- Week 3: Day 1

The Deceit Becomes Obvious


Dear Sheridan Faculty,
 
Following next week’s schedule of events, please find my deconstruction of the College Employment Council’s last deceitful publication.
 
We have a big week ahead of us. We must continue picketing for public awareness. Here are key events:
 
Monday: If you missed your full-time top-up cheque last Thursday or Friday, and have not sent in your home address to have it mailed to you, you can pick it up at 475 North Service Rd East, Oakville, L6H1A5 from 11:00 AM to NoonIt is not too late to send your address to office@local244.ca to have the cheque mailed to you.
 
Monday and Tuesday: Sign up in trailers at Traf and Davis, with Picket Captains at HMC, for buses to and from Queens Park for the mass provincial rally on Thursday.
 
Tuesday: Halloween Picketing. Bethany Osborne and Josh Schneider are organizing the Trafalgar picket with a special Halloween Strike theme. If you would like to utilize their strategy, contact Bethany at bethanyjosborne@gmail.com. If not, any costume will do.
 
Wednesday: Perogies Striketoberfest for Davis and HMC – times to be announced
 
Wednesday Evening: Sheridan Student Union is holding a Strike Open Forum for students and parents at The Marquee with Administration speakers only! I have asked for a chance to speak, but so far Faculty are not invited. We might hold an extra late picket if Union representatives are not invited.
 
Thursday: No picketing at home campuses. Please join the other 23 Colleges at the rally that starts at Queens Park, then we march to 900 Bay Street, Ministry of Education Building – further details to follow.
 
Friday: Perogies Striketoberfest for Trafalgar – times to be announced
 
And now for the depths of the CEC’s deceitful rhetorical strategy. I call it….
 
A Tale of Two Narratives
 
It was the best of lies it was the worst of lies.
 
The last misleading missive from the Colleges Employment Council (CEC) has raised the stakes. Now it’s not only about collegial governance and fairness for contract workers, which are the two pillars of our stand to improve the quality of Ontario Colleges’ education. It has become a lesson in political obfuscation, BS in common parlance. Their last stab at the truth, left it bleeding.
 
They asked and answered their own questions throughout their last brochure, thereby appropriating the Socratic method for their deception. The following is the concluding question and answer (in bold):
 
“How can the strike be resolved?
                
We believe that the best and quickest resolution to the strike is through a negotiated settlement, or by allowing faculty to vote on the offer.
 
The colleges remain available to return to the bargaining table to negotiate a settlement based on the final offer they made prior to the strike starting. We hope that the government-appointed mediator will indicate soon that the union wishes to address the issues in a positive manner so that he can bring the parties together. We want our faculty back doing what they do best.”
 
Below you’ll find a sentence by sentence deconstruction of their weaselly Socratic imitation.  
 
How can the strike be resolved?
 
You don’t resolve a strike – you resolve the issues that broke off negotiations. Strikes end when disagreements are resolved. To do that means getting back to the bargaining table. Our side is waiting with real compromises announced and in hand. The CEC have doubled down on their original position by creating a new category of professor, ‘temporary full-time’. **
 
Don’t fall for their slight-of-word. They don’t want to face the issues, so they obfuscate the language and talk about ‘resolving’ the strike. Whoever made the truth a casualty has declared war.
 
We believe that the best and quickest resolution to the strike is through a negotiated settlement, or by allowing faculty to vote on the offer.
 
Over and over again the CEC has falsely intimated that faculty are not being allowed to vote by the union. They must believe that repetition will make us forget that they have had the right to call a forced ratification vote as early as last summer and they still can. As I have stated earlier, they’ll beat us up a bit more and then call the vote. They say they believe in a Negotiated settlement. Who do they think they’re kidding? See the next entry about their negotiated settlement.
 
The colleges remain available to return to the bargaining table to negotiate a settlement based on the final offer they made prior to the strike starting.
 
Translation: The colleges won’t budge on their pre-strike offer.
 
How can one negotiate after a final offer? One can only accept or reject a ‘final’ offer. Does final not mean final? The sentence does not read, “negotiate a settlement based on the ‘last’ offer they made prior to the strike starting”. Why the adjective ‘final’ instead of ‘last’?
 
Using a descriptive rather than a chronological adjective, and so breaking the contiguity of time references “prior…to starting”, the language aims to deceive. It deceptively slips the excuse for their intransigence into a matter of timing. Changing ‘final offer’ to ‘last offer’ would open negotiations towards a compromised ‘final offer’. Something is rotten in the statement of their remark!
 
We hope that the government-appointed mediator will indicate soon that the union wishes to address the issues in a positive manner so that he can bring the parties together.
 
The “government-appointed mediator” implies that the government is a third party in this. The government, through its ministry appointed hit men, is the other side of the table. Where the government can help is to appoint an arbitrator who can really mediate, with the power to implement – after we are legislated back to work.
 
They could save the semester today by legislating us back to work and letting a third-party arbitrator, not a government appointed mediator, rule on a compromise position.
 
Now it’s, “address the issues”. In the last sentence it was a “final offer”. The only issue they want to discuss is accepting their “final offer”. You know the one about creating a new “temporary full-time” sessional position that can be renewed when they think it’s “sensible”.** They use an oxymoron and expect us to trust that we would agree with their opinion of what is sensible. Weasel words, can you smell them?
 
We want our faculty back doing what they do best.
 
How can we be the best at what we do if we accept the politicization of our students’ learning and matriculation? How can we be the best at what we do if we accept the obfuscation of language corrupting the public discourse?
 
By striking for quality of education and fairness of remuneration in the colleges and all workplaces we are doing what we do best. We are upholding the social values of honesty in language, especially in politics, and raising the economic investment in College students to the levels that once made Ontario’s economy the engine of Canada’s financial success.
 
** Proposed (by CEC) Article 2.05: Where the college determines that, due to absences such as illness, leaves of absence, vacation or other short-term needs, a temporary full-time position should be extended beyond the period wherein a sessional employee would convert to full-time and that it would be sensible for the sessional employee to continue in that position during such extension

other short-term needs = weasel words means ‘whatever they claim’
temporary full-time position = oxymoron, new contract faculty position
it would be sensible = weasel words means they decide what is sensible
 
The CEC is masquerading clever dishonesty as logical syllogism. And it’s not even that clever! And it’s not even Halloween.
 
In solidarity,
 
Jack

Jack Urowitz,
President, OPSEU Local 244
Sheridan Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning
(905) 845-9430 Extension 2832
Union Office 4065