Campaign gears up for summer

As the semester ends, thousands of college part-timers will be off campus. That doesn’t mean the campaign for part-time rights will end.

This summer, our campaign will move into the community and into the offices of Ontario MPPs. OPSEU will be hiring 13 campaign mobilizers to help coordinate the efforts from July 3 to Sept. 1. The work will include:

• identifying opportunities for our community-based postcard campaign (farmers’ markets, festivals, fall fairs, community events, shopping centres, etc.) and arranging for activists to attend these events with our display;

• organizing local lobbying of MPPs throughout the summer;

• planning for a major presence at local labour day events across the province; and

• planning “welcome back” activities at each campus.

Two mobilizers will be responsible for the campaign in each of OPSEU Regions 1 to 6; one mobilizer will be responsible for OPSEU Region 7.

The jobs are open to full-time and part-time college staff, faculty or support.

What kind of person are we looking for? It could be you, if you are: 

• an energetic self-starter who is comfortable calling new people and building new relationships;

• a person who has experience in community, electoral, or social justice campaigns; and

• someone who is willing to work flexible hours, often on evenings and weekends, and is willing to travel in the region.

For more information, contact OPSEU Senior Campaigns Officer Barbara Linds at (416) 443-8888 ext. 8203 or 1-800-268-7376 ext. 8203.

New lobby kits, postcards, posters, and coffee mugs this summer (see photo) will feature the new “I believe in FAIRNESS” logo.

To get materials, contact collegeworkers@opseu.org or call our Campaign Hotline at 1-866-811-7274 or (416) 448-7443. The mugs (see photo) cost $2 each. OPSEU locals can order them (and pay for them through a deduction from their quarterly rebate) by completing the form at http://www.opseu.org/caat/parttime/caatmugorderform.pdf  and fax it in to Mary-Anne Di Adamo at (416) 443-1762.

Part-timers still invisible to Bentley

“There are none so blind as those who will not see.”
— John Heywood, 1497-1580

Ontario’s colleges minister still won’t admit that the majority of college faculty and support workers are underpaid, non-union part-timers. In Chris Bentley’s world, part-timers simply don’t exist. Period.

On March 14, as the full-time faculty strike raged, Bentley agreed to answer questions sent  to the Toronto Star web site. Here’s a query about part-timers – and the minister’s reply:

Question: Dear Minister Bentley: Are you aware that thousands of skilled, extremely qualified, and dedicated college workers lack benefits, any semblance of job security, are not covered by any employment standards, or by any limits on the amount of work that can be required of them by their superiors? Do you think that this situation, which guarantees insecure, stressed and overworked college staff, is the best route to providing quality education to Ontario’s students? Could you explain why your government has not yet moved to give Ontario’s 16,000 part-time college employees the right to unionize? (Or at least to legislate some minimum standards to govern their working conditions?) If your government is truly committed to providing quality education to Ontario’s post-secondary students, why have you been content to sit by and watch the community colleges management force a strike? When will your government step in and take real steps to protect quality education in this province? Thank you for your time.

Answer [Chris Bentley]: Our government is committed to ensuring college students receive a quality education and all faculty members should be recognized for their hard work and commitment that contribute to this quality education system. There has been, and will continue to be, a substantial investment in colleges and universities through our government’s Reaching Higher Plan.

The best solution in a labour dispute is one that is worked out by the parties themselves. We have highly skilled mediators from the Ministry of Labour who are available to assist the parties. We urge the parties to get back to the bargaining table.

This “answer,” which mirrors Bentley’s modus operandi since last fall, shows a startling level of contempt for 16,000 voters who happen to be college part-timers. If you’d like to say something to the minister, contact him as follows:

E-mail: cbentley.mpp@liberal.ola.org 
Phone: (416) 326-1600
Fax: (416) 326-1656

More stories of part-time life

Ontario’s community colleges have devised a wide variety of ways to make life hard for part-time employees. The web site at www.collegeworkers.org keeps a running log of part-timers’ stories. Send us your name, college, and contact information, and we’ll post your story – anonymously – on the web.

It doesn’t have to be long – it can be one sentence if you like. It doesn’t even have to be a “story.” Just tell other part-timers what has happened to you.

Send your story to collegeworkers@opseu.org  or call our hotline at 1-866-811-7274 or (416) 448-7433.

This is my story...............

• I have been teaching at the college part time for two years now, and also for a board of education. I am unionized at one place but not at the college where I put in more working hours.
I am not paid for committee meetings, workshops, activities, etc. Sometimes, I find it a pity since I do not participate and I miss the opportunities of building relationships with my colleagues and my students.
One semester, apparently, someone made a mistake. I was hired as a temp and I enjoyed a full salary and working conditions in line with my skills. Since then I was told that it was impossible to repeat because classes I taught have already been given to others. Was that a good strategy to keep me?
I must work the hours I miss on public holidays, sick days and so on.
Why do I tolerate such nuisances? Because I like to teach and want to have a full-time position one day. It may never happen. It is not a lack of classes to teach. The problem is the system presently in place which deprives students of good teachers. It is really discouraging.

• I’ve been a teacher at the college for 14 years and have applied for several full-time teaching positions. Each time I have been turned down, someone on the hiring committee invariably calls me a couple of days later to find out if I can teach a course the following week because she’s desperate for an instructor. So, apparently, though I’m qualified to teach, I’m not qualified to be full-time. That makes no sense. (Of course, if I declined, I know I’d never get another teaching job at the college again.) This creates an atmposphere of resentment, and ultimately the students are the ones who suffer.

• I spent 3 years working in Human Resources for a large organization in B.C., where one of my duties was to post job positions for at least five different union affiliates. Full-time and part-time staff were paid equally, and even though the benefits differed, part-time staff were still eligible. Now, I am part-time support staff at an Ontario college, and I cannot grasp any reasoning why full-time staff are compensated more than part time staff. Have Ontario’s colleges taken a step back, when the rest of the country have advanced two steps? Read the headlines: “We do not value our part-time workers as we do their full-time colleagues, but we fully expect them to work as hard and diligently for less pay with no or little benefits!” How do they expect to retain or attract experienced staff? How do they expect to keep morale high? Where is the incentive? Where is the justice?

• After 20 years of part-time teaching, with a few sessionals thrown in, I have lots of stories to tell but will share only a few right now.
After teaching a course for several years, I realized that the existing course manual was outdated and contained misinformation. I spent over 20 hours putting together a detailed proposal for a new manual. The proposal was approved by the department co-ordinator, with the condition that the new manual would be completed and I would be compensated during the Fall term. This agreement was in keeping with department budget and would still have the manual ready for the Winter term. In September, the department co-ordinator pulled me aside at a meeting to tell me that I would no longer be teaching the Winter course and therefore did not want me to rewrite the manual. I received no compensation for work that had already been done. After teaching a wide variety of courses over 16 years and having written several other manuals, I now refuse to teach any lecture courses that involve unpaid preparation.
Over 5 years ago there was a full time position posted for the department in which I had already been teaching part time for 15 years. I met with the co-ordinator and department chair to discuss the position. The posting was for a teaching instructor. I was told that an instructor was not involved in course development, did not make decisions on curriculum and basically taught what ever was put in front of them. At that time I had been writing manuals and developing course curriculum as a part time instructor and was not interested in this particular position. I was also told that there was little chance that this posted instructor position would lead to a professorship because it was a completely different level position. Within less than a year, the department chair unilaterally decided that the newly-hired instructor (who does not have a university degree) would all of a sudden become a professor. I approached the department chair to challenge this unilateral decision to be told that he had the power to make these decisions whenever he felt.

It seems to me that each department keeps the salaries of its part time staff a secret. When I started teaching at the College 20 years ago I was paid $70 per hour (partial load). After five years was told that the COLLEGE POLICY was to no longer hire partial load staff so I had to stay within the six-hour limit to be considered part time. The salary for this position is $30 per hour. What are other part-time people paid?

• I am an alumna of the college and have been a part-time employee with a non-post-secondary program for close to a year. Upon gaining employment with the college, I was just happy to get a job.
I have a great coordinator who told me not to get too excited over the wage. I did not quite get it until the end of August when my contract was completed and I did the math.
Because I walked in and was handed course outlines and nothing else, I spent an average of 25 hours per week prepping for the two courses I taught all summer. On top of the prep, I also dedicated plenty of free time to the students for tutoring and extra help. I still offer the same extra help now because in the end it is the students who suffer. I recall having teachers who were in the same position as I am in now and they were never available for help. My grades suffered in those courses and that is not something I want my students to face. To supplement my income I have attempted to find work at the college in a support staff position. Although I come with high recommendations, I do not get a call for an interview, even when I apply for positions posted with the faculty I work in. Amazing, isn’t it? A Dean’s List graduate who is a part time faculty member cannot even get an interview for a position, for which she qualifies, at the same college from which she graduated. I feel as though I have been labelled an outcast.

• I have been a part-time instructor in Civil Technology for seven years teaching six hours a week.
The worst thing that has happened to me of all is the lack of consideration in letting me know that the program software had changed. I instruct a highway design program of which they changed the program not once but twice. I had no idea the change has happened. The preparation for course notes, approximately 60-70 pages, are technically wasted (unusable). I had to learn the highway design program on the fly with the students, which is not fair for me or the students. The students deserve better.
The college has currently gone to paperless paystubs and I found out Feb. 14, 2006, thinking that someone was taking my paystubs because the college negelected to tell me this. No respect.

• “It was there that the... lawyers proved that the demands lacked all validity for the simple reason that the banana company did not have, never had had, and never would have any workers in its service because they were all hired on a temporary and occasional basis.”
- from One Hundred Years of Solitude by Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The colleges like to talk about “empowering” everyone, but have treated contract workers like migrant workers for decades.... Faculty who have done great jobs for five years or more (in this time they have applied for the own jobs 15 times – the colleges contrive to collapse jobs for two or three weeks between semesters to avoid paying for holidays) almost NEVER are hired for full-time jobs. I believe that the HR departments of all colleges have a POLICY that contract faculty are by default not considered for full-time jobs....
There are almost no academics in any managerial position above coordinator. The management model is an ersatz, failed 1980s-style Enron model in which “directors” strut through an EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION as if it were their corporate fiefdom.
HR at the Colleges has contrived that contract faculty continuously apply for their own jobs. There is just enough time between these jobs – with no pay – that EI is impossible if the job is lost....
Over several decades, HR and upper management have contrived that at least half of the work needed is done for free. In most departments, the students being “empowered” will have far more secure jobs and be paid more than the faculty teaching them! This is what I call “empowerment”. When the actual time needed to present a course is used, most contract faculty are working for about $20 per hour. Continuous Learning faculty “prep rooms” have about 50 banker’s boxes on shelves in a 15-square-metre room; this is the “office” for this faculty. Management likes to say of this faculty that they do it for “love of teaching....”
Ontario has let this issue –which is a human rights issue –evolve over a long time, incrementally, to the point where it is ruining the quality of education in colleges. Contract faculty I know used to say that the “car wash model” was that used by HR at the colleges. I have looked into this, and now think that, with tips, the car wash attendants hired off the street make about the same $ and are not subjected to continuous insult and disrespect.

Regards,

A banana company worker

 

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