An author of a previous post clarifies which side she’s on:

Oh my goodness…. I wrote the post that has been titled “dissenting voice.” I was completely unclear/vague in my last line!

I am NOT a dissenting voice [...]! I am completely and utterly FOR the strike. Management is wrong. Sweeping away 30 years of collective bargaining is completely wrong. Ending collective bargaining as we know it is completely wrong. Asking us to roll over and “take it” (I’m not going to complete that thought, but in my anger you can imagine how I would finish that phrase), counting on fear and (perhaps) ignorance to get a NO vote is completely wrong.

I welcome the chance to exhibit the moral courage needed to stand up to increasingly arrogant and forceful anti-union forces and fight for the collective good of all workers.

I now know that [my] College voted against the strike. I’m ashamed, and demoralized. I simply CANNOT understand how people who live paycheck to paycheck, like most of us, can be against organizations that try to look out for them. I simply cannot understand it. It goes against all logic and reason.

I hope this post is more clear!

I’d say that it is.  Personally, I’m in favour of banning all pronouns, to avoid future misunderstandings. 

Faculty members and other personnel are certainly entitled to their opinion and their vote, however it is far more productive and conducive to take a moral stand on issues that are concrete.

What about moral courage that fights for work loads that are not only manageable and appropriate, but geared towards helping our students learn?  How about academic freedom that enables teachers to formulate modes of inquiry that will encourage critical development over measures that are only valuable for their expediency?  How about taking a moral stand for future students, who will serve to benefit from the adoption of all [of the] Work Load Task Force recommendations, and not just those that help colleges save money?

Take a moral stand that counts, not one that grants the colleges more authority to control, coerce, and cajole.

I don’t know that outcome of the vote yet…I really have no idea what will happen.

I just wanted to say this: there are not many times in life when we’re called upon to demonstrate moral courage. To act publically, when many are against you, when many people think you are wrong and actively and angrily will tell you so, as may happen if we end up on the picket line.

I welcome, not without trepidation, this chance to publically demonstrate the moral courage, the intestinal fortitude, that it takes to stand up and say, NO, THIS IS WRONG.

Negotiations are won by getting and using bargaining power.  You must be able to exert pressure on the other side.  At this point in time, Management’s bargaining team and the College Presidents have NOTHING to lose, strike or no strike.  Therefore, to develop bargaining power we have to make them vulnerable.  How(?)…by embarrassing them and the McGuinty government responsible for the financial abuses that are perpetrated, in every College by the Presidents and their complicit, puppet Boards of Governors.  Any 2′nd year accounting student could easily identify the self-serving greed of the Colleges’ administrations.  The obscene pay increases of Presidents, Vice-Presidents and other administrators are publicized.
Administration empire-building is the the path to personal gain. To get an additional $20,000 in salary, an administrator probably spends $300,000 in unnecessary additional staff.
The Prime Minister earns less than many Ontario college presidents.  Are these guys (and ladies) elite academic leaders? Give me a break!
So how do / why can they do it?  It is obvious that the Ministry is responsible for the fact that College Presidents have carte blanche to stuff their own pay envelopes first and then cut back on, that which they consider to be waste…the teaching payroll.

I suggest…(1) We publicly accept the 1.75% increase and take salary off the table.  (2) Demand NO other material changes to the (expired) contract. (3)Hire a financial analyst and a public relations consultant to clarify what this is dispute is really about…unfetterred greed on the part of “tin-pot” dictatorial college presidents and complete abandonment by the Government of its fiduciary responsibilty.

Your points are well taken, although we might not prioritize similar issues.  I’m more concerned with how much my colleague (who is a single mother of two) is making than how much the president of the college is making, and I’m not sure that money taken from the latter will mean more money for the former.  I’m more concerned with my ability to fulfill my role as professor than with the Government’s diligence in its role as fiscal overseer.

I do agree with you, though,  that salary is a distraction from the real issues,  and I’d probably be satisfied with the college’s 2%/year offer, given a two-year contract (not four, as the colleges seem to want) on the condition that we made non-monetary gains, regarding workload and our professional relationships.  Note though, that your own suggestions would leave us without academic freedom or any modicum of real power over our own classes, for several more years.  Personally, I’d like to see those things in our next contract.

The question is whether the overreliance on partial-load faculty is an urban phenomenon, or province-wide:

Hi all profs in the non-Toronto colleges,
I am trying to get a fix on the number of partial load and part-timers used in the non-Toronto colleges. In Toronto, at Seneca, Centennial, Humber, etc. the use is rampant. There are more non-tenured than tenured faculty by a proportion of more than 70/30. Please contact me at joyce.hall@senecac.on.ca
to give me your impression of the proportions at your colleges. Thanks.

No less importantly, I invite partial-load faculty to e-mail me (confidentially) at ontariocollegeprof@yahoo.com — get your story on the “Profs’ Stories” page, and share your thoughts about why the upcoming strike vote will or won’t affect you, personally.

While I respect my colleague’s well-thought-out concerns with a strike, I have to disagree with the idea that no strike would pose less deleterious effects.

Once you undermine the union, and a ‘no’ vote undoubtedly be perceived as such, it’ll be very difficult to rebuild the hard-fought credibility we have earned since 1970. Quite simply, in 4 years, the imposed terms will be deeply entrenched, and it would take an even longer strike to undo the damage.

I think it’ll be an unmitigated disaster to vote ‘no.’

[. . .]  Given that I entirely agree with your assessment of the faculty position, you might be surprised to hear that I have not yet made up my mind as to how I will vote [. . . .]

I believe the following:
1. College Management is engaged in a cynical and well-planned attempt to bust the union by taking advantage of the law change which enables them to do so.
2. The biggest threat to faculty is not the current imposed terms and conditions themselves, but the lack of a collective agreement which allows college management to rewrite terms and conditions at whim going forward.
3. Colleges are well prepared for the eventuality of a strike, and have the financial means (most anyway) to engage in a prolonged strike. (I understand it will actually save money for many.)

I understand what is at stake for faculty if the strike mandate is not given. I understand the considerable concessions that would be given in workload – and to a lesser degree – in salary. I also understand the moral anger felt by faculty at having conditions imposed on us. I understand the threat to faculty, and in fact all college workers, going forward, if this is allowed to pass. So the union argues that we must respond with ‘a line in the sand’, and must force the colleges back to the bargaining table, and strike, if need be.

However, I am concerned by the following:
1. The strike in 2006, from which this one has arisen, achieved very little. (Unless you accept the taskforce report that appears to carry little weight.)
2. The majority of colleges are in a strong financial position, while the wider economy, and public perception, is not.
3. Colleges are prepared and will have planned for the eventuality of a strike.
4. The provincial government is likely to back the college position, given that any demands for more money are likely to land on the desks of provincial government, and public support is unlikely to be forthcoming.

Added to this, I am very concerned that without a collective agreement, if positions of bad-will harden further and the climate becomes entrenched, college management will see fit to make further ‘adjustments’ to terms and conditions, and perhaps make sweeping cuts to programs. The groundwork for this already appears to be happening at my college, with the announcement of a ‘Strategic Planning’ process to assess all aspects of the college, before Fall, 2010.

If these observations are correct, then faculty are in a VERY difficult position, and we are being asked to vote for 2 poor options, in an election which seems fairly well-rigged in favour of the colleges. The actions and intent of the colleges suggests that they are genuinely disinterested in bargaining, and willing to accept a strike. The lack of public support, and therefore lack of pressure on provincial government, means that a strike will have little leverage.

So, vote yes, and enter into a strike which management knows will not have teeth, will erode public support for faculty, and which could potentially last through the summer, and which in all likelihood, will end without significant gains or improvements for faculty over the current terms and conditions, at the cost of weeks and possibly months of salary. Or vote no, and effectively accept the current imposed terms and conditions, and a weakened union.

The way I see it, in a game of chess between the colleges and the union, the College Council (and more specifically the government which allowed the law change and enabled imposed terms and conditions) have placed the union in checkmate. Either way the vote goes, the union has lost this round of negotiation.

And so I am at my point of decision. When voting for 2 rotten eggs, which one stinks the most: Morally, I detest conceding to the bully. But anger aside, how much is lost if we accept the current terms and conditions under duress, and at least secure ourselves with a collective agreement that protects us, albeit temporarily, from further erosion? What is the potential loss from a prolonged strike, loss of public support, and most seriously; imposed terms and conditions which render us vulnerable to sweeping changes and an attack of much higher caliber?

Perhaps this time, we should consider the battle, the bully, and the size of his armory. Perhaps it is time to retreat, regroup, and prepare for a bigger battle in 4 years when public support may be more forthcoming and economic circumstances more favourable. Perhaps, in the interim, something could be done about the flawed law change which has allowed college management to abuse faculty [. . . .]

No disagreement here on most of your insights, and if you opt to vote against a strike, no-one will ever accuse you of casting an uninformed ballot!  But I might interpret a couple of points differently than you:

1. The colleges’ funding is potentially infinite; the union’s is not.  Therefore yes, the colleges could certainly engage in a prolonged strike, but many doubt that they would want to endanger the semester for 500,000 students.  The colleges have always had money, yet no Ontario college strike has ever lasted for longer than three weeks, and the government has intervened on at least one occasion in the past, at that point.

2. I agree that the last strike accomplished little (beyond the formation of the toothless Workload Task Force report).  That indicates, though, that the problem was that the strike was voluntarily called off too early (i.e., before the actual issues were actually resolved), for the sake of good faith and public opinion on the union’s part.   Were a strike to occur today, the professors could make a very credible argument that it shouldn’t be ended until the issues are actually resolved.  As well, although the 2006 strike achieved litte, if profs hadn’t struck convincingly, we can’t say where we would be right now (or what the Terms and Conditions imposed on faculty in November would have looked like).

3. The government is indeed on the colleges’ side (which makes me reluctant to argue that professors should be considered “Essential workers”, ineligible to strike).  With that said, the deal that a government-appointed arbitrator gives us could hardly be worse than the current Terms and Conditions.  More likely, if a strike can last long enough until Back-to-Work legislation and binding arbitration is imposed, the arbitrator will undo the college management’s efforts to gut the SWF’s universality and the union’s right to grieve contract violations.  Since the government-appointed member and the college-management-appointed member of the Workload Task Force both agreed that collegiality and academic freedom must be enhanced at colleges, I think it likely that strike-ending arbitration might have to throw the union a bone on that front as well.  It also might result in a shorter contract, committing us to lower salary increases for a shorter period of time.

Long story short: I think the current Terms and Conditions themselves are pretty terrible, and hurt the weakest of us — the partial-load faculty — the most.   I don’t see how we could do any worse by authorizing a strike.   College management has absolutely no reason to make a single compromise up until the time that profs indicate that they’re unsatisfied with the current Terms and Conditions (the college management deliberately chose to ensure that that indication could only take the form of a Strike vote –  they deliberately chose not to invite profs to vote on the Terms and Conditions).

I agree that the colleges are trying to weaken faculty unions.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that this represents their very best chance to break the union since its inception.  [Which is probably why University faculty and their unions and associations have denounced the college management.] Whether or not they have a likely chance of breaking the union depends in no small part on your own vote.  Since the Terms and Conditions weaken both the SWF and grievance mechanisms, you might want to try to talk to some profs who had been teaching prior to the introduction of the SWF in 1987 — what was it like?

If any of our esteemed, experienced colleagues would like to add a story of what it was like to teach in Ontario colleges prior to the SWF (or even prior to unionization), that would be welcome!  Write me (confidentially) at ontariocollegeprof@yahoo.com

In response to my “Open Letter to Students”, another professor provides a different insight; one born of more experience:

I’ve been a full time college professor for twenty-two years and expect to retire in the next two or three years. Going on strike will affect my pension for the rest of my life. I certainly don’t want to strike. Who would? Especially in the dead of winter!

Let me give you some perspective. I went on a sabbatical leave for a year a while ago, during which I was paid 70% of my salary and ALL of my benefits. Fairly typical in the education business. And the college covered my classes during my absence with four part-time teachers. But get this: THE COLLEGE MADE A NET PROFIT ON THAT DEAL!

Yes. That means whatever they paid those part-time teachers totaled less than the 30% of my salary that they weren’t paying me. That should give you some idea of how poorly part-time teachers are paid.

The colleges Collective Agreement says that the system will favor full time positions over part-time and partial load teachers. That’s not what has been going on for nearly two decades. There are more part-time and partial load teachers by far than full time teachers in the college system. Are you getting the picture?

The problem isn’t between the professors and the college system. The problem is that the government of Ontario refuses to pay for quality post-secondary education and the citizens of Ontario remain blissfully ignorant of it. Hence, nothing gets done.

Consider this:
1. Ontario is dead last in all of Canada in per-capita post secondary education spending.
2. Ontario is 40% below NATIONAL AVERAGE in per-capita post secondary education spending.
3. The management side of the bargaining team doesn’t act independent from government but takes their marching orders from them.

So you should be angry that your education is being held hostage. REALLY ANGRY. Just direct it in the right place: at the government of Ontario.

Democracy is messy. Democracy is inconvenient. It requires citizens to act if they want the right things to happen. The only tool professors have at this point (since the management team obviously won’t bargain) is to strike. So the ball is in YOUR court. Make your voice heard. Call or write your MPP. That’s where you can do some good. Demand the kind of education that the rest of Canada has and you deserve. Act.

In reference to my “Open Letter to Students”, a student wrote:

Okay, I’ve read your arguments. I’m not at all impressed. I’m a student with three children of my own. I rely on my children being in school in order for me to attend college. If this strike happens and continues for more than three weeks, either the “fluff” as I’ve heard the professors call it, will be removed from the curriculum in order to finish by the end of the scheduled term or the term will be extending into the summer. Should the term be extended, I will not be able to attend. If the material is crammed into tighter time, that is not providing us quality education that you say you are trying to achieve through this strike. If the powers that decides on this strike genuinely cared, they would find a way to get their point across without disturbing the education of the students. Many students had to climb huge mountains to get here…I am one of them. and I feel like the rug is literally being pulled out from underneath me. This is more than the frustration you are dismissing ! When parents divorce and they go to court to fight custody, the court will not allow the children to be used as bargaining tools…the court expects the parents to act like adults and work things out with a mediator without affecting the children. OPSEU, management and the professors are using the students as bargaining tools. There is no fairness here at all. We are the ones suffering and not for our betterment as you have TRIED to state. I am more than happy with the quality of education I am getting. If professors had the right to make the decisions you believe need to be made, we might not meet provincial standards…profs are very capable of making really bad decisions too. And in my program, I hear all the time how our program is better than that from another college because we are taught a different way, so that tells me the profs definitely have a hand in what and how material is being taught. My Aunt is a college professor in BC and her words were “it’s all crazy. We get paid enough money and we provide an education that is to the best of our ability and yet every time contracts come up everyone decides they suddenly want more money and more control.” And I’m really angry that you feel that you should receive more money than highschool teachers. But you make more money than the average police officers who put their life on the line every day !!!!! There is something very very wrong with that !

As I understand it, you have four main objections to the notion of a strike:

1. It will inconvenience students’ education
2. The quality of college education is currently adequate, and a strike is therefore unnecessary
3. Profs currently have enough academic freedom
4. Profs already make enough (or too much) money

Let me respond to these individually:

1. Yes, a strike may inconvenience students’ education, but that is the responsibility of the colleges (who have the right to hire replacement faculty during a strike).  The colleges have chosen to begin a semester without signing their employees to a contract, and yes, the students may suffer from that choice.

You state that “If the powers that decides on this strike genuinely cared, they would find a way to get their point across without disturbing the education of the students”, and I think that you fail to realize that the union has spent months trying to negotiate a new contract “without disturbing the students”.  The college management’s team has walked away from the bargaining table twice, and the union is left with only one option.

2. You claim, “I am more than happy with the quality of education I am getting.”  I’m glad that you’re happy with the quality of education that you’re getting.  Remember that you’re getting it because of passionate and committed professors.  Remember also that you don’t know about the quality of education that other students in other programs or colleges are getting.  Here, I give some examples where education at colleges is being sacrificed for financial concerns.

3. You argue against academic freedom, stating “If professors had the right to make the decisions you believe need to be made, we might not meet provincial standards…profs are very capable of making really bad decisions too.”   Firstly, the union is only requesting academic freedom “subject to the requirements of any legitimate external accrediting bodies” to whom the colleges are responsible, and the deans would remain responsible for ensuring compliance.  Secondly, yes, profs can make bad decisions, but somehow academic freedom hasn’t hurt the reputation of Ontario’s universities at all; it has only enhanced their reputation.  As well, even the colleges’ representative on the Workload Task Force agreed that “collegiality [and] academic freedom . . . are important objectives in any college system”.

As evidence that profs do not need more academic freedom, you point out that colleges may differ in their approaches.  However, that fact may only indicate that different colleges have different managers; it doesn’t prove that “profs definitely have a hand in what and how material is being taught” (and “a hand in” something doesn’t necessarily “equal influence over”)

Your other piece of evidence that Ontario profs do not need more academic freedom is the fact that your aunt in British Columbia feels that profs have enough control.  Page 60 of this document, however, suggests that your aunt has academic freedom.  There would be no issue (and perhaps no strike vote), if Ontario profs were able to enjoy the freedoms that your aunt enjoys.

4. You state, “I’m really angry that you feel that you should receive more money than highschool teachers”.  You’re welcome to be angry, but it’s a general principle that jobs that require more education, experience, and training typically provide higher salaries.  The high salaries justify the extra costs of the years spent studying, for example (during which we paid tuition and didn’t make a salary).  That’s why high school teachers, for example, make more than day-care workers: You need more education to teach high school.  On this page I note that a currently-advertised college position is looking for a person who would have approximately 17 years of education and work experience.  If you feel that person deserves to make less than a high-school teacher, then we disagree on this issue.  Since one needs as few as four years of postsecondary education or training to be a high-school teacher, save your anger until after you count how many of the jobs advertised on this page require as few as four years of postsecondary education or training.

As for police? well, according to the CBC, a first-class constable makes $81,249 annually;  in 2008, the median step on the professors’ pay scale was . . . $76,129 .  As well, to become a police officer, you only need a grade 12 education.  That means you can collect a salary for over 40 years, while most profs are hired much later in life (due the the required education and training), and therefore have a much shorter career duration –  hence the higher annual salaries.

Long story short, I strongly suspect that the career income of the average high school teacher and the average police officer is considerably higher than that of the average college professor who pursued a life in academia.