This was submitted by a faculty member
Dear Colleague,
College Employer Council is out to play games in a vain effort to teach faculty a lesson about who is in charge at the bargaining table. They do not want a fair agreement; they do not even want a negotiated settlement on their terms. They want to take a victory lap in front of their colleagues and the union bargaining team. They do not just want to win. They want everyone to know they have won.
Clearly College Employer Council decided at the start of this bargaining process they were going to force a vote. They spent September pressuring faculty to vote no to a strike mandate. That was the first game. If the strike mandate was weak they would force the vote immediately but we stood strong so the College Employer Council needed to move onto game number two.
In their second game College Employer Council decided they would force our bargaining unit to strike. This was easy for them all they needed to do was continue to refuse to bargain. They assumed faculty would back down after a few weeks in the rain. Why do you think they repeatedly asked us to tell our union to vote on their abysmal initial offer? They thought we were too fragile to stand out in the cold for our convictions. We held strong though and we even succeeded in persuading the provincial government to provide more money for Ontario Colleges.
College Employer Council gave up game two under pressure from the Ontario Government. It was time for the third game. They were now willing to sit across a table from our team but they were not willing to bargain. Negotiating was never a part of the Council’s games. They would never agree to a deal, not until they forced the vote. They do not care about the language in the agreement just as long as the language is unacceptable to our union. They want to send a message that faculty are feckless and unwilling to stand behind the bargaining team.
The coming forced vote is not about this agreement. It’s about the next three agreements. The College Employer Council plan is simple. They never want to negotiate another agreement ever again. From here forward the College Employer Council plan is to present an agreement and our union is to take it. When we sit down to bargain our next agreement this will be the College Employer Council approach. When talk at the all-party Task Force, this will be their approach. When we negotiate at the committee to review the class definition of counsellors, this will be their approach. When we raise a grievance, this will be their approach. This vote is about the College Employer Council trying to force us to belong to an impotent union.
We cannot let this happen. We must vote no!