Local 354 Update!
LOCAL 354 WINS A WORKLOAD ARBITRATION AWARD (WRA)
In summary, two of our members were issued a late SWF. According to Article 11.02 A 1 “the supervisor shall give a copy to the teacher no later than six weeks prior to the beginning of the period covered by the timetable excluding holidays and vacations”. The college tried to argue that there were extenuating circumstances and therefore they did now owe the members any monetary compensation. Historically at Durham College there was a “Letter Of Understanding” that had been an agreement made between the management and the local that if a faculty were issued a late SWF he/she would be compensated a $500 payment. When we received a new CA all “Letters of Understanding” were deemed void and our current management team did not want to honour this previous agreement. Therefore we used The Whitehead Award (which was an award that provided faculty from another college a compensation of $1,300.00 for receiving late SWFs) in our argument with management who tried to massage the formula used in the Award to significantly reduce the compensation owed to our members. The Arbitrator ruled in favour of providing the faculty each $850.00 for the late SWF which was significantly higher then the management was willing to provide. This was a definite win for us and has set a precedent for the issuing of late SWFS. You should not be issued a Late SWF without some form of compensation no matter what the reason. However, a revised SWF does not fall within this Article of our Collective Agreement. That being said you always have the right to “sign back” your SWF if you do not agree with the content of it.
LOCAL WIN ON ACADEMIC POLICY AND PROCEDURE
In regards to the Academic Integrity Policy, initially the amended Policy that was brought to the Union College Committee (UCC) did not include faculty as a “Designate” in the following section of the policy:
5.5 Penalties for Breaches of Academic Integrity
5.5.1 A first breach of Academic Integrity may result in one or more of the following penalties, at the discretion of the Executive Dean/Dean/Associate Dean or Designate.
Upon further discussion at our Union College Committee meetings the college agreed to reinsert the word “Designate”.
GRIEVANCES PENDING
We currently have issued three union Grievances to Durham College that are pending resolution. One is in regards to Academic Freedom (specifically in relation to the Political Activity Policy that the President sent to staff/faculty). The second union grievance is related to the Partial Load Registry (please refer to the section below entitled “Partial Load Registry”). The third Grievance is related to a breach of the Harassment Article (please refer to the section below entitled “Article 4”).
PARTIAL LOAD REGISTRY
What is the Partial-load Registry?
The Partial-Load Registry is a product of the 2017 – 2021 CAAT-A Collective Agreement that provides an increased level of job protection for partial-load faculty (i.e. teaching 7 – 12 hours per week). By registering, employees are confirming their desire for future work as a partial-load employee at Durham College for the 2019 calendar year. This registry also documents each registered partial-load employee’s job experience, including their service months, what courses they have previously taught in their time at Durham, and the School(s) in which those courses were taught.
Who can register?
Any part-time, partial-load or sessional faculty (currently or previously employed) at Durham may register. However, part-time and sessional faculty should be aware that they will not gain hiring priority rights until after they have worked as a partial-load employee. (see “Why would I register?” below for more details).
Why would I register?
The collective agreement now requires the College to give hiring priority to registered partial-load faculty. This means that when Associate Deans and Deans determine that there is a need to hire a partial-load employee, they must consult the Registry and first offer the course a qualified partial-load faculty that has previously taught the course. To be considered as “qualified”, you must be registered with the Registry, and be either currently employed as a partial-load employee or have 8 service months of partial-load teaching in the past 4 years. Therefore, if you do not register, you may not receive teaching opportunities that you otherwise would have been eligible to receive.
When do I register?
You can register anytime, however, there is a deadline! The deadline to register for next year (2019) is October 30th, 2018. At this point, there is no procedure for second chances if you miss this deadline.
RESPONSE TO SURVEY MONKEY
The LEC would like to extend an appreciation for the response we received on the Survey Monkey we sent. We continue to review the responses to help guide our future activities. We will be aiming for a November GMM at this point. I do want to let everyone know that currently your LEC consists of 4 Executive Officers plus 5 active Stewards; therefore, while we want to address all the concerns that were highlighted on the Survey we do have to prioritize with the hope we will eventually deal with them all.
INCREASE IN NUMBER OF STUDENTS REQUIRING ACCOMMODATIONS
Your LEC is aware of the increasing number of students requiring Accommodations and the impact (multi-layered) that this is having on faculty in relation to workload; Academic Integrity; and faculties’ own mental health and stress level. We are taking a multi-prong approach to this issue and will continue to strategize on how best to support our members.
ARTICLE 4 (Pages 3-5 of the Collective Agreement)
NO DISCRIMINATION/BULLYING/PSYCHOLOGICAL HARASSMENT
Increasingly more faculty are approaching us with concerns about feeling bullied/harassed by students. Your LEC is taking this concern very seriously and want to support our members. If you feel that you are being discriminated/bullied/harassed by anyone in your workplace please contact one of your Local Executive Committee (LEC).
WHAT IS STATUS OF THE TASK FORCE?
Please refer to the following link:
WHY ARE UNIONS GREAT?
Please watch the following:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__j4j6-5bdU