College faculty pressing for fair deal
Yes, colleges are ‘thriving’ — thanks to free labour and at the expense of quality. When two-thirds of your employees say there’s a problem, there’s a problem.
After reading the opinion piece by Conestoga College president John Tibbits, faculty are left wondering where he has been. Does he know what it’s like to be in a classroom in 2017? Has he visited the picket lines to talk to faculty, to hear their concerns. Has he followed social media to see the vast number of students who want fairness for their valued faculty? Perhaps there has been too much focus on building buildings and not enough focus on who teaches inside them.
Lots of numbers have been shared lately, but here’s the number that should matter the most: 68 per cent — over two-thirds of provincial college employees — voted for a strike mandate to say they disagree with Tibbit’s belief that the college system is doing just fine. If the colleges feel so confident about their offer, why did they not place it in front of faculty for a formal vote, which has been their legal right all along?
Colleges are “thriving” by management’s definition largely because of the free labour offered by contract workers, and the dedication of the ever-shrinking full-time faculty who scramble to support their part-time colleagues, without any credit for this time in their assigned 44 hour work week.
And don’t be fooled by the hourly wages you see. Contract faculty are only paid for the hours in their classroom. Compensation is so abysmal that after considering preparation, grading, and student meetings, the effective hourly rate is below the mandated provincial minimum wage. Most don’t have a desk or a computer, so meetings with students outside of class are impossible. With no job security, they dare not speak up to defend the quality of their courses. They follow orders with the hope they will be seen as loyal employees and someday be rewarded with a full-time job. That day, we now know, rarely comes.
Colleges complain about costs, and part of the answer is more equitable government funding. OPSEU’s proposal recognizes this need by phasing in additional costs. However, much of the money is already in the system: it has simply been misallocated. Since 2010, the hiring of administrators has significantly outpaced growth in students. From 2012/ 2013 to 2015/2016, Conestoga College student enrolment increased by 9.8 per cent while administrators increased by 19.2 per cent.
Do we want diplomas, degrees and postgraduate certificates to be worth something, or will we instead treat colleges as diploma mills, pushing people through and pressuring for passing grades just to get more tuition money to build more buildings for more students and managers? It’s a vicious cycle where no one wins.
In no way are faculty trying to claim “unilateral control” over programming decisions, as our college president would have you believe. College faculty have backgrounds in the industries in which they are teaching; of course they should be part of the decision-making process. The applied learning environment colleges provide is built on the knowledge acquired through this experience. Most of Conestoga’s industry partnerships were formed by faculty. It is insulting to our professors for the college to suggest otherwise.
Collective bargaining, at its best, is a partnership where both the employer and the union try and find a mutually acceptable compromise. The College Employer Council has consistently focused on winning, instead of creating fair agreements. The union has been willing to bargain. Management, so far, has not.
College faculty (including our overworked counsellors and are ever-diminishing librarians) seek a settlement that improves the quality of the education for students and provides fairness for faculty. It’s about defending what’s right and protecting what’s great about college education in Ontario. As soon as the colleges step up and bargain collectively for a fair agreement, we will be able to get back to class.