Category Archives: Unions

CUPE 2278 TAs Have Everything to Gain with Strike Vote at UBC

On Wednesday, 24 October, CUPE 2278 teaching assistants at the University of British Columbia (UBC) will take a strike vote.  For each and every one of the graduate students, this should be a ‘no brainer’ yes, to escalate labour action: Yes to solidarity with CUPE 116 and SFU’s CUPE 3338 support staff on strike; Yes to migrating the student movement from Quebec to BC; Yes to taking a stand for equity and fairness, and yes to the future of education.  This escalation comes at a strategic time across the province as CUPE support staff collectively takes stands against years of employer and government suppression of wages.  Universities and government have for too long designated the likes of public school teachers, support staff, and teaching assistants as net zero workers.

As GTA wages at UBC have been stagnant (i.e., 0%), administrative salaries have skyrocketed.  From 2005, the year UBC began to merely roll over CUPE 2278 contracts, to 2011, the last year of accessible data, the President’s salary rose from $434,567 to $528,504 (22% increase).  The Provost’s salary increased from $230,887 to $321,023, a whopping 39% increase!  The salary of VP Human Resources, who manages bargaining for the University, jumped from $191,793 to $230,704 (20% increase).  The Director of Faculty Relations’ salary rocketed from $119,615 to $198,209 (41% increase).  And so on.  Deans have made certain that there is similar progress with their salaries.  For example, the Business Dean’s salary bounced from $334,196 to $422,304 (26% increase) while the Education Dean’s salary leaped from $216,519 to $261,732 (21% increase).  Through 2010, the Arts Dean’s salary quickly grew from $191,408 to $249,816 (30% in 6 years).  It is no mystery why the ranks of managers at UBC have swelled in numbers over the past few years.  The transition of Associate Deans and others to management via the 2010-12 Collective Agreement merely instrumented trends and ambitions.

Some faculty members’ salaries have kept pace, basically for those in Business or jumping at chances for an administrative stipend or retention fund.  Like CUPE, it has been tough slogging for the Faculty Association of UBC and Business made ground only through its own, elite faculty association.  If it were in my power, I would give the TAs 5% per year, no questions asked, and freeze administrative salaries, with a new net zero worker mandate for management fat cats living large, for a decade as a slap on the hand for irresponsibility and status quo.  CUPE support workers deserve the same 5% increases that administrators are receiving on average.

Against this rather comfy scenario for administrators at UBC, who want to leave well enough alone, undergraduates and graduate students, with 0% increases in TA wages, have struggled in or on the brink of poverty.  Students have been burdened with pronounced increases in inflation, tuition costs, supply costs (e.g., textbooks), housing costs, and debt over the decade, and it is getting worse in an economy that itself is top heavy and stalling with inflation, cutbacks, and debt.  The vast majority of PhD students face the worst job market for University faculty employment in Canada in generations— since the Great Depression.  Is there anything for the graduate students to lose by escalating job action?  There is everything to gain.

Inflation or cost of living increases at about 2% per year with larger increases in the densely populated cities such as Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver.  Tuition has risen nearly each year over the decade, with the BC government now forced to regulate increases at 2% per year.  The result is more than a doubling of tuition fees over the past decadeTextbook costs have inflated 10%-30% for some years during the decade.  In BC, landlords likely added about 4% to student rental housing this year and can add about the same next year.  Of course, these rises have been accompanied by unprecedented student debt.  Cumulative student debt across the country is now well over $15 billion with an average debt sentence for graduates in BC at $27,000 and rising.  This potential sentence and a bleak job market for youth make implications profound for already poverty-stricken families.   Graduate students in BC leave with a bit more debt on average– $30,000 – $35,000.  Fair enough some might say, students can readily sign for new credit cards with only 18% interest.

The average age of the professoriate in Canada is 50; in my Department, it’s closer to 55.  The writing on the wall is that faculty jobs have stagnated and are at an all time low.  Month after month in Education, a PhD graduate will pick up the Careers section of University Affairs or the CAUT Bulletin and find the column under “Education” and its related disciplines empty or with just a few openings across the entire country.  In BC alone, an estimated 75 PhDs graduate from Faculties of Education each year.

It is no wonder that the UBC AMS filed an Article #13 complaint to the United Nations on 25 November 2009.  The undergraduate students appealed that the BC government be held responsible for “gross human rights violations” in failing to control tuition, provide sufficient financial support, and provide adequate funding to post-secondary education.  It is no wonder that the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators of BC sent a letter to the BC Minister of Advanced Education on 7 September 2012.  The letter, co-signed by 24 supporters including the President of the Canadian Union of Public Employees-BC (CUPE) concluded: “Like institutional Presidents, our various organizations see the continued underfunding at our institutions as a serious threat to not only local students and local communities, but also a serious undermining of BC’s future.”

The extraordinary steps taken by students in Quebec between February and August of this year will pay dividends for the student movement across the country.  With models of direct democracy, the students managed to topple a government and win immediate concessions by the new government—in its first day of office the PQ government cancelled the pending tuition hike and repealed an anti-protest law that curbed basic freedoms of expression.  That’s inspiring democratic action.  Again, for UBC TAs, is there not everything to gain by escalating job action and moving from the classroom to the streets of campus, Vancouver, and Victoria?

SFU Behind Picket Lines

CUPE 3338 set up pickets lines this morning, effectively shutting down Simon Fraser University’s (SFU) downtown Vancouver campus.  Stepping up job action, this union of SFU support workers has for months been immensely frustrated with the University’s refusal to negotiate.  The union “reports virtually no progress in more than two years of talks.”  “With inflation, our members are actually falling behind in real terms,” says 3338 business agent John Bannister, “unlike top SFU administers who have been enjoying substantial annual increases while refusing to negotiate with us.”  “SFU has arbitrarily decided it will not sit down and bargain in good faith with us,” says CUPE 3338 president Lynne Fowler. “It has chosen instead to focus on its broken pension plan and deny its CUPE employees the right to negotiate a new collective agreement,” she adds.

CUPE BC Photos

Earlier this month, CUPE 3799 support workers picketed the University of Northern British Columbia’s (UNBC) campus while CUPE 116 escalated job action at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Following failed mediation, CUPE 2278 teaching assistants will take a strike vote next week to likely escalate CUPE job action at UBC.  Undergraduate students at UBC are calling for solidarity with the unions.

Workplace #1 Inaugural Issue Republished!

The Institute for Critical Education Studies (ICES) has embarked on the daunting, yet enjoyable, task of reissuing all back issues of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor in OJS format.  We begin with the inaugural issue and its core theme, “Organizing Our Asses Off.”  Issue #2 will soon follow.  We encourage readers and supporters of Workplace and Critical Education to revisit these now classic back issues for a sense of accomplishment and frustration over the past 15 years of academic labor.  Please keep the ideas and manuscripts rolling in!

New Issue of Workplace Launched

Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor has just published Issue #20, “The New Academic Manners, Managers, and Spaces.”  This issue includes key conceptual and empirical analyses of

  • the creation and avoidance of unions in academic and business workplaces (Vincent Serravallo)
  • the new critiquette, impartial response to Bruno Latour and Jacques Ranciere’s critique of critique (Stephen Petrina)
  • the two-culture model of the modern university in full light of the crystal, neural university (Sean Sturm, Stephen Turner)
  • alternative narratives of accountability in response to neo-liberal practices of government (Sandra Mathison)
  • vertical versus horizontal structures of governance (Rune Kvist Olsen)
  • teachers in nomadic spaces and Deleuzian approaches to curricular practice (Tobey Steeves)

Workplace Issue #20 Table of Contents:

Parallel Practices of Union Avoidance in Business and Academia

The New Critiquette and Old Scholactivism: A Petit Critique of Academic Manners, Managers, Matters, and Freedom

Cardinal Newman in the Crystal Palace – The Idea of the University Today

Working Toward a Different Narrative of Accountability: A Report from British Columbia

The DemoCratic Workplace: Empowering People (demos) to Rule (cratos) Their Own Workplace

Bridges to Difference & Maps of Becoming: An Experiment with Teachers in Nomadic Spaces for Education in British Columbia

We invite you to review Issue #20 for articles and items of interest. Thanks for the continuing interest in Workplace (we welcome new manuscripts here and Critical Education),

Institute for Critical Education Studies (ICES)
Workplace Blog

Duquesne appeals NLRB decision on union

Tribune-Review: Duquesne appeals NLRB decision on union

Board decision to reject the university’s request that it be allowed to withdraw on religious grounds from an agreement allowing part-time faculty to form a union, officials announced today.

The United Steelworkers petitioned the labor board on May 14 to supervise a union election to represent about 130 part-time faculty.

The NLRB issued a ruling Monday after Duquesne sought to withdraw from the vote because, as a religious institution, it qualifies for an exemption from NLRB jurisdiction, said Bridget Fare, a university spokeswoman.

AAUP Proposes Giving Contingent Faculty a Much Bigger Role in College Governance

The Chronicle: AAUP Proposes Giving Contingent Faculty a Much Bigger Role in College Governance

The American Association of University Professors is poised to urge colleges to give much more say in their governance to contingent faculty members, including many part-time adjuncts, librarians, and graduate students who are paid to teach or conduct research.

In a draft report being released today, the association argues that colleges are ill-served by policies that exclude most instructors who are off the tenure track from governance activities, and offers a list of recommendations for giving contingent faculty members much more say in the affairs of the institutions that employ them.

Faculty Unions Mobilize to Regain Lost Ground in Elections

The Chronicle: Faculty Unions Mobilize to Regain Lost Ground in Elections

Labor unions that represent college instructors are gearing up for several major battles at the polls in the coming months, out of a conviction that they must flex more muscle politically if they are to prevent further assaults on their members’ pocketbooks and bargaining power.

Although labor-related issues have long been key points of contention in state and national elections, labor activists in academe are especially geared up for the current election cycle in response to the attacks that fiscally conservative Republican lawmakers mounted against them after the elections of 2010.

Labor-Relations Board Seeks Input on Faculty Unions at Private Colleges

Labor-Relations Board Seeks Input on Faculty Unions at Private Colleges

The National Labor Relations Board is soliciting legal briefs on the question of whether or not faculty members at private colleges should be considered managers, a distinction that determines whether they are eligible for union representation.

Since a 1980 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, National Labor Relations Board v. Yeshiva University, professors at private colleges have been typically classified as managers and, therefore, largely barred from forming unions. In asking for the briefs in its announcement this week, the NLRB said it was seeking help in responding to a case involving Point Park University, a private institution in Pittsburgh where faculty members petitioned for a union election and voted, in 2003, to be represented by a local chapter of the Communications Workers of America.

UBC Temporarily Dodges TA Strike

The University of British Columbia’s application to the BC Labour Relations Board for a mediator in the stand-off with the graduate students’ union CUPE 2278 was granted.  LRB Mediator Mark Atkinson will convene CUPE 2278 and the University to the bargaining table in early May.  Atkinson was a staff representative with the Hospital Employees’ Union from 1981 to 1995, and has served as Mediator in the LRB from 1995-2004, and 2008-present. In the meantime, CUPE 2278’s strike position will remain  but the union cannot strike during this interim period leading to mediation. And in the meantime, the University will fall back on an excuse that the graduate teaching assistants are net zero workers, underserving of an increase in their pay cheques.  Again, here we are like the case of the BC Teachers’ Federation and the government’s sentiment: ‘Let them negotiate, let them bargain,’ as long as they remain net zero workers.

UBC TA / CUPE 2278 President Appeals for Solidarity

CUPE 2278 President Geraldina Polanco appealed for solidarity and unity amidst recent ploys by a University of British Columbia faculty member and subsequently the University to splinter the graduate students union’s strike position.  Polanco wrote to members: “Our employer reads our communications to you — for example, they have told us at the bargaining table that they regularly visit our Facebook page and read our newsletters. This makes engaging in transparent discussions with our members regarding bargaining a difficult task for the Union Executive. Our members are sprawled across workspaces on the UBC campus and beyond, which reduces most communication to electronic routes that, by their nature, are accessible to the employer…. we are limited in our ability to communicate information with you via virtual routes because we do not want to facilitate the transfer of information to our employer.”

Responding to attempts to splinter or divide the union, the CUPE 2278 President now has to remind members and supporters: “Going forward with bargaining it is useful to keep in mind that the employer benefits from a non-unified membership. Our mutual trust in each other is paramount, and we hope our minimal communication with you has not been misread. Our lack of formal correspondence is not because we do not seek to be transparent but rather because we are limited in what we can say.”

Last week, FT faculty member Dr. David Klonksy published “Dear CUPE 2278,” a diatribe to undermine confidence in the graduate students’ leadership.  At these times a few anti-union or anti-labour activists are readily played by management.  Good try, bad motive, Dr. Klonksy.  The letter is seriously uninformed in stating that CUPE 2278 “Union leadership has made no effort to reach out to faculty.”  Let’s be clear, CUPE 2278 has reached out– the communication from the union leadership has been outstanding– a model of leadership and transparency. If a strike materializes from the overwhelming support, faculty members will stand on the picket line in support of and sympathy with the students.

BCTF Finds Bias in BC Government Inside Appointment of Mediator

The BC Teachers’ Federation filed an application to the Labour Relations Board to quash the 28 appointment of Dr. Charles Jago as mediator in the current labour dispute.  “On April 2, BCTF President Susan Lambert wrote to Dr. Jago respectfully requesting that he step down as mediator, citing numerous factors that create an apprehension of bias. One day later, Dr. Jago wrote back, saying he declined to withdraw.”  Lambert argued that “this government has legislated a biased process and appointed a mediator who not only lacks experience, but evidently lacks impartiality as well.”  The BCTF is seriously concerned with insider connections to the BC Liberal Party.  In 2006, Jago was on commission to former Premier Gordon Campbell’s Progress Board.  The BCTF reports that Jago’s “findings clearly foreshadow positions taken by the BC Public School Employers’ Association at the bargaining table and also reflect policy directions laid out in Bill 22.” Lambert continued, saying “bbviously there is a strong linkage between Dr. Jago’s thinking, and the bargaining and policy objectives of this government.”  Jago also admitted to the BCTF that he was “given the opportunity to review and ‘to wordsmith’ a draft of” the draconian Bill 22 before it was tabled in the Legislature. “This was the very legislation he would later be expected to interpret impartially as a mediator.”   Jago was appointed on 28 March, shortly after the anti-labour legislation was passed.

Read More: BCTF News Release

UBC Braces for TA Strike

Signs are pointing to a full strike by Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) at the University of British Columbia within a week.  The GTAs’ bargaining unit, CUPE 2278, put its members on alert and is taking measures to train picket captains for successful job action.  In the meantime, the University is calling the escalation “perplexing,” despite its longstanding wage freeze / cut for the students under rising costs to their graduate programs, exploitive working conditions, and rolled over contracts.

Routinely, the University has placed the Vice Provost and AVP Academic Affairs, this time Anna Kindler, in charge of the notorious Ad Hoc Senate Strike Preparedness Committee. Following the CUPE 2278 strike in 2003, UBC’s Senate rushed through a series of changes to the University’s Strike Policy and Guidelines and the charge of the Strike Preparedness Committee is to enforce the new policy guide.  In 2003, many faculty and students felt intimidated by the University in its use of the policy guide in a “captive audience” workplace setting to maintain business as usual against union job action, including the full 2278 strike.

Study Finds Continued Growth of Unions for Faculty Members and Graduate Students

The Chronicle: Study Finds Continued Growth of Unions for Faculty Members and Graduate Students

The number of college faculty members and graduate-student employees represented by unions has risen substantially over the past five years. But such growth might be slowing as a result of moves by state legislatures to curtail collective-bargaining rights, among other recent developments, according to a report published by the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions.

UBC TAs Mobilizing Strike Capacities

Voting overwhelmingly on 22 March to move into a strike position, Graduate Teaching Assistants at the University of British Columbia are now mobilizing for a strike that may begin next week.  Frustrated by the University’s unwillingness to give on key components in contract negotiations, the GTA’s bargaining unit, CUPE 2278, is taking steps toward labour action. The government and University have designated the TAs net zero workers.  In many ways, the University ought to feel indebted to the GTAs, yet exploitative conditions prevail. CUPE 2278 has asked if it is “okay to let an employer profit off your work at a comparatively lower cost and then balance its budget out of your pocket by passing on its expenses?”

Let’s face it– the TAs, like all workers in BC, deserve much, much better than the net zero worker designation.  And rolling over contracts that date all the way back to 2005 is not good enough.  The UBC Faculty Association is also bargaining with the University at this time, with faculty members similarly designated as net zero workers.  Yet unlike CUPE 2278, the faculty members have a no strike clause in their history with the University. If the 2003 CUPE 2278 strike is an indication, a vast majority of faculty members will nonetheless be on the picket lines behind and beside the students.

Duquesne Adjuncts Seek to Form Union Affiliated With Steelworkers

The Chronicle: Duquesne Adjuncts Seek to Form Union Affiliated With Steelworkers

Adjunct faculty members at Duquesne University are seeking to form a union affiliated with the United Steelworkers, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports. The steelworkers’ union said non-tenure-track faculty at the Roman Catholic college had formed a group called Adjuncts Association of the United Steelworkers and hoped to organize a collective-bargaining unit to push for more job security and better pay and working conditions. The steelworkers’ union is considering trying to organize adjuncts at several other colleges in the Pittsburgh area, Maria Somma, its assistant director of organizing, told the newspaper. Richard J. Boris, executive director of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions, said on Thursday that he was unaware of any existing faculty union around the country with a United Steelworkers affiliation.

“Mission Impossible” Mediator for BC Labour Dispute

Setting a stage certain for failure, ex-UNBC President Charles Jago, appointed as mediator in the labour dispute between the BC Teachers’ Federation and Government, described the assignment as “mission impossible.”  Jago is off to a rough start, with less than 12 hours in, with this off-handed remark, doudts about his expertise, and concerns about his political and financial support of the BC Liberal party.

BCTF President Susan Lambert commented that she “had not heard of Jago before the announcement” this morning and “also noted he does not appear to have any experience as a mediator.”  “I’m sure he is very accomplished person,” Lambert said, “but I am concerned about his ability to mediate this dispute and his ability to understand the issues that separate both parties.”

The BCTF bargaining team will meet with Jago, but Lambert “expressed concern about the perception of bias because of his donations to the B.C. Liberal Party.” “Of course that would concern me,” said Lambert after hearing about the donations.

Read more, CBC News

Court rejects UIC union

Inside Higher Ed: Court Rejects Faculty Union

Almost a year ago, faculty members at the University of Illinois at Chicago filed papers to unionize. The drive at the university was seen as a major victory for academic labor, which has struggled in recent years to organize at research universities. And at a time when the treatment of those off the tenure track is an increasingly important issue to faculty leaders, the new union was to have combined tenure-track and adjunct faculty members. Since then, the union has been engaged in a legal fight with the university, which has argued that Illinois law does not allow joint units for tenure-track and non-tenure track faculty members. Along the way, the union won most of the skirmishes, but that ended on Thursday.

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/03/23/appeals-court-rejects-faculty-union-u-illinois-chicago#ixzz1qFOD1Hhh
Inside Higher Ed

UBC TAs Approve Strike Vote

CUPE 2278, representing graduate teaching assistants at UBC, overwhelmingly approved a motion to strike– 81% in favour.  Now poised for labour action, CUPE 2278 heads to the bargaining table on Tuesday.  The students have opted for solidarity with other unions:

On Thursday, March 15 local CUPE 116 (UBC) obtained a successful strike vote. 75% of the local’s membership cast a ballot. 89% voted in favour of potential labour action. An eclectic assortment of U.B.C employee’s (custodians, brick layers, electricians, gardeners, food service workers) came together to let the university know that they are willing to fight for fair working conditions.

Our members have been very vocal that our goals in bargaining need to be about more than simply increasing compensation for teaching assistants. T.A.s have expressed the importance of supporting their fellow UBC workers. Though there is certainly outrage at the amount of remuneration we receive in comparison to T.A.s at other universities, (http://cupe2278.ca/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Steward_march_2012.pdf) we are ultimately fighting for more than just ourselves. We are striving to create equitable working conditions for all UBC employees.

Read More at CUPE 2278 blog

BC Teachers Adopt Bold Plan to Resist Unjust Legislation

BCTF AGM delegates break for information briefing (3-19-2012)

In addition to acknowledging and endorsing the immensely reliable and visionary leadership of BC Teachers’ Federation President Susan Lambert by re-electing her to a third term, BC teachers adopted a bold plan to resist the “harsh and unjust measures contained in Bill 22.”  About 700 delegates sustained an AGM over the weekend and through yesterday to see through the union’s Executive elections and formulate a response for the teachers to the draconian measures imposed by the BC Liberals.

“Christy Clark as education minister started this fight 10 years ago with her legislation that stripped teachers’ collective agreements of our bargaining rights and of guarantees for quality learning conditions for students,” said BCTF President Susan Lambert. “The BC Supreme Court found her bills to be illegal and unconstitutional, yet her government has done nothing to show respect for the ruling, for public education or for the teachers and students of BC. In fact they’re violating the rights of teachers and cutting the same services to students with Bill 22.”

“In April, all teachers will vote on the plan recommended by the AGM delegates. To be clear, the plan also includes a possibility of a future province-wide vote of members on whether it’s necessary to respond to government actions with a full-scale protest against Bill 22,” President Lambert emphasized. “At every step of the way, government has chosen bullying tactics instead of respectfully working with teachers towards a solution.”

Read More, BCTF News release

Union Win at Oregon

Inside Higher Ed: Union Win at Oregon

University of Oregon faculty members may have a union soon, after a group representing faculty members at the university filed about 1,100 signed authorization cards with the state’s Employment Relations Board Tuesday. Officials at United Academics, an organization representing tenure-track, non-tenure-track and research professors, said that the number represented a majority of the institution’s approximately 2,000 faculty members.
The university has until April 4 to object to the petition for unionization, according to an official at the Employment Relations Board. Oregon is a state where no election is required as long as a certified majority of the employees in the proposed unit file cards. A challenge could theoretically come if 30 percent of the faculty members petition for an election, but no organizing has taken place for such a challenge.
The now-likely formation of the faculty union at Oregon would be a major victory for academic labor, which has struggled in recent years to organize at research universities. “It shows that faculty members are increasingly frustrated at the increased corporatization of research universities,” said Jack Nightingale, associate director for higher education organizing at the American Federation of Teachers. He said the effort to organize at Oregon was about two years old, with the AFT working with the American Association of University Professors and local faculty members.

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/03/15/university-oregon-faculty-takes-step-toward-unionizing#ixzz1pcyNEbPh
Inside Higher Ed