Tag Archives: British Columbia

Faculty Take Strike Vote at University of Northern British Columbia

From The Tyee:

Faculty Take Strike Vote at University of Northern British Columbia
Salaries a sticking point in pricey northern city.

By Katie Hyslop

The University of Northern British Columbia’s faculty association made history Jan. 15 when it became the first faculty union at a B.C. research university to take a strike vote. The vote passed with 84.8 per cent in favour of a strike, giving faculty members 90 days to take strike action.

The university, located in Prince George, has been bargaining with the faculty association for eight months, the last three with help from British Columbia Labour Board-appointed mediator Trevor Sones.

About 70 per cent of bargaining issues at UNBC have been settled, but faculty association president Jacqueline Holler says a major impasse is faculty salaries, which are as much as 24 per cent lower than salaries at similar-sized Canadian universities.

“What the employer has offered in terms of compensation does absolutely nothing to address the situation,” said Holler. Neither she nor UNBC would disclose specifics of offers on the bargaining table.

Holler said another reason faculty deserves higher pay is the university’s frequent ranking by Maclean’s magazine as one of the top three primarily undergraduate universities in Canada.

But UNBC says there are a number of factors affecting salary negotiations: Government requirements for wages to stay within fixed financial parametres; an overall decline in enrollment; an increase in the number of B.C. universities; and increased government support for trades training.

“I’m not citing those [factors] as the most important, only to suggest that there’s a number of factors that are all at play,” said Rob van Adrichem, UNBC’s vice president of external communications. “And it all affects this situation.”

Unionized last April

The vote comes after UNBC’s faculty association, representing close to 500 full and part-time instructors, became a union last April. The faculty associations at Simon Fraser University and University of Victoria unionized around the same time.

There are six research universities in British Columbia. They include UNBC, Simon Fraser University, University of Victoria, Thompson Rivers University, Royal Roads University, and the University of British Columbia.

The faculty association at the University of British Columbia became the first B.C. research university to unionize in the 1980s. In exchange for the university’s support the union gave up their right to strike. Almost 20 years later Royal Roads University’s faculty association officially became a union. Faculty at Thompson Rivers University is also unionized.

With the exception of Alberta, where law prevents university faculty associations from becoming unions, there are only four non-unionized public university faculty associations in Canada. They are at McGill, Waterloo, University of Toronto, and McMaster.

Salary disputes were the common denominator between Simon Fraser, University of Victoria, and UNBC faculty associations’ decision to unionize, says Michael Conlon, executive director of the Confederation of University Faculty Associations of British Columbia, an umbrella organization for research university faculty associations.

“I think it’s fair to say that salary increases at all the research universities in B.C. have not kept up” with the rest of Canada, Conlon said.

Attracting highly educated academics is a good reason to increase salaries, says Conlon, adding competition for “internationally renowned-faculty” is stiff both nationally and internationally.

“As B.C.’s pay scale falls farther and farther behind, I think it will be a challenge to recruit and retain the best researchers, the best teachers, and the best faculty,” he said. “I think that’s a challenge for the entire province in ensuring we’ve got a competitive and excellent system of post-secondary education.”

The faculty’s previous contract expired last June, four months after arbitrator Vince Ready released a final decision on a 2012-2014 contract, which included two retroactive pay raises of 2.5 per cent.

Ready agreed with the faculty association that salaries were low compared to other similar-sized universities, and said UNBC did have the money to raise the pay of faculty members.

Bargaining continues this weekend

But while the wage increase helped, Holler says it didn’t fix UNBC’s “broken” salary structure and was negated by similar wage increases at other B.C. universities.

Holler said living in the north is more expensive than southern B.C., a factor not taken into account when deciding faculty wages.

“In most fields if you work in the north you actually get paid a little more because they understand that it’s hard to attract people,” she said.

The faculty association still hopes to reach an agreement through bargaining, and has yet to meet to discuss strike options. UNBC undergraduate classes end April 17, two days after the strike deadline.

UNBC’s van Adrichem says the strike vote itself doesn’t have an impact on the bargaining process. “The university has been and is very keen to negotiate an agreement,” he said.

Both sides are scheduled to return to the bargaining table on Jan. 30 until Feb. 1. [Tyee]

BC Teachers Strike Debate on Global BC Morning News Show

This morning on the Global BC Morning News Show, Sophie Lui and Steve Darling interviewed a variety of people on key issues related to education in British Columbia, in the context of the current labour dispute between the teachers and the BC government.

Segment 1
Topic: Cost of education to both parents and teachers (for example, money spent on supplies, possibility of corporate sponsorships as possible solution to alleviate the funding problem?)
Guest 1: Lisa Cable (Parents for B.C. Founder)
Guest 2: Harman Pandher (Burnaby School Board Trustee, Surrey teacher & parent)

Segment 2
Peter Fassbender, BC Minister of Education

Segment 3
Jim Iker, President of British Columbia Teachers Federation

Segment 4
Topic: Class size & composition
Guest 1: E. Wayne Ross (UBC Professor, Faculty of Education)
Guest 2: Nick Milum (Vancouver School Board Student Trustee)

Segment 5
Topic: Future of education, fixing the system & avoiding future strikes?)
Guest 1: Charles Ungerleider (UBC Professor Emeritus, Faculty of Education)
Guest 2: Dan Laitsch (SFU Associate Professor, Faculty of Education)

Dark Days for Our Universities

[Recent events at Capilano University and University of Saskatchewan have raised serious concerns about the health of the academic culture of post-secondary institutions in Canada. Crawford Kilian, who taught at Capilano College from its founding in 1968 until it became a university in 2008, wrote the following analysis of Canadian academic culture for The Tyee, where he is a contributing editor. The Institute for Critical Education Studies at UBC is pleased to reprint the article here, with the author’s permission.]

Dark Days for Our Universities
Dr. Buckingham’s censure only confirms the long, tragic decline of Canadian academic culture
Crawford Kilian
(Originally published in TheTyee.ca, May 19, 2014)

On May 13 I attended a meeting of the Board of Governors of Capilano University, which has had a very bad year.

Last spring the board agreed to cut several programs altogether. This caused considerable anger and bitterness, especially since the recommendations for the cuts had been made by a handful of administrators without consulting the university senate.

Recently, the B.C. Supreme Court ruled that the board’s failure to consult with the senate was a breach of the University Act. This upset the board members, who may yet appeal the decision.

Adding to the angst was the disappearance of a satirical sculpture of Cap’s president, Kris Bulcroft, which had been created and displayed on campus by George Rammell, an instructor in the now-dead studio arts program. Thanks to media coverage, the sculpture has now been seen across the country, and by far more people.

Board Chair Jane Shackell (who was my student back in 1979) stated at the meeting that she had personally ordered the removal of the sculpture because it was a form of harassment of a university employee, the president. Rather than follow the university’s policy on harassment complaints (and Bulcroft had apparently not complained), Shackell seemed to see herself as a one-person HR committee concerned with the president alone.

At the end of the meeting another retired instructor made an angry protest about the board’s actions. Like the judge in a Hollywood court drama, my former student tried to gavel him down.

I didn’t feel angry at her; I felt pity. It was painfully clear that she and her board and administration are running on fumes.

The mounting crisis

I look at this incident not as a unique outrage, but as just another example of the intellectual and moral crisis gripping Canadian post-secondary education. The old scientific principle of mediocrity applies here: very few things are unique. If it’s happening in North Vancouver, it’s probably happening everywhere.

And it certainly seems to be. On the strength of one short video clip, Tom Flanagan last year became an unperson to the University of Calgary, where he’d taught honourably for decades. He was already scheduled to retire, but the president issued a news release that made it look as if he was getting the bum’s rush.

More recently, Dr. Robert Buckingham publicly criticized a restructuring plan at the University of Saskatchewan, where he was dean of the School of Public Health.

In a 30-second interview with the university provost, he was fired and escorted off campus.

A day later the university president admitted firing him had been a “blunder” and offered to reinstate him as a tenured professor, but not as a dean. It remains to be seen whether he’ll accept.

The problem runs deeper than the occasional noisy prof or thin-skinned administrator. It’s systemic, developed over decades. As the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives noted last November, the University of Manitoba faculty very nearly went on strike until the president’s office agreed to a collective agreement ensuring professors’ right to speak freely, even if it meant criticizing the university.

Universities ‘open for business’

At about the same time, the Canadian Association of University Teachers published a report, Open for Business. CAUT warned about corporate and government deals with universities that would ditch basic research for more immediately convenient purposes.

“Unfortunately,” the report said, “attempts by industry and government to direct scholarly inquiry and teaching have multiplied in the past two decades…. For industry, there is a diminished willingness to undertake fundamental research at its own expense and in its own labs — preferring to tap the talent within the university at a fraction of the cost.

“For politicians, there is a desire to please industry, an often inadequate understanding of how knowledge is advanced, and a short time horizon (the next election). The result is a propensity to direct universities ‘to get on with’ producing the knowledge that benefits industry and therefore, ostensibly, the economy.”

This is not a sudden development. The expansion of North America’s post-secondary system began soon after the Second World War and really got going after Sputnik, when the Soviets seemed to be producing more and better graduates than the West was. That expansion helped to fuel decades of economic growth (and helped put the Soviets in history’s ashcan).

Throughout that period, academic freedom was in constant peril. In the Cold War, U. S. professors were expected to sign loyalty oaths. In 1969-70 Simon Fraser University went through a political upheaval in which eight faculty members were dismissed and SFU’s first president resigned.

A Faustian bargain

What is different now is that Canadian post-secondary must depend more and more on less and less government support. Postwar expansion has become a Faustian bargain for administrators: to create and maintain their bureaucracies and programs, post-secondary schools must do as they’re paid to do. If public money dwindles, it must be found in higher student fees, in corporate funding, in recruiting foreign kids desperate for a Canadian degree.

So it’s no surprise that Dr. Buckingham was sacked for criticizing a budget-cutting plan to rescue an ailing School of Medicine by putting it into Buckingham’s thriving School of Public Health.

And it’s no surprise that Capilano University had shortfalls right from its announcement in 2008. It had to become a university to attract more foreign students than it could as a mere college, but at the last minute the Gordon Campbell Liberals reneged on their promise to give it university-level funding.

For six years, then, Cap’s board and administration have known they were running on fumes. They are in the same predicament as B.C. school boards, who must do the government’s dirty work and take the blame for program and teacher cuts.

In 40 years of teaching at Cap, I rarely attended board meetings, and never did a board member visit my classes. I don’t know the members of this current board, apart from a couple of faculty representatives, but I’ve served as a North Vancouver school trustee. As an education journalist I’ve talked to a lot of university and college administrators, not to mention school trustees. I know how they think.

Managing the decline

For any school or university board, underfunding creates a terrible predicament: protest too loudly and you’ll be replaced by a provincial hireling who’ll cut without regard for the school’s long-term survival. If you have any love for the institution, you can only try to do damage control. But when your teachers or professors protest, as they have every right to, that annoys and embarrasses the government. It will punish you for not imposing the “silence of the deans” on them.

University presidents and senior administrators make six-figure salaries and enjoy high prestige. They are supposed to be both scholars and managers. Their boards are supposed to be notable achievers as well, though their achievements have often been in the service of the governing party. Their education has served them well, and now they can serve education.

But a Darwinian selection process has made them servants of politics instead, detached from the true principles of education. When they realize that their job is not to serve education but to make the government look good, they panic. Everything they learned in school about critical thinking and reasoned argument vanishes.

In reward for previous achievements and political support, the B.C. government appointed Cap’s board members to run the school without giving them the money to run it well, or even adequately. And whatever their previous achievements, they have lacked the imagination and creativity — the education — to do anything but make matters worse. Faced with an angry faculty and a humiliating court judgment, they have drawn ridicule upon themselves and the university.

They can’t extricate themselves and they have no arguments left to offer — only the frantic banging of a gavel that can’t drown out the voice of an angry retired prof exercising his right to speak freely. [Tyee]

B.C. teachers inch toward strike vote as Abbott, Lambert square off

The Province: B.C. teachers inch toward strike vote as Abbott, Lambert square off

B.C. Education Minister George Abbott wants teachers to think twice before walking out in an illegal strike.

Teachers meeting in Vancouver are debating whether to walk out in protest over Abbott’s Bill 22, passed last week, which took away the teachers’ right to strike.

“I’m optimistic that the teachers’ federation will choose the constructive path that we have put in front of them,” Abbott told The Province from Dalian, China, where he’s on an educational tour.

“Bill 22 doesn’t impose a settlement, but sends teachers on the road toward a mediated settlement.”

B.C. Teachers’ Federation president Susan Lambert told reporters Tuesday that she will abide by the decision of the BCTF’s 41,000 teachers, even if that means an illegal strike that would incur fines of $475 per day per teacher and $1.3 million daily for the BCTF.

Union faction urges B.C. teachers to support full-scale strike

Vancouver Sun: Union faction urges B.C. teachers to support full-scale strike

Pamphlet calling for a province-wide strike was circulated to delegates Sunday at the union’s annual general meeting

A faction of the B.C. Teachers’ Federation is calling for a provincewide strike by public-school teachers that would continue until the Liberal government repeals a new law that the group describes as the most aggressive attack on education in a generation.

“There are times in history when taking action is critical,” says a pamphlet circulated to delegates Sunday at the union’s annual general meeting in Vancouver and leaked to The Vancouver Sun. “Only a strong response will be able to stop Bill 22.”

B.C. teachers strike: Indecisive government gives teachers’ union the upper hand

The Province: B.C. teachers strike: Indecisive government gives teachers’ union the upper hand

Just a few days ago, Premier Christy Clark was all gung-ho to cut the teachers off at the pass and stop their strike before it even began.

“I want to make sure kids don’t lose a day of school,” Clark said, while insisting she wanted to declare the strike illegal before it started by rushing a back-to-work bill through the legislature.

“I hope we get this legislation in place before we see any further job action in any public schools in British Columbia,” she said.

That was Tuesday. Then the government morphed from tigers into pussy-cats.

On Thursday, education minister George Abbott said he “respects” the teachers’ decision to go on strike and the government will not move aggressively to stop it.

B.C. teachers’ union walks out, vows to resist back-to-work legislation

Globe and Mail: B.C. teachers’ union walks out, vows to resist back-to-work legislation

The head of B.C.’s teachers’ union is vowing to “resist” government legislation ordering an end to her union’s strike even if passed into law, but has declined to say what form that action might take.

“We’ll be consulting with our members determining what to do,” said British Columbia Teachers’ Federation president Susan Lambert. “I can tell you that teachers will not accept legislation that erodes the quality of the school system. We will do something to continue to resist such legislation.”

B.C. teachers plan strike vote, gov’t prepares bill

CTV: B.C. teachers plan strike vote, gov’t prepares bill

The ongoing contract dispute between British Columbia teachers and the provincial government is promising to heat up before it cools down, as each side prepares its next move.

Teachers have been on a limited strike since September, and while they can’t legally walk off the job, they’ve been refusing to perform administrative duties like filling out report cards.

On Friday, the BC Teachers’ Federation, which represent 41,000 members, announced it will hold strike votes province wide, asking educators Tuesday and Wednesday whether they want to escalate limited teach-only action to a full-scale walkout.

Update to issue 17 of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor

The current issue of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor has been updated with two new field reports.

Issue No. 17 of Workplace “Working In, and Against, the Neo-Liberal State: Global Perspectives on K-12 Teacher Unions” is guest edited by Howard Stevenson of Lincoln University (UK).

The new field reports include:

The NEA Representative Assembly of 2010: A Longer View of Crisis and Consciousness
Rich Gibson

Abstract
Following the 2009 National Education Association (NEA) Representative Assembly (RA) in San Diego, new NEA president Dennis Van Roekel was hugging Arne Duncan, fawning over new President Obama, and hustling the slogan, “Hope Starts Here!” At the very close of the 2009 RA, delegates were treated to a video of themselves chanting, “Hope starts Here!” and “Hope Starts with Obama and Duncan!” The NEA poured untold millions of dollars, and hundreds of thousands of volunteer hours, into the Obama campaign. In 2009, Van Roekel promised to tighten NEA-Obama ties, despite the President’s educational policies and investment in war. What happened in the year’s interim? What was the social context of the 2010 RA?

Resisting the Common-nonsense of Neoliberalism: A Report from British Columbia
E. Wayne Ross

Abstract
Faced with a $16 million budget shortfall, the Vancouver school trustees, who have a mandate to meet the needs of their students, have lobbied for more provincial funding to avoid draconian service cuts. The government has refused the request, and its special advisor to the Vancouver School Board criticizes trustees for engaging in “advocacy” rather than making “cost containment” first priority. The clash between Vancouver trustees and the ministry of education is not “just politics.” Rather, education policy in BC reflects the key features of neoliberal globalization, not the least of which is the principle that more and more of our collective wealth is devoted to maximizing private profits rather than serving public needs. British Columbia is home to one of the most politically successful neoliberal governments in the world, but fortunately it is also a place to look for models of mass resistance to the neoliberal agenda. One of the most important examples of resistance to the common-nonsense of neoliberalism in the past decade is the British Columbia teachers’ 2005 strike, which united student, parent, and educator interests in resisting the neoliberal onslaught on education in the public interest.

Strike news

Canadian Press: Canada’s top court refuses to hear B.C. unions’ appeals about one-day strikes
VANCOUVER, B.C. — Two prominent British Columbia unions have lost their bid to have the Supreme Court of Canada decide whether a pair of one-day walkouts were Charter-protected political protests or illegal strikes.The teachers’ and health-workers’ unions staged separate walkouts in 2002 and 2003 to protest a provincial law that stripped their collective agreements – walkouts the province’s Labour Relations Board ruled were illegal.

Examiner.com: Pending strike for east bay schools
Teachers come out in droves for a strike authorization vote in East Bay District of West Contra Costa Unified School District, WCCUSD. They voted 93% yes, authorizing the United Teachers of Richmond, UTR, the authority to strike.

Wichita Business Journal: Teachers union rejects proposed contract
Untied Teachers of Wichita rejected a tentative agreement with the board of education, with 56 percent voting against the contract that called for pay freezes, elimination of bonuses and increases in health care premiums. In all, 2,684 teachers voted.

Providence Journal: 15 teacher contracts remain unresolved in R.I.
With just days to go before the start of school, a high number of school districts have unsettled teacher contracts, an indication of the tough financial times facing communities, say education and union officials.

NarcoNews: The Learning Curve of the Teachers vs. the Honduras Coup
AUGUST 23, 2009, SABA, HONDURAS: The classrooms were empty but the assembly hall was full. Last Thursday afternoon, more than two hundred striking schoolteachers and other members of the civil resistance from the northeastern state of Colón gathered at the city high school to chart their next steps.

Arab News: PA dismisses teachers, arrests Hamas loyalists
RAMALLAH: Hamas on Saturday said that the West Bank-based government of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has dismissed 17 Palestinian teachers following recommendation from the Palestinian Authority security forces.

Toronto Sun: Oh, no, not another strike!
Toronto’s public high school teachers still don’t have a new contract, but at least they’re still talking

Free Press: Detroit unions threaten to strike over cuts
They rally in protest over plans that call for furloughs, layoffs and labor concessions
Public employees and members of several Detroit labor unions threatened to strike Wednesday in response to Mayor Dave Bing’s plans to trim the city’s budget through furloughs, layoffs and union concessions. Representatives from AFSCME Local 207, the Detroit Federation of Teachers and the activist group By Any Means Necessary threatened to strike if Bing and Detroit Public Schools Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb continue to lay off people and threaten bankruptcy and wage and benefit cuts.

Detroit News: Editorial: Strike would damage chance for recovery
A strike by public employees in Detroit would hurt recovery chances for the city and region
The last thing Detroit needs is a strike by its public employees. The city and region are reeling from the shrinkage of the domestic auto industry and declining tax revenues. A labor walkout would seriously hurt the chances of this area to join in any economic recovery in the rest of the nation.

Nigeria: ASUU Strike Threatens National Interest
Lagos Civil Society Alliance of Nigeria, a Kaduna-based rights group, has appealed to Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) to embrace dialogue with the Federal Government and suspend its six-week-old strike in the interest of students.Addressing a press conference in Lagos, the group’s convener, Bashir Abdul, expressed concern over ASUU’s plight, but pleaded with the university dons to rev…

The Post (Zambia): PTUZ calls for reimbursement of teachers’ salaries
NEWLY formed Professional Teachers Union of Zambia (PTUZ) interim president Osward Matandiko has challenged teacher unions to reimburse teachers salary deductions they are suffering as a result of taking part in the recent strike action. Matandiko said Basic Education Teachers Union of Zambia (BETUZ), Secondary Education School Teachers Union of Zambia (SESTUZ) and Zambia National Union of Teachers (ZNUT) had huge financial reserves from which they could pay their members the deductions that the government had slapped on them for taking part in the strike.

Bucks County Courier Times: Teachers contract talks at a standstill
Teachers will weigh their options at a Sept. 2 union meeting. Less than a month before school starts, the North Penn School District and its teachers union are still deadlocked over a new contract.

Business Day (Nigeria): Teachers Strike: FG pulls out of talks
Hopes of getting the university students back to school have been dashed as the Federal Government negotiating team announced its official withdrawal from the ongoing re-negotiation exercise with the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) on the ongoing industrial action. Gamaliel Onosode leader of the federal government team who announced government withdrawal from the exercise also urged the Governing Councils of Federal Universities to recall their staff that are on strike and provide an enabling environment for teaching, research and community services for those who are willing to work.
Onosode said until the Union suspends its current strike, it will not continue because of non availability of enabling environment for governing councils to continue the negotiation with their employees.

British Columbia: Ogden Case Settled, CAUT Ends Inquiry

CAUT Bulletin: Ogden Case Settled, CAUT Ends Inquiry

CAUT’s inquiry in the case of criminologist Russel Ogden of Kwantlen Polytechnic University came to an end in January when a mutually agreeable settlement was reached by Ogden, the university and the Kwantlen faculty association.

CAUT set up a special committee of inquiry last June after the university notified Ogden that he was to stop his research on suicide and assisted suicide, even though the re­search had been approved by Kwantlen’s research ethics board. Ogden was told not to engage “in any illegal activity, including attending at an assisted death.” Ogden disputed the claim that his research involved illegal conduct.

Settlement in Dispute on Academic Freedom and Assisted Suicide

Inside Higher Ed: Settlement in Dispute on Academic Freedom and Assisted Suicide

Russel Ogden will be able to resume his research on assisted suicide, according to a settlement announced by the Canadian Association of University Teachers. Ogden, a sociologist at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, has written about assisted suicides and observed many of them. An ethics review board at his university had approved the research, but Kwantlen ordered him to stop any studies that involved observing suicides. While suicide is not illegal in Canada, assisting a suicide is illegal, and the university has equated Ogden’s proposal to observe assisted suicides with assisting suicides himself. Many professors in Canada backed him, arguing that observing something is not the same as endorsing or participating in it — and noting that many sociology studies involve observing illegal activities. The Canadian Association of University Teachers set up a committee to study the matter last year. The association’s announcement of a settlement in the case said that Ogden is now permitted to engage in the research approved by the university’s ethics review board.