Keep up the pressure: Montgomery
Striking college faculty must keep up the pressure on
management to achieve a contract that improves education quality,
says Ted Montgomery, chair of the OPSEU bargaining team.
Bargaining
began this morning under a news blackout.
“The return
to the table is a direct consequence of the success and strength of
the 5000-strong faculty rally and all our efforts so far at the
colleges,” Montgomery said in a weekend memo to OPSEU local
presidents. “Key to achieving [a] settlement will be to continue the
pressures that have brought management back to the table:
unequivocal demonstrations of faculty’s resolve to have the quality
issues addressed.”
“We spoke to
him about the fact that this strike is about quality,” said White.
“We talked to him specifically about workloads, class sizes, and
staffing.
“We pointed
out to him that his government’s message, and all this money that is
coming into the system, is exactly in line with what we are saying,
and is exactly in line with what Bob Rae has said in the past.”
All three
OPSEU board members for Region Four also attended the rally: First
Vice-President/Treasurer Smokey Thomas, Regional Vice-President Bob
Eaton, and Dave Lundy.
Replacement workers?
No thanks!
At least a
few colleges are looking for people to do full-time faculty work
during the strike.
As part of
the “Semester Completion Strategy,” some colleges are asking
part-time faculty to act as strikebreakers.
“The whole
idea is outrageous,” said Paddy Musson, co-coordinator of the OPSEU
provincial strike committee. “Part-timers, who are the most
exploited faculty of all, are to be used as cannon fodder in a
management battle against full-timers. It’s a gross insult to
part-timers’ professionalism and a bald-faced attempt by management
to take advantage of part-timers’ poverty.”
OPSEU
faculty bargaining team chair Ted Montgomery said striking faculty
will not tolerate strikebreaking.
“Striking
workers have not and will not passively allow replacement workers to
take over their work,” he said. “Where, to date, picketing has been
very peaceful in contrast to labour disputes in other sectors, we
can be certain that it will not remain so if the employer tries to
use replacement workers.”
Part-time faculty or others who are approached by
college management with offers of faculty work are asked to report
what they learn to the Strike Headquarters at their college.
Picket in critical
care at Sunnybrook
An OPSEU
member was hit by a car early today on a picket line at the Progress
Campus of Centennial College.
John
Stammers, an Accounting professor, is in the critical care unit at
Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto after being flung from the hood of a
car and striking his head on the pavement.
Police on the scene interviewed several OPSEU pickets who were
eye-witnesses to the incident.
“We just hope he is okay, “ said striker Janice Hill, who
administered first aid. All OPSEU members send their best wishes to
John and his family at this painful time.
The police
investigation continues.
