Category Archives: Strikes

National Post: Talks in Ont. college teachers strike resume Monday

Ontario’s community colleges are expected to resume negotiating with faculty today as 150,000 students await detailed contingency plans in the event there is no resolution to the two week-old strike threatening to jeopardize the academic year.

”I wouldn’t say we’re optimistic,” Ted Montgomery, chief negotiator for the union representing college staff, said yesterday. ”I’d say we’re hopeful management will come back with something that finally addresses our concerns.”
On Friday, following two demonstrations, one which saw students dressed as chess pieces to express their displeasure at being treated “like pawns,” both parties met separately with Chris Bentley, Minister of Colleges and Universities, before agreeing to resume talks.

Pulse24.com: Hope for a deal

There’s a glint of hope for Ontario college students as a strike by their teachers reaches the two-week mark.

Negotiators for the province’s colleges and the teachers union are meeting Monday for the first time since faculty members walked out in early March.

It’s a definite step forward but whether they can reach an agreement is another thing entirely – and when the strike began the two sides appeared to be far apart on several issues. A provincial mediator will be on hand at the Fairmount Royal York Hotel, where talks are ongoing, in the hopes of hammering out a settlement.

570 News: College talks on again

There is some hope that strike-bound college students may get back to class soon.

Negotiators for the colleges and teachers union are meeting today for the first time since the instructors walked out of classes two weeks ago.

The meeting was agreed to after meeting with the Universities and Colleges minster last Friday.

Today’s meeting is closed to the media, but 570 News will break in with updates when information becomes available.

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Ottawa Sun: Strike three for dispute

Well it’s about time. That’s all we can say of the news that the two sides in the strike by Ontario college teachers are set to resume talks tomorrow.

It’s just too bad that they couldn’t have come to their senses a couple of weeks earlier and headed off a destructive walkout that has punished the very students that the teachers said they were trying to help with their job action.

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cbs5.com: SF TEACHERS UNION CALLS FOR STRIKE AUTHORIZATION VOTE

United Educators of San Francisco, the union representing teachers in the San Francisco Unified School District, today announced it will hold a strike-authorization vote by the end of the month.

President Dennis Kelly said today that an assembly of the union had voted unanimously Wednesday to go ahead with the strike vote.

Teachers in the district have been working without a contract since June, according to the union. “The district has taken every opportunity to prolong these negotiations,” Kelly said.

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Toronto Star: Mediator asked to step in

Ontario colleges and the union representing their striking faculty members have agreed to head back to the bargaining table on Monday, the first break in the impasse since the strike sidelined 150,000 students 10 days ago.

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Teachers union to call for strike vote

San Francisco’s teachers moved one step closer to a strike Thursday, as their union leaders said they would call a strike vote by the end of this month.

If the 6,000 teachers and aides represented by United Educators of San Francisco authorize a strike, a walkout could start within days, said Dennis Kelly, the union’s president.

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The Daily Barometer: Contract talks, in debate since July, have come to a deadlock and a faculty strike is impending

The future is uncertain for the faculty and students of Western Oregon University, as contract negotiations between the university’s administration and faculty have come to a stalemate, and might escalate to the first higher education faculty strike in Oregon histo

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National Post: Teachers take strike to Toronto

Striking college teachers and students, who have been kept out of classes for nearly two weeks, will protest in Toronto today.
Faculty plan to rally in downtown Toronto (at Yonge and Dundas) and then march a few blocks to the Ministry of Colleges building.

Toronto Star: Teachers wary of minister’s invitation

Chris Bentley asks to meet with striking college teachers and college negotiators

The man who heads the bargaining team for 9,100 striking Ontario college teachers and faculty said he is “encouraged” by today’s invitation to meet tomorrow with the minister responsible for post-secondary education.

“Finally, we have somebody willing to listen,” Ted Montgomery shouted out to about 2,000 teachers at a noon-hour rally at Dundas Square in downtown Toronto. “I’m proud of you, but deeply saddened we have been driven to this,” he told them.

The invitation to meet came from Colleges and Universities Minister Chris Bentley, but the invitation was greeted skeptically by organizers of the rally.

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The Globe and Mail: Students won’t lose year, colleges to promise

Ontario community colleges are set to promise students that they will not lose their academic year despite a strike by teachers, now in its second week. Newspaper advertisements tomorrow and Thursday will tell students that they will complete their winter semester, with management teaching classes if necessary.

The colleges will look at the transcripts of graduating students first to determine the essential work necessary to complete each course, said Rick Miner, president of the colleges’ committee of presidents and also president of Seneca College.

About 150,000 full-time and thousands more part-time students were shut out of classes last week after negotiations collapsed between the Ontario Public Service Employees Union and the province’s 24 community colleges. More than 9,000 teachers, librarians and counsellors are on strike, pushing for smaller class sizes and more full-time instructors. There are no talks scheduled between the two sides.

Toronto Sun: Students to air views at rallies

Whether through a placard-waving rally or by bringing teachers a coffee and a doughnut, local college students will be weighing in on the provincewide strike.

A group of local college students affected by the full-time faculty and librarians’ strike at Algonquin College have launched the Take Action Campaign to “have our voices heard and stand up to the teachers’ union.”

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Reuters Canada: Late semester strike threatens Ontario students

A province-wide strike by Ontario’s community college teachers is threatening the academic year of more than 150,000 students in the province, a student association said on Monday. Tyler Charlebois of the College Students Alliance said the prospect of students losing the academic year is “quite real” because of the strike’s critical timing with less than two months left in the school year. “When you get into week three and four of a strike, that’s when you cut into time needed to cover remaining (course) material before April exams,” he said.

CTV: Union can’t guarantee students’ year: negotiator

A teachers’ union says it’s up to Ontario’s College Relations Commission to ensure a strike by 9,100 faculty doesn’t jeopardize the students’ year. Ontario Public Service Employees Union negotiator Ted Montgomery says teachers can’t promise students they won’t lose their year because of the week-old strike. Montgomery says it’s up to the commission, an independent body, to advise the government when the students’ year is in jeopardy.

OPSEU: Bad faith: OPSEU takes employer to the College Relations Commission

Union bargaining team chair Ted Montgomery made the announcement to a packed news conference this morning. On March 6, in the final hour of negotiations, having tabled nothing in five days of bargaining, the management bargaining team tabled a position at that crucial stage that was an offer that they knew could not lead and would not lead to a settlement. Its purpose was not to settle, not to move ahead, but rather to force and provoke the strike that weíre now on.

OPSEU strike information

Toronto Sun: College strike in deadlock

School’s still out today for 150,000 Ontario college students as their striking instructors enter day seven of a provincewide strike. The provincial association of colleges and the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, which represents 9,100 faculty members, are at loggerheads and no new negotiations are scheduled. “We’re still very disappointed that after a week with students not in the classroom, that neither side has made any movement toward putting themselves back at the table,” said Tyler Charlebois of the College Student Alliance, which represents 100,000 full-time students in Ontario.

London Free Press: College studies summer option

Fanshawe College may extend the school year into summer to make up lost time from a strike by staff, a college spokesperson said yesterday. A summer session is just one of the options being considered to ensure students do not lose their year, Emily Marcoccia said yesterday.

Toronto Star: Students may face weekend classes

Ontario college students, now losing classes because of a teachers’ strike, may be forced to go to school on Saturdays and Sundays to make up for lost time if the dispute drags on. Insisting all will be done to ensure more than 150,000 students complete their semester before summer, Ontario Public Service Employees Union bargaining chair Ted Montgomery said the term may be extended by a week, the exam period shortened and both days of the weekend used for classes. “I know that’s not comfortable for students and neither is it for faculty,” Montgomery told reporters at a news conference. “But I’m not suggesting, and I don’t understand the colleges to be suggesting, that there are plans to extend into summer.

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Mountain News: On Strike

Mohawk college teachers part of province-wide walkout that has shut down community college system. A year ago they would have been studying for final exams and looking forward to the end of another school year. But for some 150,000 community college students across Ontario, including about 9,500 full-time students at Mohawk College, the final six weeks was put on hold earlier this week when about 9,000 full-time teachers, counsellors and librarians at the province’s 22 community colleges went on strike.

insidetoronto.ca:
College strike puts the pinch on students

It’s a case of no more teachers and no more books for college students across Ontario, as the teacher strike has cancelled all classes.

Students fear worst in colleges strike

Students are frustrated by the Ontario college teacher’s strike and are concerned their school year might be in jeopardy.

Brampton Guardian: Students are victims of strike

It’s always such a shock when teachers go on strike. We know it shouldn’t be. The teacher’s union is just another group that collectively bargains and tries to get the best deal possible for its members.

CNW Telbec: College students need to know: why is OPSEU disrupting their year?

Ontario colleges have launched a newspaper ad campaign today to ask the question that college students and parents want to know: why is OPSEU disrupting the school year?

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Following last fall’s BC teachers’ strike a number of departments and programs at UBC, along with the New Proposals Publishing Society and <a href=”http://www.cust.educ.ubc.ca/workplace/”Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor sponsored a public roundtable discussion on the significance of the strike and the struggle for education in the public interest in British Columbia.

Streaming video of the presentations at the roundtable are now available via Charles Menzie’s In Support of Public Education blog or you can click on any of the presenters names below to access the video:

Stephen Petrina (Department of Curriculum Studies, UBC)
Jinny Sims (President British Columbia Teachers’ Federation)
Catherine Evans (BC Society for Public Education)
Paul Orlowski (Teacher, Kitsilano Secondary School, Vancouver)
Charles Menzies (Department of Anthropology & Sociology, UBC)
Kevin Millsip (former Vancouver School Board Trustee)
E. Wayne Ross (Department of Curriculum Studies, UBC)

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CUPE Local 2278 (TAs, tutors and markers) has published on their website the results of their strike vote they conducted on February 27 and 28: “The vote was 80% in favour, with 750 votes cast”.

The University of British Columbia brought an application to the Labour Relations Board to challenge the TA strike vote as invalid, claiming it was not obtained in accordance with the Labour Relations Code.

The Ubyssey: TA strike vote passes—No job action without membership consultation, says TA union

Teaching assistants fired a warning shot at the University last week when they voted to authorise their union, Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) local 2278, to initiate a strike.

Although the vote means the union can now legally serve the University with a strike notice, according to Sarah Roberts, chair of the bargaining committee for CUPE local 2278, union protocols require them to go back to the membership before job action can actually occur.

“What this vote means…is that we want to send a message to the University that our members support us at the bargaining table,” she said.

The result of the strike vote was 80 per cent in favour of a strike, with a voter turnout of 45 per cent.
Teaching assistants at UBC have been without a contract since August 31 and are currently in negotiations with the University. The lack of progress made was the driving force behind the vote, explained Roberts.

“That’s our real hang-up, that our negotiations aren’t moving forward,” she said.

Roberts claimed that if the University doesn’t offer graduate students enough money to be teaching assistants, it might translate into top students not wanting to come to UBC. This will have negative consequences towards research and teaching at the University, she added.

“As students we are concerned about the education this University is offering…but at this point it’s becoming an unworkable environment here,” said Roberts. “All levels of the University are starting to suffer by our inability to recruit good graduate students.”

UBC Director of Public Affairs Scott Macrae said that contract negotiations with the union are ongoing and didn’t want to comment on specifics.

“Those discussions really remain at the table at this point,” he said.

According to Macrae, the union and UBC are set to meet today for contract deliberations.

“As long as people are talking there’s always the mutual hope that they’ll get to a satisfactory conclusion,” he commented, adding, “We’re still talking.”

Teaching assistants went on strike in early 2003 but were legislated back to work by the provincial government on March 12 of that year.

Roberts said she was optimistic that a contract can be agreed upon and a strike avoided.

“The last thing anyone wants to do is go on strike,” she said. “I really hope it doesn’t come to that.”

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ABC Newsonline: ACT teachers urged to consider NSW pay package

ACT Education Minister Katy Gallagher has urged teachers to consider an offer to have the same pay and conditions as New South Wales teachers before next week’s planned industrial action.

The strike was called when the Government offered teachers a 9 per cent pay increase over three years when teachers have been seeking 12 per cent.

Ms Gallagher says the offer would deliver the pay rise the teachers are seeking but would require secondary teachers to work face to face in the class room from two extra hours a week.

She says she will put the offer in writing to the Australian Education Union (AEU) today but the strike will have to be called off before talks can proceed.

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Bexley Times: University lecturers strike for 25 per cent wage hike

DOZENS of university lecturers took part in strike action over low pay this week demanding a wage hike of 25 per cent.

Angry staff at the University of Greenwich set up picket lines at its three campuses – at Greenwich, Avery Hill in New Eltham, and the Medway – throughout Tuesday.

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CTV: College teacher strike enters day two

It could be a long and drawn out battle between college professors and the institutions they work for, with Ontario students paying the price for the ongoing labour dispute.

On Wednesday, Ontario professors entered their second day on the picket lines, with both sides of the dispute acknowledging it could be some time before an agreement is reached.

Toronto Sun: Prez urges more cash

THE ANSWER TO Algonquin College’s labour strife rests with the province, says college president Robert Gillett. In a move that could force the summer semester’s cancellation, 9,100 instructor, librarian and counsellor members of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union from 24 colleges across the province walked off the job yesterday over workload demands.

Sentinel Review: College teachers on strike

The province’s college professors are calling it a matter of “education quality,” but regardless of the issue, students won’t be in the classroom until an agreement is reached.
As of midnight Tuesday, 9,100 instructors – members of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union – walked off the job after talks broke down between union negotiators and the College Compensation and Appointments Council. At the Oxford campus of Fanshawe College, there are only six faculty members involved in the action, but the satellite campus is still effectively shut down for the duration of the strike.

“All post-secondary activity has been suspended,” said Sherri Knott, the principal of the Oxford campus.

Because of the strike, the satellite’s roughly 30 part-time instructors have been laid off until a resolution can be reached between the union and college management. Knott indicated that “nothing had been established” to deal with the strike’s potential impact to the academic year. Knott, though, reassured the campus’s almost 300 students their year was likely not in jeopardy

Perry Sound North Star: College students locked out

One teacher is on strike and about 25 students are locked out of class at Canadore College’s Parry Sound campus following a breakdown in talks between the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) and the Association of Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology Monday.

The strike is affecting 25 students here in two classes, including 15 from the Academic Skills Development class, and 10 within the Welder/Fitter Program, which is run out of Parry Sound High School. While the program’s teacher is not a part of this particular strike action, the school has decided to shut down the program. They are concerned that students not be disrupted should a picket line be formed there.

Toronto Star: One professor

Ray Holmes has traded in his wrenches for a picket sign, abandoning his Centennial College classroom to join in the first strike of his 15-year teaching career.

He does not want to do it. He feels he must.

“Everybody is frustrated,” Holmes, 48, said last night. “Something has to be done.”

Holmes, the co-ordinator/professor of the Acura/Honda automotive apprenticeship program at Centennial’s Ashtonbee campus in Scarborough, is one of 9,100 full-time college faculty who walked off the job yesterday in a dispute over workload and class sizes.

With a class full of students completing their fourth and final eight-week course on their way to becoming qualified mechanics, Holmes is well aware that the strike could have a huge impact on his pupils. But he feels it’s a fight that will ultimately benefit those who come after them.

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Guardian Unlimited: Falling on deaf ears

John Sutherland

As the national strike by lecturers fails to gain significant newspaper column inches, John Sutherland wonders how the university sector has become so impotent

Wednesday March 8, 2006

The headline was in giant letters and dominated the front page of newspaper, placard-style. “Strike!!” it thundered.

That was the good news for the Association of University Teachers (AUT) and Natfhe activists. The bad news was that the newspaper in question was the London Student. In the national press, the academic “day of action” on March 7 – to be followed by a strategic boycott of marking and examining duties – didn’t rate a mention.

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politics.co.uk: AUT: Indignant union members will be out in force on the picket lines

Lecturers’ fury at employers’ claim over staff pay

Furious university staff reacted with amazement today (Tuesday) at reports from their employers that, on average, they earn over £40,000 a year. The claim was made by the Universities and Colleges Employers’ Association (Ucea) ahead of the 24 hour strike by members of the Association of University Teachers (AUT) and Natfhe today (Tuesday).

The truth, however, is very different, as the most recent figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), the central source for higher education statistics, show. According to their figures the average salaries for the different roles in academia are:

Researchers: £25,807
Lecturers: £32,531
Senior lecturers and researchers: £41,776
Professors: £56,944

The HESA data reveals that the average pay for full-time academic staff is actually £35,773. Their figures also show that at just 10 (ten) institutions out of 170 do academic staff earn an average salary above £40,000.

The full list of average full-time staff by institution can be found here:

http://www.aut.org.uk/media/excel/n/p/avunipayments.xls

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