Posts tagged with strike.

Ontario needs to prevent college strike

Joey Coleman, February 1, 2010 at 3:36 PM

The clock is ticking and the question is if anyone at Queen's Park takes action in the next ten days to prevent a strike at Ontario's community colleges.

 

The Ontario Public Service Employees Union, which represents full-time instructors at Ontario's public colleges, announced a February 11 strike deadline at a news conference today. 

 

Interestingly, the union has moderated its rhetoric and is even willing to accept binding arbitration to prevent a strike. "First and foremost, we want to reach a negotiated settlement," OPSEU bargaining chair Ted Montgomery said in a news release. "If the Colleges won't bargain that, we are willing to send all our outstanding issues to binding arbitration. The Colleges, however, must agree."

 

The announcement by the union that it is willing to accept binding arbitration - a likely outcome if a strike happens -  puts the ball firmly in the court of Ontario's colleges and their political masters in Premier Dalton McGuinty's office. 

 

(Colleges do not have the autonomy from government that universities enjoy and the government can issue directives requiring actions by the institutions - see Hassum v. Contestoga College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning, 2008 CanLII 12838 [ON S.C.])

 

The question now is what the Premier plans to do. So far, he has offered empty platitudes calling on both sides to reach a negotiated agreement to prevent a strike. This lofty rhetoric is acceptable in most circumstances. This is not one of the those circumstances - the Premier has already poisoned the chalice by implementing flawed anti-labour provisions when his government rewrote the Colleges Collective Bargaining Act.

 

One of the primary reasons that students are caught in the crossfire was the decision by Ontario's colleges to use their newfound power in an attempt to bypass the collective bargaining process and impose a contract - power granted to them by Mr. McGuinty's government.

 

I e-mailed a spokesperson for John Milloy, Ontario's Minister of Training, Colleges, and Universities, after the union announced its strike deadline. The response from the government was to send me a link to a statement  issued by the Minister on January 13, calling for the two sides to return to the bargaining table.

 

It is time for the government to do more. The government has two choices: force Ontario's colleges to accept the union's very reasonable offer of binding arbitration, or force the two sides back to the table by setting a time and location for them to meet.

 

The government should also give Ontario's senior college administrators a little more incentive to negotiate. The Minister should send a directive informing all college administrators making more than $150,000 a year - and there are a lot of them - that their pay will be cut off in the event of a strike. 

 

I'm willing to bet the threat of a strike actually hurting them - instead of helping them balance their books - will assist them to act in the best interest of students.

 

Of course, the government can continue to whistle past the graveyard like it did during the York University strike - after all, that strike didn't hurt anyone, did it?

 

[Additional information: Union bargaining chair Ted Montgomery's speaking notes provided to the media at today's news conference are available online.]

 

[Jim Wilson, Ontario's Official Opposition critic for Colleges and Universities, held a news conference this morning criticizing the government's handling of the labour situation. His remarks are available online: http://tinyurl.com/yb3gm2q.]

Tagged with strike, ontario, college, mcguinty | Comments (4) |

Why the college vote to strike wasn’t

Joey Coleman, January 14, 2010 at 3:22 PM

 

With Ontario's college instructions barely giving their union a strike mandate there is an opportunity for both sides to forget past grievances and work anew to reach a negotiated agreement.

 

Much like a political leadership vote, there is a convention that a strike mandate requires a two-thirds majority to be considered successful. 

 

With only 57 per cent of college faculty voting for strike action, it is clear that the union does not have enough support to launch a successful strike action; even more so when the numbers are broken down by college campus. With the majority of faculty at four colleges voting against strike action, any attempt by OPSEU to quickly launch a labour disruption will be met with resistance from enough faculty members to doom any strike to failure.

 

Where does this leave students? The same place they were prior to the vote; sitting on the outside looking in and wondering what's next.

 

The truth is nobody really knows what will happen. The negotiations are occurring at a provincial level disconnected from both students and faculty. A strike will be the result of negotiators from the Ontario Public Service Employees Union bargaining team and the College Compensation and Appointments Council failing to act in good faith to reach an agreement.

 

Sadly, as I noted in December, the two sides have a strong personal dislike for each other, making the outside mediator's job a tough one.

 

With the strike vote out of the way, both sides need to negotiate and keep in mind that this vote doesn't work in either side's favour; faculty are divided but they are not siding with either party.

 

Over the past few days, I've spoken extensively with college faculty and the theme of those discussions are the same: They want a fair agreement without going on strike. I find they have a distrust of both their union and the college administrators. They are upset with the announcement by Ontario's colleges that they intend to impose a new non-negotiated contract. There is concern that their union is looking to make a statement by going on strike. In short, many of them are conflicted and this conflicted atmosphere is evident in the split in the strike vote.

 

There is a strong message in the split for Ontario's colleges: Their faculty are discontented and demoralized. This is a major problem that needs to be addressed, especially at Lambton college, where more than 80 per cent of the faculty voted in favour of strike action. The colleges need to be seen by their faculty to be acting in good faith instead of imposing a contract that struck out sections of the previous agreement.

 

The union, despite its public chest-puffing, has been told by its members not to rush into a strike. Technically, they have a strike mandate and legally, the union negotiators in Toronto can call a strike. In reality, they do not have enough support to run an effective strike. They are in no position to win a strike and will only harm their members by calling for one. Two recent higher education labour disputes illustrate the peril of OPSEU's current position.

 

The CUPE 3903 strike at York University was a dismal failure for the labour movement. While the membership of the union was behind the strike at the beginning, the public was not. An extremely poor communications strategy and horrible negotiating tactics resulted in overwhelming public distain for the strikers. The personal dislike between the negotiators for York University and CUPE dragged out the strike, which ultimately required the provincial legislature to end it with back-to-work legislation.

 

OPSEU faces an uphill battle to win over public opinion to their side and, judging by their communications following the strike vote, they have not figured out how to communicate to the middle-class parents they need the support of. Further, the history of animosity between OPSEU and the colleges is very similar to the York situation.

 

The recent teaching assistants' strike at McMaster University is a perfect illustration of what happens when a union's leadership decides to take a weak strike mandate and throw up picket lines without going back to their membership for a strong mandate.

 

The strike was a complete and utter failure with a large number of union members ignoring the picket lines and continuing to conduct tutorials. Eventually, the union was forced to allow its membership a vote on McMaster's contract offer; the membership accepted it and the union leadership were left with a humiliating defeat.

 

OPSEU would be wise to lower the temperature of its rhetoric and delay any strike plans until such time as they are in a position to win a strike.

 

They have not won the strike vote, nor have they lost. They have the attention of the media and the public; there is an opportunity for them to focus on the issues that they can win the battle of public opinion with. Victory is within reach, if only the labour movement would move past their old industrial-age ideas that a picket line is necessary for victory and move into the information age, in which intellectual actions are more effective than physical blockades.

 

Tagged with strike, ontario, vote, college | Comments (0) |

Only McGuinty can prevent Ontario college strike

Joey Coleman, December 18, 2009 at 5:47 PM

 

Ontario's estimated 500,000 college students better start asking Santa to deliver a Christmas miracle, because that's what it will take for Ontario's public colleges and the Ontario Public Service Employees Union to reach an agreement themselves.

 

Both sides in this dispute are entrenched against the other; there are very few issues they agree on and they don't seem to particularly like each other. The labour negotiation process usually sees public declarations from each side accusing each other of trying to destroy the other, but they can put these public statements aside at the negotiating table. But not in this case.

 

One of the many problems that caused last year's York University strike was the strong personal dislike between negotiators on both sides of the table.

 

With a history of antagonizing each other; York University and the CUPE 3903 union were both looking for a fight and students were the ones left with the bloody nose at the end.

 

There is not much difference in this regard in the current battle between OPSEU (the union representing full-time academic staff at Ontario's 24

community colleges) and the College Compensation and Appointments Council (representing the colleges); both sides have been at each other's throats for the last few years. In the last two years, there have been six rulings by the Ontario Labour Relations Boards in disputes between the two parties. Both sides are presently fighting over the validity of ballots in the unionization vote held by part-time college faculty in Ontario.

 

Adding fuel to the part-time unionization fire, the College Compensation and Appointments Council decided to impose new contract conditions on full-time college faculty in November after saying that, in their opinion, OPSEU was not negotiating in good faith.  Needless to say, the labour movement was enraged by the action.

 

As it stands right now, neither side is talking, no talks are planned and a strike vote will be held on January 13.

 

Last year, the Ontario government whistled past the graveyard during the York strike. As it became clear to the public that neither side was capable of reaching an agreement on their own, Ontario's Premier stubbornly stuck to his position of not acting to end the strike. Students protested on the front lawn of the legislature and their pleas for action fell on deaf ears.

 

Eventually, after over 75 days, Dalton McGuinty sent in his "top negotiator" to mediate the dispute and stubbornly stood by his position that the government would not act to end the strike. This didn't work; even his "top negotiator" couldn't get the two sides to agree.

 

It was only after all four Toronto-based newspapers published editorials demanding the Premier act that he introduced back-to-work legislation.

 

Sadly, for students, the damage was already done and many suffered the loss of summer jobs due to Mr. McGuinty's inaction to end it in a timely manner.

 

Did Mr. McGuinty learn his lesson from the York strike?  We'll see. If he sits back and lets a strike happen, the answer is no. If he acts as soon as Christmas is over, the answer is yes.

 

Instead of waiting until students lose jobs, the Premier needs to immediately assign his "top negotiator," publicly announce the time and place that negotiations will resume, and dare the two sides to not show up.

Tagged with strike, ontario, college | Comments (26) |