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Bargaining news for OPSEU members in CAAT Academic The provincial election call has an impact on this presidents who, while never at the table, direct bargaining for the employer. Then there is the The faculty union team negotiates face-to-face with government itself. While the government does not the management team across the table. These are engage directly in the process, it plays a major role. It is college and College Compensation and Appointments the government that ultimately sets the parameters that Council (the Council) appointees and their chief frame the settlement. It is the government that can deny spokesperson, a lawyer from the firm of Hicks Morley.
Behind the scenes is a steering committee of college With the Eves government in election mode, it has not been in a position to carry out the government’saccustomed role in bargaining.
With Eves making much of his campaign strategem to ban strikes in the education sector, his party would like nothing more than the opportunity to tout the need forsuch legislation in light of a colleges strike. Not surprisingly, the Eves government had no interest in an College support staff are conducting a vote on on-time settlement. Neither will they if they win re- management’s offer to them. Their vote will be election. Nothing would make a strike ban more held on October 7. The support staff team is marketable than a solid strike threat.
Faculty know that it is the threat of the withdrawal of Faculty took their offer vote back on May 8 at services that ultimately backs up our contract needs and which time management’s offer was rejected by 98 When we look closely at the Eves election platform, The offer vote is a requirement of the Colleges the initial call for a “ban on school strikes” has become Collective Bargaining Act before a strike vote can a ban on “education” strikes. He has moved it from just be taken. Both faculty and support staff have elementary and secondary schools in the hope of completed the fact finding process which is also a appealing to voters who are in college or university or Faculty and support staff negotiating teams are The impact of the Harris/Eves post-secondary looking at further negotiations with management education agenda is clear in our bargaining. There is no As in previous rounds, the focus of faculty’s approved credit hours be deemed teaching contact workload demands centres around improving not only hours and that they, including the appropriate prep and our working conditions but also the quality of education evaluation factors, be included on faculty SWFs, along that we deliver. We, the professionals who deal with with credit on an hour-for-hour basis for additional time students on a daily basis, recognize that over the last required to teach these courses. Management’s decade management’s money-driven decisions to response to these demands was that electronically- increase class size and cut curriculum have severely mediated instruction is not an issue any longer and that there is very little electronically-mediated instruction We want to halt this erosion of quality and address going on in the province. We all know that is not true the issue of class size. To do that, the union has and we all know that providing quality education proposed an addition to the workload formula that requires the time to do it properly.
would provide relief once an individual faculty A long-standing concern has been the discriminatory member’s total student numbers exceed 150 ( 0.03 treatment of certain members of our bargaining unit.
attributed hours per student over 150). For example, if Counsellors and librarians have been denied access to a faculty member’s total student number were 200, he/ the Workload Monitoring Group to resolve their she would receive an additional 1.5 attributed hours workload complaints. Non-post-secondary teachershave workload limits that are higher than post-secondary teachers. We have proposed language to address both of these issues – to provide access to the Average faculty member’s
WMG/WRA to counsellors and librarians and to total student #s per week
eliminate the unfounded non-post-secondary distinction.
Another discriminatory practice of the colleges has Largest single class size
been to assign teaching hours to non-full-time Based on CRCIS Statistics for 2000/2001 employees without giving any consideration to the totalworkload involved with these assignments. The facultyteam has proposed that the work assignment of part- (200 – 150 = 50 x .03). Most recent available statistics time, partial-load, and sessional teachers include all of show an average number of students of about 125 (see their total workload – not just the direct teaching box). Clearly, this demand is reasonable and will contact. Partial-load workloads should be capped at no more than 28 total workload hours per week.
Further, faculty are proposing that the teachers – not Our collective agreement recognizes that we require the managers – should determine the method of time to engage in meaningful professional development evaluation that is suitable for the courses we teach. We activities. Currently, we have an allocation of 10 days find that management’s decisions have nothing to do per year. The team proposed that we could defer these with education; they have everything to do with money.
days for up to two years so we could participate in Evaluation factors, for example, are being changed from activities that are longer than 10 days. Management essay to routine/assisted solely to keep one’s workload agreed to this proposal, but only if faculty agree to their under 44 regardless of what effect that has on our workload concessions, which would render the ability to properly evaluate our students’ progress.
workload formula meaningless. We will not accept or Electronically-mediated instruction is being handled in agree to concessions. We will not damage or jeopardize as many different ways as there are colleges. The the quality of education we deliver. Now is the time to faculty team is proposing to standardize the crediting of improve the workload provisions of our collective these courses by ensuring that ministry- or college- Management has offered to provide a “drug card” and the date it would have become eligible under the so our members can get prescription drugs and only plan. And, because frequently such committees decide pay the druggist the 15 per cent deductible. Sound that a new drug will not be added to the coverage, good? Not once you realise the effects of the significant several would not have been approved at all.
concessions management demands in return.
If your doctor orders a drug that has not been added When it comes to drug coverage, our insurance plan to the list, you will have to pay the whole cost. Kineret, They propose to freeze the current list of eligible eligible, and the “cost effectiveness” of allowing the prescriptions. No new drugs would be added to the drug’s inclusion. This additional and unnecessary level coverage until they have been reviewed and assessed of approval would further restrict our access to by a committee established under the terms of the beneficial medication. The barrier that would be created is sufficient to warrant rejecting the drug card offer, but Management had an identical offer on the table in the there are other nasty changes included.
previous round of negotiations. Here is a small sample If a generic substitute is available, rather than the of the drugs that have become available since that time.
doctor-prescribed drug, then the plan would only cover All automatically became eligible under our current the cost of the generic. This could be overridden only where the doctor specifically prescribes “no • Comtan™ (entacapone) – for Parkinsons • Hectorol™ (doxercalciferal) – for hyperparathy- All drug cards depend on information networks. For you to use the card, your pharmacy must be on the • Reminyl™ (galantamine) – for Alzheimer’s “preferred provider” list of the network. Sun Life, our • Kineret™ (Anakinra) – for rheumatoid arthritis insurance carrier, uses BCE Emergis. Recently the • Gleevec™ (imatinib) – for chronic myeloid leukemia network removed Shoppers Drug Marts in Windsor • Nexium™ (Esomeprazole) – for duodenal ulcers from their list. Consequently, Sun Life’s card holders • Pegetron Injection™ (PEG-interferon & ribaviron) must pay the full charge for the drugs they buy at Shoppers in Windsor and send in the receipts to get These drugs, and every other drug introduced since that round of negotiations, would have had to go The proposed changes in our insurance arrangement through the insurance company approval process. At are far too great a price to pay for the minor best, there would have been many months of delay improvement in convenience that would come from following the time the drug received federal approval having a drug card. We will never fall for it.
decline of quality education in the colleges. We believe funding for the staffing required to meet the needs of an that a negotiated settlement should be achievable ever-growing student population. Recently, the without a strike. Whether or not the managers across underfunding has become so serious that even the the table, and whether or not the steering committee of college presidents – notoriously reluctant to challenge a college presidents share that view, we will see over the sitting government – have publically decried it. The Eves next period of bargaining. Whether or not we have a government is focused on privatizing education, not provincial government which shares that view will be supporting the college system. New and needed funding is locked up in so-called SuperBuild projects.
After the October 2 election, the faculty team will invite management to return to the bargaining table. If To get in touch with the bargaining team, send a Eves is re-elected, we will have to deal with the bargaining consequences that follow from that result. If one of the other parties – or both – form the nextgovernment, we have a very different proposition.
There would still be lots of bargaining to accomplish, but that bargaining would be conducted without thethreat of legislation.
We believe, based on their positions taken both in the legislature and in the election campaign, that eitherof the two opposition parties would be much more sympathetic to the concerns of faculty regarding the

Source: http://www.opseu.org/caat/caat_ac/nn8.pdf