This was written by a full time professor at Conestoga College in response to remarks by the college president.
The Ontario College system is fifty years old. Its model of educational delivery has been substantially altered and modernized to meet changing conditions over that period of time. Most of the modifications have been driven by faculty. How can we say a system which, in its fifty year existence, has needed four faculty strikes to drive the necessary changes to meet the educational needs of its students, is not broken?
When a student graduates from College, it is not the management they remember. It is not the administration – which has increased by 77% in the last twelve years – that form the basis of their satisfaction. It is instead the faculty, the face at the front of the classroom, which makes the College experience a rewarding one. So who says that Ontario’s college can’t be improved?
It’s not full-time faculty. Every day it is the faculty at Ontario College’s that maintain the high standards they have set for themselves and for their students. This in the face of increasing class sizes without any increase in the corresponding resources and facilitates necessary to provide our students with the best possible education.
It is not part-time. temporary faculty. They are the people hired every four months to teach courses that they have not been adequate time to prepare for. With no guarantee of ongoing employment many part-time/temporary faculty have to work at a number of institutions to try to make a living wage, while also trying to meet the needs of students.
It’s not students. They see the increasing class sizes, resources and classroom spread thin, and faculty who cannot give them the time both wish to make sure that their education is at the highest level.
It’s not OPSEU. The union representing full-time and some part-time faculty has presented a comprehensive plan to deal with the issues that its members said were most important to them. These issues included addressing the increasing ratio of students to full-time faculty, the need to redefine what Academic Freedom means in a college system which is increasingly being asked to behave in a manner similar to universities, and the precarious and callous manner in which part-time/temporary professors are dealt with by the Colleges.
It is the Colleges. Rather than engaging in meaningful bargaining, Ontario’s Colleges kept submitting the same offer to OPSEU’s Bargaining Team and then seemed surprised when they kept receiving the same answer. In the collective bargaining process, those chosen to bargain on behalf of a union’s members are charged with negotiating an agreement that best suits the needs and wishes of those members. Only when they have an agreement which they can recommend do they have to present it to the membership for a vote.
In the specialized area of Collective Bargaining in the Ontario College system however, the Colleges can present their offer to the faculty directly. OPSEU cannot prevent this being done in the current labour dispute. Instead the Colleges refuse to do so and they then complain that OPSEU is not doing their job for them. The Colleges are raising a classic “straw-man” argument to try and blame the current labour dispute solely on OPSEU. Fortunately their spurious argument does not survive even the most cursory scrutiny. Why are the Colleges reluctant to present their offer to the faculty directly? Is it because a rejection of the agreement by faculty would further bolster OPSEU’s position in bargaining?
In his editorial, Dr. John Tibbits claims that OPSEU is advocating on behalf of a group it doesn’t represent. This is, at best, an inaccurate statement. In the Ontario College system, the status of a part-time/temporary faculty member is determined by the number of hours they teach in a week. Dr. Tibbits only refers to those faculty teaching six hours or less per week. They currently are not represented by OPSEU, and were in fact the only employees in the Province denied their Constitutional right to join a union by Ontario law until eight years ago. Those faculty teaching seven to twelve hours in a week, are considered partial-load and as such are part of OPSEU. Finally, those faculty teaching thirteen or more hours a week are classified as sessional faculty. They also are not currently part of the union.
It only adds to the precariousness of the part-time/temporary faculty at Ontario Colleges, that they can in one year be considered three different kinds of employee, some with union representation and some without. Even so they face the same issues. No certainty of employment past the end of the current term. No benefits or rights under the Collective Agreement, unless they fall into the category of part-time/temporary faculty that are part of the union for that term. Payment at a rate far below that of their full-time colleagues, and a recognition only of their time in front of a class, without any for their time preparing for class, marking, or meeting with students.
It is Ontario’s Colleges which seem content to perpetuate a needlessly complicated system which creates different castes of the professors being entrusted to teach students.
Dr. Tibbits also refers to this strike as unnecessary and even dangerous. Since when has it been considered unnecessary to stand up for your rights? Since when has it been considered dangerous to identify problems in a public service institution and advocate for their improvement?
All faculty in Ontario Colleges are asking for is the ability to be able to do what they are in a position to do best. That is to create and teach the subjects that they are experts in, in such a way as to challenge and inspire students.
Ontario’s Colleges should be aspiring to reach higher than graduating students who are “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with their education. They should be aiming to have graduates look back at their education and College experience as the best experience of their lives, both in getting them ready for the workplace and in realizing their potential as people.