Letter from President Leah Casselman to all members and supporters
March
1, 2006
To all OPSEU members and supporters
Dear Sisters and Brothers:
I am writing because faculty members at
Ontario’s 24 Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology may be on
strike as of March 7.
This is a group of 9,100 teachers, counsellors
and librarians who work full-time or have partial-load assignments
in the colleges.
Our members are fighting to improve the quality
of college education by demanding smaller classes, more teachers and
more faculty time for students.
This strike has a potential impact on many of
you in different ways. For our members in the support staff
bargaining unit, your leadership has asked that you offer any help
you can to faculty, including joining the picket lines before and
after work and during breaks and lunch hours.
Faculty is seeking improvements to the workload
formula which could result in more full-time teaching positions.
This will hopefully benefit the thousands of part-time and sessional
teachers who are not unionized because the law doesn’t allow it.
OPSEU has launched a campaign to make it legal for part-time college
workers to join a union.
In the event of a strike, I ask part-time and
sessional teachers to refuse any requests to do work that is
normally done by full-time or partial-load faculty and report any
such requests to the union.
Many more of you have children or other family
members enrolled in college programs. I ask you to explain to them
that if faculty is forced on strike, it is because they are fighting
for quality education in the colleges. Both Bob Rae’s report on
post-secondary education and Premier Dalton McGuinty support more
access for students, more faculty to accommodate higher enrolments
and more faculty time to help students succeed.
I encourage you to support faculty in their
important fight for quality education in any way you can.
In solidarity,
Leah Casselman,
PresidentLC/mp
