Week 2, Don’t Grow Weak Too
Please Note: Picketing schedules have not changed for tomorrow. Your picket Captain will tell you about any future changes. Check out our website for Picketing Pics.
Greetings Sheridan,
This picketing inconvenience, this no paycheck, this strike – has a socially important and noble cause behind it, the education and future of our students and the society they will build. Do you want to be run by Corporate or Academia? That’s the choice before us.
It will be hard to motivate yourself to come out to the picket lines this week. Some of your comrades will drop off. The best reason to come out is to show the Council and the public that we are resolute in our decision. Council is expecting our picket lines to be washed away by rain.
Below are three of our goals which all lead to and stem from better care for our students through the education we provide. They make for good talking points on the picket lines (see below). We must:
- Increase the ratio of full-time to part-time teaching hours to 50%
- Put collegial governance in the Collective Agreement
- Treat partial-load professors fairly
So, show up on the picket line. Give Council the fear that if they put the vote to us, we’ll still say no until they respond to our goals for our students and vulnerable colleagues. Because, as sure as the night follows the day, they will put the vote to us after we have been beaten up a little. More on this tomorrow.
Check out this article for more on why we’re striking:
Stand strong,
Jack
Addendum:
Increase the ratio of full-time to part-time teaching hours to 50%,
If contract workers are paid more fairly, then enrollment will be the main factor in full-time hiring, because hour by hour, there won’t be much difference in payroll. Having more full-time professors around will improve the quality of education – more teachers for extra-curricular participation, for student access and academic collaboration. You want to know where the Council wants to take us. They want to have unlimited Sessionals – that is “temporary full time teachers”. It’s their proposed new Article 2.05** - say good-bye to full time hiring. And all the Council is swinging in front of us is money, and not even enough to keep up with the cost of living.
Put collegial governance in the Collective Agreement
As it stands right now, a college president can say, “I don’t need a Senate” and it’s gone. Sheridan’s president and vice-presidents sit on provincial committees of their peers. Many is the cold shoulder and worse, directed at them for being the exception. They represent the one college that has proven that collegial governance works. And they allowed it, if not encouraged it! Without enshrining collegial governance in the Collective Agreement, we have to hope our new president doesn’t want to cozy up to the Committee of Presidents by u-turning on the road to Academic Freedom and Faculty control of curricula.
Treat partial-load professors fairly
If full-time work needs a SWF to measure and compensate us for preparation and evaluation, why shouldn’t contract workers have one? I ask you full-timers, could you do as good a job if you were teaching six, seven or eight courses in two colleges? Don’t we want our students to have the best educational environment – where they can find their teacher or have their email answered? And why not give part-timers two semester contracts instead of one? They do it for Sessional teachers. Yes, this will cost more money, but it aligns with the spirit of Bill 148. Is the government full of hot air or perhaps the post-secondary sector isn’t part of the deal for fairness in the worklplace? (Rhetorical question?)
**Proposed 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
Jack Urowitz,
President, OPSEU Local 244
Sheridan Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning
(905) 845-9430 Extension 2832
Union Office 4065
(905) 845-9430 Extension 2832
Union Office 4065