labour relations
Tentative Agreement: On the Way to Performance Indicators?
Richard Wellen
An Analysis and Commentary on the Proposed Teaching Load Reduction Framework
The likely result will be annual competitions among both units and colleagues for course releases. We know the university has been avidly studying the use of performance indicators, and they have been canvassing Faculties on this topic. The acceptance of this framework is almost certain to result in a significant intensification of post-tenure performance review within units. In fact, one cannot avoid the suspicion that the reason the parties negotiated a vague framework with only very general principles, was so that performance indicators could more easily be smuggled in.
Memorandum of Understanding: A Response
Marcia Macaulay and Yvette Szmidt
On September 17 there will be a meeting to ratify or not a tentative settlement between the employer and YUFA. This tentative settlement fails to reflect the bargaining positions which YUFA members approved and gave the Bargaining Team a mandate to negotiate at a General Membership Meeting on June 2, 2009. There are a number of significant concerns which we wish to bring to your attention.
Precipitous Settlement ???
Marcia Macaulay
What members should fear in the case of a precipitous settlement is a trading off of the bargaining positions ratified by the membership during the last General Membership meeting. Advances in workload could in fact be clawed back, leaving York as a university without the benchmark of 2+2 which is in keeping with other universities in Canada. And although the Executive's language on carriage rights was withdrawn from the bargaining proposals, this language could return, to the detriment of the members.
YUFA Executive Ignores Members’ Mmotion to Hold Monthly Consultation Meetings During Negotiations
Richard Wellen
At our spring membership meeting a near unanimous motion was passed directing the Executive to hold consultation meetings with the membership at least monthly during bargaining in order to keep members up to date. Apparently there is no intention to comply with that motion as we have already exceeded the one month threshold.
For those who are not in YUFA, or for those in YUFA who were expecting a somewhat visible bargaining process, please take a look at the message below from YUFA about negotiations (Bargaining Update # 2)
An Open Letter to Arthur Hilliker, YUFA President
The YUFA Democracy Caucus
In your statement to YUFA members on May 25 you do not mention that you have blocked all attempts to discuss and resolve the election irregularities by the Executive, and have discounted the motion passed by Stewards Council reaffirming its procedures for the election...
The Failures of a Faculty Association
Jody Berland and Ricardo Grinspun
Challenging times require strong collective action to defend values of fairness, integrity, and democratic accountability. It is deeply disappointing to see the York University Faculty Association failing to stand up to the task. We are responding to egregious anti-democratic practices in the Executive of that Association, most recently in the election of Steward Council Representatives to YUFA Executive. In this article we offer context and commentary on this event.
Report on YUFA Executive Meeting of May 4 2009
The YUFA Democracy Caucus
How is it possible that a member of another union, is suddenly in a position to dictate what our elected members on Stewards' Council should and shouldn’t be doing? The lack of democracy makes me crazy – it’s a combination of a majority on Executive that wishes to control how another YUFA body, Stewards' Council operates, plus for good measure staff that now has far more power than YUFA members.
Executive's Proposed Abolition of Carriage Rights
Nick Lary
The Executive is considering changes in Article 9 that will seriously weaken members’ rights in the new Collective Agreement. The stewards and the members will have a chance to reject these proposed changes in their separate votes on the bargaining proposals before negotiations begin.
Stolen Stewards Council Election?
Laurence Green
The stewards should elect "their" representatives to the YUFA Executive. If the Executive chooses the Council's representatives, then this isn't "representation." The stewards present, agreed and voted accordingly. After the motion carried, no one was prepared for it to be overturned this week, and accompanied by claims that THIS MOTION and the stewards who voted for it were trying to change the terms of the election, during the election... when from my perspective, and others, we were clearly trying to accomplish the opposite and PREVENT any procedural irregularities from skewing the election outcome.
Democratic Gains at the YUFA SMM on March 3
Marcia Macaulay
The YUFA Special Membership Meeting on March 3, 2009 was an important
event for the membership as a whole. It was attended by approximately one
hundred and fifty members. This meeting concentrated on motions brought
from the previous Special Membership Meeting on February 9.
Appendix T (formerly U) -YUFA'S President Proposes Faculty Salary Freeze
Richard Wellen
YUFA has been very ‘cooperative’ in the last decade of negotiations. In consequence, we have won very few improvements in pay and working conditions over those years. In the meantime, we have seen faculty unions at Carleton, Brock and Wilfred Laurier win teaching load reductions that have been refused by our own employer. Now is not the time to fall further behind and make our own members pay the price for the misguided policies of both the employer and the government.
Crisis in YUFA
YUFA members need to intervene to call for a new election, to be held according
to the Stewards Council’s rules which place the power to choose their
representatives entirely in the hands of elected Stewards.
YUFA Executive Stalls on Donation to Labour-Friendly Centre
Norene Pupo
...Even last year when I asked YUFA for a $500 donation to support a conference, Labour Rights as Human Rights, (a conference following the BC Supreme Court Decision, and involving international guests from the ILO) YUFA refused, despite again wide labour support, including support from the other campus unions...
Demanding the Impossible: Struggles for the Future of Post-Secondary Education
Tyler Shipley
There is growing acknowledgement... that there is a crisis in post-secondary education and a need for real change in the structure of university funding. This has manifested as a proliferation of student and worker unrest across the country and, indeed, the world; in 2008 and early 2009, there were dozens of university strikes and occupations across the world marked both by broader ideological challenges to the prevailing social order as well as increased repression from campus and state authorities... The recent strike of graduate students and part-time faculty at York University in Toronto over the winter of 2008-09 confronted these questions directly... this piece will sketch a brief history of the funding crisis in post-secondary education in the hopes of highlighting what I think are the crucial pressure-points in fighting back the trends toward inaccessible and watered-down educational experiences for students and low-reward, exploitative working conditions for teachers.
To read the complete article, go to:
http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/bullet215.html
Report on YUFA Executive Meeting of March 9 2009
The YUFA Democracy Caucus
Once again, YUFA observers were excluded from much of the meeting, an action not mentioned in the Constitution.
