the employer.
We have attached a quick overview of how the faculty team has modified our proposals between August and October. This chart clearly demonstrates our significant movement from our original proposals.
With that in mind, the team does look forward to the opportunity to present and discuss revised offers during the conciliation process, once the outstanding legal issues caused by the ULP have been resolved.
We are also planning to hold a province-wide bargaining update meeting for members in the near future, and will send registration information ASAP.
In the meantime, we invite you to read a new message from the Canadian Association of University Teachers, in support of our bargaining efforts and proposals, at: https://www.caut.ca/node/10785
Together, we are stronger.
In solidarity,
JP, Jonathan, Katie, Michelle, Ravi, Rebecca, Shawn
Update from the Bargaining Team on next steps following the end of mediation talks
Oct. 29, 2021 – We have heard from a number of you asking questions about what’s next, now that mediation has failed.
Your bargaining team met today with the Local Presidents and Bargaining Advisory Committee. We discussed the mediator’s report, the faculty team’s offer of settlement, and sought direction on next steps. The Local leadership was unanimous that they would like the team to continue to bargain.
We have invited the CEC team to meet on Monday, to give both sides a chance to discuss the current state of negotiations after speaking with their principals. We have also suggested that neither side escalate until after we are able to meet again.
We are also in the process of scheduling a province-wide virtual bargaining update for all members in early November, and will share that information with you as soon as it is confirmed.
We look forward to meeting with you in the coming days, and to providing you with further information now that the communications blackout has been lifted.
In solidarity,
JP, Jonathan, Katie, Michelle, Ravi, Rebecca, and Shawn
Bargaining Team reports that mediation has failed
Dear Faculty:
It is with great disappointment and frustration that we report to you that mediation has failed. Attached is the final report of the mediator, along with the offer of settlement we tabled during mediation.
We absolutely disagree with the finding of the mediator’s report, most of which paints the faculty bargaining team as recalcitrant and unreasonable, as well as unwilling to negotiate realistic changes to our Collective Agreement. As you will see in the offer of settlement, your faculty team focused our demands on workload, partial-load working conditions, equity, Indigenization, and intellectual property rights; in other words, the top demands of faculty. We stripped our initial proposals down to their bare bones in order to try and start a dialogue with the CEC team. We responded to their questions, provided research, incorporated their language and structures into our revised proposals. We were repeatedly told by the CEC team that their offer of settlement was the only path to a negotiated agreement.
While Mediator Keller was suggested by our bargaining agent, OPSEU, and we did consent, as a team we have great concern with the way in which the process of mediation unfolded. In particular, we believe Mediator Keller’s conclusions about the proposals were arrived at on the basis of very little direct communication with the faculty bargaining team, and even less understanding of the process by which the faculty team arrived at its proposals, nor the urgent needs of our members that they attempt to address.
Realistically, Mediator Keller’s position reflects that of the CEC and is a classic approach to collective bargaining: that the only changes possible in any round of negotiations are minor and few in number. Our team’s approach to bargaining is that attempting to negotiate greater changes is possible and necessary. It is our opinion that it is realistic and appropriate to bargain for all work to be paid work; for partial-load faculty to have that work recognized and appropriately compensated; that evaluation and preparation factors that have not changed in 30+ years need to be adjusted; that mode of delivery affects faculty workload; and that Counsellors, Librarians, Indigenous faculty and faculty from equity-seeking groups deserve fair working conditions now.
We also know that faculty having intellectual property rights has NOT prevented innovation or research in the university sector, and would not do so here.
We also know that the CEC’s offer of settlement is not enough for faculty, nor will it prevent the ongoing and accelerating erosion of full-time faculty work in the colleges.
We invite you to read our offer of settlement, along with the mediator’s report, and will set up time to consult with the Local Presidents and Bargaining Advisory Committee as soon as possible.
We also promise to continue to bargain and fight for the improvements you need and deserve.
In solidarity,JP, Jonathan, Katie, Michelle, Ravi, Rebecca, and Shawn
Media blackout imposed by mediator
Mediator Brian Keller has imposed a total communication blackout as mediation continues between Ontario’s public college faculty, represented by OPSEU/SEFPO, and the employer, the College Employer Council. Until the blackout is lifted, OPSEU/SEFPO will be unable to provide further information on the progress of negotiations.
CEC agrees to mediation Friday
Sept. 24, 2021 – We are happy to report that today, the sixteenth scheduled day of negotiations, the College Employer Council’s Bargaining Team agreed to the process of mediation that we proposed last Friday in the hopes of fostering constructive dialogue between the teams. We are confident that both sides will soon reach agreement on details regarding the process.
When not at the table, the team spent much of the day going through our published proposals in an effort to distill them further and to incorporate feedback that we have received. We look forward to continuing a process of dialogue and compromise, in consultation with a mediator.
We are also very pleased to report the release today of the 2021 Update on Education in Ontario Colleges by Kevin MacKay and Martin Devitt, which was distributed to members earlier today. This is the first major update to MacKay’s 2014 Report on Education in Ontario Colleges, and provides an important look at current social trends that affect both our students’ education and our members’ working conditions.
In solidarity, JP, Jonathan, Katie, Michelle, Ravi, Rebecca, Shawn
2021 updated Report on Education released
In an updated report on the state of Ontario’s colleges, the Divisional Executive of the college faculty members in OPSEU/SEFPO calls on government to approach the post-pandemic world with a stronger vision for post-secondary education.
The report — 2021 Update on Education in Ontario Colleges — is a follow-up to the 2014 Report on Education in Ontario Colleges. Both detail a vision for colleges in which “faculty, administrators and the Province are equal partners in ensuring a high quality, publicly funded, equitable college system.”
The report says we face a “clear choice” when it comes to our colleges: “slip further down the slope of austerity, privatization, precarity and reduced quality, or move towards a publicly-funded, student and faculty-centered, high-quality model of education.
The full report contains 17 specific recommendations for putting colleges back on the path towards publicly-funded, student and faculty-centered, high-quality model of education.
Click here to read the full report or download a printable PDF.
Faculty Bargaining Town Hall: September 27, 7:00 PM
We welcome you to join us for a Town Hall to discuss where we are in the bargaining process.
Register in advance for this webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_rPZZLM3qRVOR3w6B9E2E3w
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar. Registration in advance is necessary because each attendee will receive a unique link.
You can also submit questions for the Town Hall and comments in advance to: CAATAopenhouse@gmail.com
TODAY’S BARGAINING SUMMARY
The faculty team invited the CEC team to the table today to clarify the status of bargaining, respond to their correspondence regarding mediation, and to propose additional dates.
In a recent update posted to their website and circulated to faculty at many colleges, the CEC team erroneously claimed that bargaining was on hold. The faculty team did not consent to putting bargaining on hold, nor had the CEC team notified us that their intent was to suspend bargaining. We asked that they issue a correction.
We let the CEC team know that our offer for mediation without escalation or preconditions remains on the table. Despite our agreement to remove all faculty proposals without prejudice to proceed with mediation, and despite our agreement with the ground rules proposed by the CEC, in his response letter, CEO Graham Lloyd says that unless faculty are willing to remove our list of 17 demands, the CEC team is unwilling to consider mediation.
Lloyd stated that mediation can only be successful if both parties set aside their proposals and faculty set aside their demands, explaining that “[the CEC team’s] position has not changed. For mediation to be successful, the parties must show flexibility and compromise.” These appear to be contradictory messages, however, we remain willing to engage in mediation should the CEC team’s position become more flexible.
The faculty team also proposed 4 additional dates in October to continue bargaining if a settlement is not able to be reached by September 30.
We continue our own work to move closer to a negotiated settlement that addresses faculty demands, and plan to meet the CEC team again tomorrow.
In solidarity,JP, Jonathan, Katie, Michelle, Ravi, Rebecaa, Shawn
Video update on the the latest round of bargaining from Local 562
Thanks to our sister local 562 (Humber) for this concise video update on contract talks this week.
Summary of CEC settlement offer and Bargaining Team’s rationale for rejection
Bargaining Update 22 September 2021
What are the issues with the employer’s offer of settlement?
The CAAT-A Bargaining Team met with Local Presidents and the Bargaining Advisory Committee on Monday, September 20, to review the College Employer Council team’s offer of settlement, tabled last Friday.
Below is a summary chart of the CEC team’s current offer of settlement, along with a detailed explanation of why the faculty team, after consultation with the Local Presidents and Bargaining Advisory Committee, cannot recommend the offer to members. Simply put, the CEC offer does not address faculty’s demands, nor does it reflect the changes that are immediately needed in the system.
CEC Settlement Offer (Sept. 15, 2021) Summary
| Issue | Employer’s Offer Includes | Why Can’t Your Team Recommend It? |
| Workload | Item 2: Non-binding workload task force to study issues of interest to both Union and Employer – Not co-chaired; Union pays ½ of all costs Item 3: FT Faculty who are obliged to provide retroactive accommodation after teaching period may turn to WMG to resolve issue of workload after the semester is completed Item 4: PL Faculty who are obliged to provide retroactive accommodation after contract period may discuss additional compensation with supervisor | · No changes to workload formula for three years (until next CA), if at all · Preparation and evaluation factors remain unchanged since 1985 · No recognition of different preparation demands for online or hy-flex / multi-mode delivery · No additional time for student accommodations · Proposed Task Force explicitly targets current workload protections for faculty in apprenticeship, academic upgrading, aviation programs and field placement supervision · Inequitable access to Workload Monitoring Group: Counsellors, librarians, and PL faculty denied |
| Staffing | Item 7: Article 2.02 and 2.03A staffing grievances may not include data from Sept. 1, 2014–Dec. 20, 2017 or March 23, 2020–April 30, 2022. This will limit the Union’s ability to create new full-time positions | · This is a concession to our staffing language (Article 2), as opposed to the improvements in the Faculty team’s proposal · No language preventing contracting out · No language to establish and safeguard a stable complement of full-time faculty · No requirement for Colleges to give preference to hiring partial-load faculty instead of part-time · No minimum requirement for staffing Colleges with counsellors or librarians |
| Partial – Load | Item 8: PL credited with service for scheduled teaching days that fall on holidays, for purposes of 26.10C Item 9: Convert PL registry to academic year instead of calendar year; move registration date from Oct. 30 to April 30. | · No measurement of actual PL workload (including prep, evaluation, out of class assistance) · No mechanism to limit actual workload associated with PL contract · No improvements to PL seniority language; no improved transparency of or access to the partial-load registry · No improvements to access to benefits between contracts (whereas faculty proposals would improve access) · No access to workload dispute resolution |
| Equity | Item 1: Non-binding equity, diversity + inclusion “joint advisory group” to collect demographic data – May make recommendations for changes to the Collective Agreementin the next round of bargaining – Not co-chaired; Union pays ½ of all costs Item 5: Non-binding Truth & Reconciliation Round Table to study issues of interest to both Union and Employer – 8 member Round Table with regional representation only – Makes recommendations a) for changes to the Collective Agreement in the next round of bargaining b) to individual colleges regarding policy – Not co-chaired; Union pays ½ of all costs | · No commitment to structural change · No improvements to equity language of the CA for at least 3 years, if at all · No improvements to transparency of college processes · No transparent investigation process for formal complaints of bullying or psychological harassment · No acknowledgement of the value of Indigenous education, knowledge or experience, when determining starting salary · No bipartisan, college-level apparatus to review college policies and implement non-discriminatory workplace systems, policies and practices, including employment equity · No leave to attend cultural events or expansion of the understanding of family bereavement leave |
| Academic Quality (Intellectual Property; Academic Freedom; Academic Decision- Making) | Item 6: Materials converted from face-to-face courses to online courses as a consequence of the pandemic won’t be used in “purpose-built online courses”, unless the faculty member uses that material when creating an assigned “purpose-built online course” | · No acknowledgement of faculty members’ IP rights, copyrights, and moral rights · No acknowledgement that Academic Freedom includes decision-making authority concerning curriculum, evaluation, mode of teaching, or the authority of counsellors to determine counselling services · Subjects faculty members’ intellectual property to sale and use without faculty knowledge or approval · No expansion of faculty voices in Colleges’ academic decision-making at the program and College level · Inequitable access to dispute resolution processes for faculty members · No acknowledgement of Indigenous peoples’ ownership and custody of their heritage · No acknowledgement of counsellor’s ability to exercise professional judgment |
| Compensation (Salary & Benefits) | Item 11: Government-imposed concession from Bill 124 – 1% increase/year for 3 years Item 12: Reopening clause in the event Bill 124 overturned Item 13: $4,000 / year for prescription cannabis | · [Faculty proposal not yet tabled, but restricted by government-imposed concession of Bill 124] |
| Coordinators | – | · No recognition that coordination is to be performed by faculty only · No language to ensure transparent, responsible and equitable treatment in the appointment, workload, and compensation of coordinators |
| Class Definitions | Item 10: Changed Counsellor class definition appears to restrict Counsellor definition to mental health, referrals, team participation, and applied research | · No acknowledgement of the breadth of work currently performed by Counsellors in college community and communities beyond · Removal of language around academic counselling performed by counsellors |
| Labour Relations | – | · No attribution for Union representatives’ time spent participating in joint college committees |
| Outside Work | – | · No recognition of faculty rights to work outside the College without a manager’s permission |
Partial-Load Demands
Below, we have included a separate summary of the faculty team’s proposals to address the demands of Partial-Load faculty, as well as what the CEC’s offer includes.
On August 3rd, the CAAT-A Bargaining Team tabled extensive non-monetary proposals to the College Employer Council (CEC) to improve the working conditions for the thousands of precarious partial-load (PL) faculty members in Ontario’s public college system.
Our proposals included:
- Preference language for partial-load over part-time positions.
- No contracting out language, to protect faculty work.
- A SWF for partial-load members to more accurately measure their work and provide workload limits.
- One-year contracts to provide greater stability to both faculty and students.
- Service credits for statutory holidays on which a PL member is scheduled to work.
- One month’s service credit for any month in which they work (removes the current 30 hours per month minimum).
- Quicker progression through the salary grid.
- Transparency of the PL registry – both the union executive and PL members would be able to view it.
- Counting all courses taught, including as part-time or sessional, for the purposes of the registry.
- Allowing previously-employed PL members to be eligible for the PL registry if they are currently part-time or sessional. (This eliminates a loophole management has been exploiting.)
- Giving PL members priority for courses that are substantially the same as ones they have previously taught, even when the course code or name of the course has changed.
- Entitling a PL member who has priority (under the PL registry) to the maximum possible PL workload assignment.
- PL members to be considered “internal applicants” for vacant full-time positions if they have worked as partial-load faculty within the previous six months (increased from the current four).
The CEC did not respond to these proposals until last week and have only addressed one of the above proposals in their extension offer of settlement – service credits for statutory holidays. Additionally, the proposals that the CEC has put on the table and threatened to return to if their offer of settlement is not accepted would only make partial load members even more precarious. Notably, the CEC proposes to attack the seniority rights that were won in the 2017 round of bargaining. In addition, they are proposing a probationary period of 1008 hours for PL members, which would allow for the employer to let a PL member go without any reason and restrict the member from being able to grieve to get their job back.
The hypocrisy of the CEC claiming that they are only looking to provide stability for students while exploiting the large contingent of precarious, contract faculty who teach these students is appalling. We will continue to bargain for much better for partial-load faculty members.
In solidarity,
Your CAAT-A Bargaining Team
CEC tables settlement offer that fails to address faculty demands and threatens concessions without union support
Bargaining Update 17 September 2021
The faculty and employer teams met today to discuss the additional proposals and an offer of settlement tabled by the College Employer Council on Wednesday at 4pm. We were pleased that the CEC responded to faculty’s request to table their complete package, and that they chose to include a settlement offer at the same time.
The Employer’s offer of settlement contains a number of concessions for faculty, and limited enhancements. Further, the faculty team was told that if we did not recommend this offer to members, they would return to previously-tabled concessions, many of which are in the proposals attached below, and that they retain the right to seek more to address their areas of concern.
This is, simply, a scare tactic. Offering a settlement that does not adequately address any faculty demands while simultaneously threatening previously-tabled concessions if such an inadequate offer is not accepted is a tactic that we recognize from many previous rounds of negotiations with this employer. It is also one that has not had the desired effect of preventing faculty from achieving gains.
Such a tactic is also not in alignment with the CEC team’s stated goal of fostering an ongoing positive relationship between the faculty/Union and management.
The tone of the CEC team’s comments has shifted into much more aggressive rhetoric this week, and risks misrepresenting the history of this round of negotiations. To be clear, the faculty team has not refused to engage in discussions. We have provided various information that has been requested. We are also fully willing to discuss our proposals. It is also a misrepresentation for the CEC to claim that negotiations would be protracted and unsuccessful if faculty pursue our proposals rather than the settlement offer they tabled on Wednesday at 4pm; that is fear-mongering.
The presence of complex proposals does not necessitate the avoidance of a regular bargaining process timeline. Had the CEC team been prepared to table their proposals at the outset of bargaining, then we believe that both sides would have had sufficient time to engage in an in-depth negotiations process. It is also factually inaccurate to assert that faculty proposals are designed for rejection. Changes to the collective agreement are not based on the CEC’s definition of a demonstrated need for change.
It is, frankly, insulting for the CEC to repeatedly assert that faculty’s lived experience is not enough to demonstrate the need for practical changes to the Collective Agreement. Our proposals represent faculty members’ priorities, and were gathered through an extensive and democratic process involving literally thousands of hours of consultation and participation. Faculty members’ lived experience has always formed the basis for faculty demands in every round of bargaining. This is the first time that we are aware of when this has been challenged by the employer as a sufficient source.
These types of statements, combined with our feedback attached below, point to a fundamental difference in understanding between the teams about the actual purpose of collective bargaining.
With that said, we remain committed to working toward a settlement together, and agree with the CEC that bargaining effectively requires a shared understanding of language, context, scope, and–we would add–purpose. Based on our exchanges thus far, we do not believe that either team is able to reach that understanding in the five remaining scheduled days of bargaining, without outside assistance.
Therefore, in the spirit of moving us forward without escalating tensions, we acknowledged that we have a labour relations problem, and we proposed a labour relations solution.
The faculty team invited the CEC to join us in pre-conciliation mediation with an independent mediator for a fixed period of time with the goals of focusing both teams, and sorting out a pathway to bargaining a negotiated settlement. We further proposed that both teams consent to not taking any additional steps toward conciliation or other labour escalation until that time period had elapsed. We also proposed an independent mediator who is familiar with the Ontario College sector, has extensive experience in provincial and federal public sector bargaining mediation, and who has been acceptable to both parties in the past in seeking to achieve a settlement.
With five days remaining in our process, and with the teams still working on developing a shared context for bargaining, we have offered mediation as a way forward together. We recognize the passionate commitment that members on both teams bring to this table and this process; this proposed dispute resolution mechanism requires both teams’ consent. Our team is fully committed to a negotiated settlement, and to pre-conciliation mediation as a preferred pathway to achieving it, as well as a means of improving our ongoing labour relations. We hope that the CEC team will seriously consider this offer.
Partial-list of concessions in CEC proposals:
(for a more comprehensive summary, please see the full text of the faculty responses)
- Inequitable workload based on program area such as apprenticeship and academic upgrading
- Increasing the number of weeks of work per year
- Two-tiered total teaching contact hours, number of courses assigned, contact days, time between assigned contact days
- Two-tiered work week: Ability to schedule new faculty on any 5 consecutive days in a week (for example, weekends would now be part of the work week for new faculty)
- Weaken faculty access to professional development
- Elimination of caps on overtime
- Allowing for courses without professors, only marking assistants
- Ability to require work on weekends without recognition or additional compensation
- Reduction of hours for evaluation and feedback for online evaluations
- Unacceptable changes to the length of the academic year (no longer 10 months) and faculty vacation scheduling and rotation
- Limits to faculty ability to access full parental leave
- Unnecessary and harmful restriction on faculty ability to bank sick days
- Attacking Partial-Load seniority rights won in 2017
- Extending the probationary period for FT faculty; introducing a probationary period of 1008 hours for PL faculty
- Creating additional hurdles to hiring, reassignment, or automatic conversion of full-time faculty
- Further limits to faculty intellectual property rights, and expansion of privatization of faculty work
- Limiting the scope of counsellor work
- Reducing faculty academic freedom in regard to course delivery, professional development
- Removal of LOU subcommittees without mechanisms to continue their work or enshrine their recommendations in the Collective Agreement
- Attempt to create conditions where courses can run without a professor
- Appear to create a slippery slope to eliminate the role of professors altogether
Other notes about the CEC proposals:
- Offer no improvements to workload for Counsellors, Librarians, or Partial-Load faculty
- Dismiss the work done at the IP subcommittee as a non-starter
- Dismiss faculty proposals for academic councils as a non-starter
In solidarity,
JP, Jonathan, Katie, Michelle, Ravi, Rebecca, Shawn
(*To view the documents mentioned in this update please see this page)
Bargaining update for Sept. 15/21
The bargaining teams met again Tuesday. The CEC team introduced counter-proposals [see attached] on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, as well as a proposal on “Truth and Reconciliation.” These proposals conclude their responses to the full equity proposals tabled by faculty. The CEC team has proposed the formation of committees that would report to the Employee/Employer Relations Committee (EERC) and would make recommendations to the parties in 2023. The faculty bargaining team is reviewing these proposals and will provide responses. In addition, the CEC team indicated that they will have further responses on additional issues tomorrow.
Bargaining update for Sept. 10/21
With the completion of this week’s bargaining, we have now completed more than half of our scheduled bargaining dates with the College Employer Council. There are eight scheduled bargaining dates remaining before our Collective Agreement expires. Five weeks have now passed since the Union tabled our comprehensive non-monetary proposals. Monetary proposals are limited by the concessions imposed by the Ford government’s Bill 124 which caps public sector compensation increases at 1% per year, effectively a pay cut when considering inflation.
With less than three weeks left until our Collective Agreement expires, the employer’s bargaining team has yet to table language around several of the changes that they have indicated they wish to make to our Collective Agreement, or what they have called “areas of concern”. In addition, they have not presented counter-proposals on the majority of key faculty demands, and have simply dismissed several others.
Today, the employer team proposed language on respectful workplaces, dates for union release time, and the assignment of coordinator duties. They did not address faculty concerns around structural changes in relation to harassment and discrimination, and dismissed the need for joint union-employer committee work to be recorded on SWFs. In addition, the employer team continued in their questioning of the legitimacy of faculty demands rather than dealing with the substance of these concerns.
In their responses, the CEC chair has repeatedly suggested that the faculty team has not provided answers to their questions about the data that underlies our proposals. The faculty team has explained that our data is gathered through an extensive and continuing process of consultations with faculty, both through the months-long demand-setting process, as well as through ongoing consultations with local leaders, the bargaining advisory committee, organizers, and specific sub-groups such as counsellors. In addition, our team has conducted reviews of collective agreement settlements and existing language in post-secondary institutions across Ontario and Canada, relied on research from organizations such as the Canadian Association of University Teachers, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations, as well as the employer’s own publicly available information. In addition, we have concluded our 2021 Update on Education in Ontario Colleges, which we expect to release shortly.
We are particularly disappointed that the employer has not yet provided any response to our proposals for gains for Partial-Load faculty, except to deny outright the need to create minimum staffing ratios of full-time to non-full-time faculty. Our other partial-load proposals include:
- Establishing a priority for the colleges to hire partial-load over other contract faculty categories
- Meaningful workload measurements (as opposed to paying PL faculty the same amount regardless of the number of students in their classes)
- Language to ensure equity in Partial-Load faculty workloads
- Transparency in the Partial-Load registry along with improved job security
In her remarks today, CEC team chair Laurie Rancourt stated that “in an established bargaining relationship, language should only be changed where there is a demonstrated need.” Neither the legitimacy of our data, nor the urgency with which faculty are experiencing a need for change should be in question. Faculty have sent the team to the bargaining table with a clear vision for a better future for Ontario colleges and students. The team developed a plan to make that vision a reality. We have demonstrated the need for change and provided specific language to address it. It is past time for the CEC team to do the same.
As is our practice, all proposals and notes shared at the table today are attached. For questions and comments, please contact bargainingteam2021@gmail.com
In Solidarity,
JP Hornick
Jonathan Singer
Michelle Arbour
Kathleen Flynn
Shawn Pentecost
Ravi Ramkissoonsingh
Rebecca Ward
College Faculty Negotiations Bulletin #4
Aug 24, 2021
Message from the President and First Vice‑President/Treasurer
Meeting resistance — and overcoming it
Bargaining successes for faculty members ultimately result in a stronger education system for all Ontarians. Better workload, staffing, equity and professional conditions for College Faculty will mean a better future for our colleges. As we look ahead to a recovery from this pandemic, a strong college system is important to that recovery.
Bargaining is a long and challenging journey but a worthwhile one to fight for better working conditions for all College Faculty members and improvements to Ontario’s colleges for all students. Your bargaining team has the full support of OPSEU/SEFPO’s 180,000 members, and our 300-plus staff experts are here to provide every resource necessary to succeed.
In solidarity,
Warren (Smokey) Thomas, OPSEU/SEFPO President
Eduardo (Eddy) Almeida, OPSEU/SEFPO First Vice-President/Treasurer
Message from your bargaining team
The Employer’s questions
This week, we met at the bargaining table for three days with the College Employer Council (CEC) bargaining team. The week prior, we had tabled extensive proposals in an attempt to incorporate into our collective agreement the demands presented by our members at local and final demand-setting meetings. Our proposals covered a broad range of issues including workload, staffing, co-ordinators, the treatment of contract faculty, academic quality, and employment and workplace equity.
We were hoping during this week’s bargaining dates to receive a comparable set of the employer’s proposals from the CEC. Unfortunately, that was not to be the case, as the employer declined to provide their full package of demands. Instead, they limited their proposals to brief counters on workload and the counsellor class definition (both of which are discussed below). As well, rather than engage meaningfully with our proposals on equity and workload, the employer provided exhaustive lists of questions regarding supporting research and data collection seemingly for the purpose of demonstrating that our members’ concerns are valid.
The Employer’s proposals
The mutually agreed-upon addition of two new bargaining dates in September means that we have completed over 40 per cent of our 19 scheduled dates. It is a matter of some concern that the employer’s bargaining team has provided concrete proposals on only two issues.
Both the union team and the CEC team have proposed new class definitions to clarify the role of counsellors in Ontario colleges. We are concerned that the employer’s proposed definition would seem to restrict counsellors to the work of addressing mental health issues and providing referrals, with no recognition of the other work currently performed by counsellors, including traditional culturally based counselling services, academic advising or disabilities/abilities counselling. Nor was there any clear identification of whether that work would remain performed by faculty.
As for workload, the employer’s only proposal thus far was to create a workload task force that would provide data to inform the next round of bargaining, some years away. We have expressed our concern with the proposal, noting that several workload task forces after the introduction of the SWF in 1984 have provided limited improvements to our members’ working conditions. We also noted that our members have communicated to us that meaningful change in the amount of time that we are given to evaluate our students’ work and to prepare our students’ classes is necessary now – particularly in the context of the modes of teaching that the colleges are currently implementing.
The CEC team also identified areas of the collective agreement for which they would like to see changes related to faculty scheduling and assignment of workload. Although they did not provide concrete proposals, they indicated possible future proposals may include:
- creating a two-tiered collective agreement in which new faculty would be subject to different working conditions, including teaching on Saturdays and Sundays, without additional compensation
- exempting faculty members in academic upgrading, apprenticeship and aviation programs from workload protections offered by the SWF
- changing the definition of the academic year to 12 months from 10, which would permit managers to assign vacations at any time of the year
- greater management control of
what faculty do during professional development periods - eliminating or reducing prep time for asynchronous online courses
- teaching contact hours of less than 50 minutes of instruction time to permit managers to assign classes of virtually any length
Again, no concrete details have been provided around these items, but it seemed possible that the colleges might propose an inequitable two-tier collective agreement in which newly hired faculty would lack rights and protections granted to other faculty.
The CEC also provided a presentation that questioned the preparation hours associated with academic upgrading, apprenticeship and aviation programs, and we expect those areas to be targeted for further concessions. Of broader concern is the statement from the CEC chair that, in cases of asynchronous teaching, “Detailed development occurs prior to delivery, and the current preparation factor does not obviously apply”. We invite faculty teaching asynchronously to reach out to us at bargainingteam2021@gmail.com and share their experience of the preparation that is required throughout the semester when teaching such courses.
The Employer’s responses
The employer rejected out of hand the union’s proposals on the constellation of issues that are foundational to academic quality: academic freedom, intellectual property and academic councils that
would provide faculty and students with a representative voice in academic decision-making at the colleges. We will continue to advocate for faculty members’ demands on these issues, which we maintain are essential to modernizing the colleges and promoting innovation, academic quality and academic integrity.
The System’s finances
We have received documents related to our disclosure requests on the colleges’ financial situation. Based on the information provided by the CEC, there is a surplus of over $100 million in the Ontario college system thus far for the current fiscal year, following on the heels of a $333-million surplus in 2019-2020. Only two colleges – Durham and Fleming – are claiming a deficit, and this is despite both of these institutions receiving government bailouts of $7.1 million and $6 million, respectively. Nevertheless, the CEC has repeatedly referred to funding challenges faced by the colleges. While we agree that chronic underfunding from the government is a challenge, it is clear that the colleges are in a position to invest in the changes that faculty and students need to ensure that academic quality is the central concern in a rapidly changing college system.
The Employer’s approach to bargaining
It would appear to us that both sides are approaching bargaining with different understandings and goals in mind. The employer has stated that, because this is a mature collective agreement, they do not believe change is necessary unless one can prove a demonstrated need with data, research, etc. They are looking to us to prove beyond a doubt where problems specifically lie and to demonstrate beyond a doubt how our proposals will solve those problems. They also seem to reject proposals outright, either by questioning the legitimacy of proposals that are grounded primarily in our members’ demands, rather than third-party research, or by disregarding proposals that have been tabled in previous rounds.
This is not how the negotiation process works. We are at the bargaining table with proposals that our members brought forward and voted on through a democratic and transparent process. Our approach ensures that the needs of our members are communicated through processes that they determine are fair and representative. The demands that end up forming our proposals are based on evidence: the experiences of faculty as they perform their work. It is not the employer’s right to tell us whether faculty’s experiences are valid issues to bargain. We have reminded them of the collective bargaining process, and we hope that they start to take your demands more seriously.
In solidarity,
JP Hornick, Local 556 (George Brown) – chair
Jonathan Singer, Local 560 (Seneca) – vice-chair
Michelle Arbour, Local 125 (Lambton)
Ravi Ramkissoonsingh, Local 242 (Niagara)
Kathleen Flynn, Local 354 (Durham)
Shawn Pentecost, Local 415 (Algonquin)
Rebecca Ward, Local 732 (Confederation)
Aug. 12, 2021
Workload issues front and centre at bargaining table
Today, we presented our preliminary response to the College Employer Council (CEC) team’s initial proposal for a taskforce on workload, along with some of their questions and assertions.
In their presentation yesterday, the CEC team has proposed deferring all workload issues to a three-person taskforce that would report on its findings in February, 2023. We believe that such a task force would be unlikely to result in any changes in workload for faculty, and even if workload changes could result from it, such changes would not take effect for years, after the next round of Collective Agreement negotiations.
While the CEC team did not offer any concrete workload proposals other than the taskforce, they did highlight other areas of Article 11 (“Workload”) of our Collective Agreement that they intend to propose revisions to in the future. Based on the areas that they identified for future proposals, and the presentation by CEC team Chair Laurie Rancourt, we suspect that the Employer may intend to propose the following:
● Creating a two-tiered Collective Agreement in which new faculty would be subject to different working conditions, including teaching on Saturdays and Sundays without additional compensation
● Exempting faculty members in academic upgrading, apprenticeship, and aviation from the same workload protections offered by the SWF
● Changing the definition of the academic year to 12 months from 10, which would permit managers to assign vacations at any time of the year
● Greater management control of what faculty do during professional development periods
● No or reduced prep time for asynchronous online courses
● Teaching Contact Hours of less than 50 minutes of instruction time, to permit managers to assign classes of virtually any length
● No additional time to support the increasing diversity of our students’ needs and skills
Academic Quality
The CEC team stated frankly that they will never agree to our faculty proposals to promote meaningful faculty input into academic decision-making in classes and the college, and misconstrued the history of past attempts to address these issues. In addition, they are once again framing this as a struggle over academic control. They refuse to consider any proposals regarding intellectual property rights, or clarifications of existing academic freedom language. The sole exception around what they are open to consider concerned recognizing Indigenous faculty members’ inherent intellectual property rights over knowledge and practice specific to Indigenous culture(s).
The CEC team suggested that even presenting modified proposals on these ongoing, unresolved issues was somehow offensive, despite this being a normal practice in negotiations. They also described the Union’s proposals as unreasonable, despite the fact that they adhere to current legislation, they address fundamental issues of academic quality and integrity, and they mirror policies that are found in Ontario’s University system and other College systems.
The team will provide a detailed update to Local Presidents and the Bargaining Advisory Committee tomorrow. We will meet with the CEC team again on September 9th and 10th, having agreed to those two additional dates today.
Counsellor Class Definition
The faculty team provided a detailed preliminary response (attached) to the CEC team’s proposed counsellor class definition, and indicated that we would respond fully after our upcoming consultation with counsellors.
Equity
The CEC team also provided a response to the feedback we provided to them yesterday. The Employer has not acknowledged that systemic discrimination exists in the system and have yet to suggest language to address issues of harassment, bullying, racism and discrimination, but has suggested they would like to identify what can be done this round.
We look forward to seeing their proposed language in this area.
COMING SOON:
We will be launching the updated Report on Education in Ontario Colleges in the coming days, followed by a series of in-depth issue sheets designed to provide further background on key areas of concern. We welcome your feedback, and can be reached at bargainingteam2021@gmail.com.
Counsellor definition discussed at latest bargaining session
Aug. 10, 2021 – The faculty bargaining team met with the employer today, for the first time after tabling nearly all of our proposals last week. We hope to be able to finish presenting our monetary proposals this week, but are still awaiting full financial disclosure from the College Employer Council (CEC), to confirm and finalize our information.
On August 4, we submitted a proposal updating the Counsellor class definition, to clarify and reflect counsellors’ current duties at the colleges. The CEC team began this morning by presenting their response to our proposal (see attached). We are reviewing the CEC’s response in detail, but already note that they propose to strictly limit the work of counsellors to mental health issues, and appear to want to expand managers’ ability to assign counsellor work to non-faculty. Their proposals also indicate a discomfort with spelling out in detail the work that counsellors do, which is a serious issue that counsellors have told us needs to be addressed this round. We will be consulting with counsellors directly to get their feedback on this employer proposal.
In addition, the CEC has indicated that they will not be tabling their concrete proposals as a full package. Our hope would have been for each side to table their detailed language early in the process (as is typical in negotiations), so that we can identify common ground as well as areas where we diverge, as a foundation to begin discussions in earnest. We felt that this would have been the best way for both parties to engage in sincere negotiations, where both sides are candid and forthcoming about their initial positions.
Today concluded with the CEC team presenting us with an exhaustive list of questions related to our proposals around equity. These questions centred almost entirely on challenges to whether there is data specific to the Ontario college system that backs up our members’ lived experiences of bullying, harassment, discrimination, and racism. We will provide further information after we’ve had a chance to review and discuss the CEC’s questions in more depth.
Our goal is to negotiate a settlement by September 30. Our team initially offered 35 dates to the CEC to further that goal. We have 11 dates remaining, with the vast majority scheduled for September. We know that this gives us the time we need to engage in rich discussion and debate, and to come to a resolution—but only if the CEC adheres to their stated goal of bargaining in good faith, by tabling concrete proposals that would allow sincere negotiating to begin.
Message from your bargaining team
Aug. 9/21 – On August 5, the bargaining team for full-time and partial-load college faculty completed a scheduled three days of bargaining with the College Employer Council. During these days, the bargaining team presented all demands not related to issues of compensation.
The following are highlights from the major proposals presented by the faculty bargaining team. You may read the complete proposals here.
Workload
- provide faculty an extra two hours weekly on the SWF for supporting students with accommodations
- provide SWFs for partial-load faculty members to measure their entire workloads
- increase time attributed for preparation in general and recognition of the additional preparation associated with online teaching modes, including hybrid and hy-flex
- increase time attributed for grading “essay or project”-type evaluations
- create recorded workload assignments for counsellors and librarians
Staffing
- establish that 50 per cent of faculty complement at each college will be full-time positions in 2023 and 70 per cent will be full-time in 2026
- require partial-load contracts to be for a minimum of one year
- establish minimum numbers of counsellors and librarians based on student numbers
- end outsourcing and contracting-out of faculty work
- improve pathways to full-time jobs and service credits for partial-load faculty
- make partial-load registry transparent to faculty and locals, and include all courses taught, regardless of contract status
Equity
- form committees to i) review employment and workplace policies, address systemic discrimination and recommend structural changes; and ii) review compensation to ensure equitable compensation for all faculty
- create alternative dispute resolution processes respecting Indigenous cultures and practices
- implement workload practices that honour the work associated with decolonization, Indigenization and reconciliation by Indigenous faculty
- strengthen language around bullying, harassment and discrimination, as well as return-to-work and accommodation language
Professionalism
- permit faculty members to work outside the college without manager permission
- clarify that academic freedom includes control over course content, evaluations and grading
- clarify that faculty own their work produced in the course of employment
- updating the class definition of counsellor
- establish academic councils at each college to permit elected faculty representatives to advise the Board of Governors on all academic issues at the colleges
- The team has not yet presented demands related to compensation, as the employer’s bargaining team has yet to disclose the information related to the colleges’ finances we requested in our Notice to Bargain. We have been assured that we will receive this information shortly.
- The two teams will be returning to the negotiating table on August 10, at which time we expect the employer to respond to our proposals. We look forward to ongoing discussions about how we can work together to build a better college system for both students and faculty.
Bargaining for better: faculty’s vision for a future together
Below is the full text of our opening presentation for the faculty proposals to the College Employer Council:
Overall context for union proposals
We’d like to begin by saying thank you for sharing your opening remarks, eight stated goals, and contextualizing comments with us in early July. These were helpful in establishing where we have shared concerns and for clarifying that you “are looking forward to the opportunity to explore with [us] issues that are relevant to the faculty collective agreement, and to co-create solutions that will unite us and prepare us for a future together.”
This, as reinforced by your bargaining tagline, “A Future Together”, speaks directly to the top concerns faculty have raised over the course of the past few years around having a meaningful voice in academic decision-making at the colleges. Building a future together must involve faculty being consulted in a structured and meaningful manner in relation to our classrooms, libraries, labs and counselling sessions – as field experts and academic leaders. Through our research and discussion with our members and others in postsecondary organizations, we know how this can be done in a way that strengthens the Ontario college system, builds on existing structures and legislation, and creates space for diverse voices to participate equitably. You’ll hear more about our approach when we discuss our proposals for shared governance, intellectual property and academic freedom.
Similarly, we share your stated goal of working together “to provide students with stability, flexibility, and high-quality education.” As we discussed in our first days at the table, the pandemic has exponentially accelerated the adoption of online educational tools and required a massive effort from faculty in creating and revising curriculum and content, reframing pedagogical approaches, learning new technologies, and adapting student supports. What has become perfectly clear over the past 18 months is that this will be ongoing work, and that our students’ needs for additional mental health and educational supports will be similarly ongoing. It will also require our members to continuously upgrade their knowledge and review their curricula and pedagogy, to adapt to imposed changes, such as microcredentials and multiple modes of delivery in our classrooms. Our team has listened to, and worked with, our faculty to develop language that reflects these changing student and institutional needs, and ensure that we are able to best respond to them. Our proposed language on online learning, workload, class definitions and co-ordinator duties outlines a clear path to recognizing and addressing these changes to postsecondary teaching and learning environments.
We agree that stability is essential to student success and for maintaining the reputation of Ontario’s college system. It is also crucial to the economic recovery of our province, as good jobs provide the foundation for economic and social growth post-pandemic. While some flexibility is necessary in any system, high-quality education is best achieved and ensured in the long term through a stable, ongoing complement of faculty. As recent analyses of the so-called gig or flexible economy have shown, the social and economic costs of high levels of precarity in the labour market far outstrip any short-term benefits. In addition, colleges attract students who are looking for good, stable, full-time jobs, and colleges have a responsibility, as employers, to provide them as well. Any expansion of flexibility in the ways in which courses and programs are offered must be counterbalanced with the stability students need through dedicated, full-time faculty. Our system is significantly out of balance in terms of the number of contract faculty compared to full-time faculty. Both sides recognized this as a key issue in 2017 and were making progress to addressing this on the Provincial Task Force before it was cancelled by the Ford government. In this round of negotiations, we have incorporated language to address staffing ratios, partial-load faculty job security and workload, minimum complements of counsellors and librarians, and prevention of contracting-out.
No true improvements to our system can be achieved without addressing issues of equity and addressing the specific barriers faced by Indigenous and racialized faculty. We were pleased to learn that one of your eight goals is that the “current collective agreement must be reviewed with the intention of beginning to collectively identify and address language and process issues which contribute to barriers to creating an equitable, diverse and inclusive workplace.” We agree beginning this long-overdue process in this round is a central goal and would add that this needs to be done at a structural level and cannot be limited to “updat[ing] language and identify[ing] priorities to support Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion”, as suggested in your non-monetary proposals document dated July 8, 2021. With that in mind, we are proposing comprehensive language to both identify and address structural barriers in hiring, employment, workload and compensation, as well as mechanisms to ensure these are ongoing and measurable efforts. Your stated commitment to “EDI” indicates a welcome willingness among your institutions to incorporate changes that reflect the value and contributions of all faculty, the importance of these changes for students, and for enacting measures that reflect best practices around decolonization, equity and diversity.
We noted that many of your stated goals referred to fiscal constraints, provincial funding concerns and faculty salaries. Our members are extremely aware of the chronic underfunding of the public college system, the legislative restraints imposed by Bill 124, and the current economic landscape. We are also aware of the massive layoffs faced by part-time support staff, many of whom are students, the non-renewal of contract faculty, and the decisions by many colleges to contract out faculty work and engage in partnerships with private curriculum developers and private colleges that target international students. We have noted, as well, that there has not been a corollary decrease in administrative staff, and that the vast majority of managerial positions are both full-time and have been eligible for salary and other monetary increases beyond the one per cent both before and during Bill 124 and the pandemic. You will find our salary and benefits proposals address the current
economic and legislative context in the colleges, and leave room to revisit them, as needed. They are in keeping with negotiated and accepted proposals in the postsecondary and public sectors.
Finally, it was interesting to us that you mentioned the Reg Pearson report, given that both the chair of this team and the chair of the CAAT-A Division were interviewed as part of that investigation. The report has not been made public, making it difficult to review your interpretation of the contents. What we recall clearly, however, is that Mr. Pearson made reference to the College Employer Council’s apparent preference for bargaining through arbitration, rather than at the table.
In addition, Mr. Pearson did not state in the report that it was the faculty who seemed to presume that any breakdown in negotiations that led to labour disruption would be settled through government intervention, but that this was a significant problem in labour relations in our sector. He was also clear that the EERC was not functioning effectively, despite your claims to the contrary. As a result, he suggested, conditions were not optimal for either side to bargain at the table with an eye towards finding common ground.
Our strength at the table lies in knowing and reflecting the expertise and will of our membership. The proposed language you will hear about in the coming days represents exactly that. We present it to you in the spirit of goodwill and in an attempt to restore to the college system the harmony, equity and mutual respect that are preconditions to building a better future together.
In solidarity,
JP Hornick, Local 556 (George Brown) – chair
Jonathan Singer, Local 560 (Seneca) – vice-chair
Michelle Arbour, Local 125 (Lambton)
Ravi Ramkissoonsingh, Local 242 (Niagara)
Kathleen Flynn, Local 354 (Durham)
Shawn Pentecost, Local 415 (Algonquin)
Rebecca Ward, Local 732 (Confederation)
Bargaining committee presents proposals on coordinators, outside work and joint committee time
Aug. 5/21 – The CAAT-A Bargaining Team met with the Employer for the third consecutive day. They presented proposals on Joint Committee Time, Article 11.06 (outside employment), and Coordinators. The proposals are found below.
The committee has not yet tabled monetary proposals, although they have been working on them. On July 2nd, the committee gave Notice to Bargain and asked the Employer for the information needed to complete the monetary proposals. That disclosure has yet to be provided. It was confirmed today that they are gathering the requested information and it will soon be presented. As a result, the monetary proposals were the only ones not tabled this week.
The committee will return to the negotiations table with the Employer on Tuesday, August 10th.
Next round of bargaining underway as union tables its proposed improvements
Aug. 4/21 – Your bargaining team is meeting with the employer again this week. Their goal is to table the committee’s entire proposal package by the end of this week so that they can begin negotiations immediately and work toward a better collective agreement that satisfies members’ demands.
During Wednesday’s meeting with the employer the union tabled proposals on the class definitions of a professor and counsellor. Additionally, they presented proposals on academic freedom, intellectual property rights and shared governance, and finally, staffing.
The union’s proposals are rooted in feedback from consultations with faculty and students; existing best practices in our system and in other PSE institutions; model language from and discussions with CAUT and other PSE leaders; and through review of both the language proposed by the locals this round, along with language that has been table previously.
The proposals are available to view below.
Return to class announcement sparks workload and safety concerns
July 29/21 – The sudden announcement that Ontario colleges and universities can go back to classroom teaching this fall without physical restrictions or limits on class sizes has caught many faculty by surprise. And while some colleges are taking an aggressive stance on returning to the classroom, not all are rolling out more on-campus teaching this fall, nor are all colleges making vaccinations an “expectation” for employees and students.
Your OPSEU Divisional Executive and the Bargaining Team have a number concerns about the health and safety of members in returning to work in the fall:
1) Workload
Moving teaching from online to in-class and/or to hybrid delivery requires time and energy. Faculty have been pivoting on a dime for a year and a half. Many are tired and burning out and yet we have:
· faculty workloads being maxed out in nearly every college;
· faculty trying to teach remotely without adequate technological support;
· faculty teaching to student class sizes that cannot be accommodated in a classroom;
· faculty trying to organize and supervise placements without adequate time assigned on their SWF.
OPSEU also remains entirely unclear what is intended by the statement in the government’s fall announcement that the updated Postsecondary Education Public Health Measures Framework will include “availability of mental health supports”. We need time to do this job. We need time to ensure we are able to bring our students with us. Retention rates are decreasing while mental health concerns are increasing. We care about our students and their success. To reach them, to both teach and counsel, we need the time required to reshape our learning and counselling contexts and to provide adequate support.
Meanwhile, almost every college has posted a surplus for the past year, and many continue to hire administrators while laying off part-time support staff and reducing numbers of contract faculty. They can afford to temporarily reduce workloads to ensure faculty, staff, and student health and safety is a priority, while we put together courses/counselling services that ensure success and quality for our students and while we create a new sense of much needed normalcy on our campuses.
2) Continuity of Education Plans
The colleges and the ministry need to include faculty voices at all return-to-campus planning tables. Instead, the faculty union’s role has been minimized in almost every college and ignored by the ministry. Our job is to keep faculty and student health and safety and quality education central to all discussions, and we have a vital role to play in ensuring that all plans can be enacted safely in our classrooms, labs, libraries and counselling spaces. The Locals should have access to all information to ensure health and safety, including risk assessments, contingency plans and information about outbreaks. Rest assured, pandemic language is another key area for this round of bargaining.
3) Vaccinations and Returning to Campus
In the wake of Seneca’s decision to roll out mandatory vaccinations, we see some colleges setting the stage that vaccinations are an expectation of all employees returning to campus. We are unsure of the legal status of this approach, or of how vaccinations of employees and students will be monitored or policed at individual colleges. We do know that faculty should not be placed in the position of checking or surveilling students’ or colleagues’ vaccination status. We are also unsure of what accommodations will be made for those who aren’t vaccinated. We will await information from the College Employer Council and individual colleges in this regard.
4) International Travel and Quarantine
Those who will be returning to campus who have travelled outside of the country, but who are also vaccinated, are no longer required to be quarantined for 14 days. Given the variants that are circulating, we are concerned about the risk that this may pose to faculty and students alike. We are further unclear how the colleges will monitor and enforce the quarantining expectation for those travelling but not vaccinated. Stay tuned and we will keep you updated as quickly as we can.