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September 29, 2011 - No. 4 40th Ontario General Election The Demise of Good Faith Collective Bargaining in the Ontario Public Sector -- An Election IssueElection Issues 40th Ontario General Election The Demise of Good Faith Collective Bargaining in the Ontario Public Sector -- An Election IssueThe latest round of contract negotiations between Ontario community college support staff and the College Employer Council has confirmed what the set of academic negotiations in 2008-09 revealed: there is no longer any such thing as good faith collective bargaining in labour relations in the Ontario public sector. Days before the beginning of the 2007 Ontario provincial election, the Ontario Liberals promised to recognize the right to collective bargaining of part-time college workers as part of a review of the Colleges Collective Bargaining Act (CCBA). With this sleight-of-hand, they wiped the issue of the rights of part-time college workers off the election agenda. This was one issue that had the potential to explode in the face of the McGuinty Liberals as OPSECAAT was prepared to challenge leading ministers at campaign stops across the province. College workers have paid dearly for their trust in the Liberal Party. The Liberals reneged on their 2007 deal. The part-time issue has not been resolved. The Whittaker Commission was created to provide a justification for a long list of anti-worker, anti-union revisions to the CCBA which were passed in 2008. However, college lawyers have succeeded in stalling the counting of the representation vote ballots at the Ontario Labour Relations Board in a process that is expected to take ten years to complete. The new terms of the CCBA were used to allow shock-and-awe tactics during the faculty negotiations of 2008-09, with the Council imposing a new contract, claiming a right they did not have in the Act and manipulating the voters' list in order to obtain a razor thin acceptance of the imposed contract. Now, this year, we have the first round of support staff contract negotiations under the new CCBA. Right from the beginning the College Employer Council showed a refusal to bargain in good faith. While the union held demand-setting meetings across the province and came to the bargaining table with these demands concretized as proposed contract language, the Council only offered to discuss housekeeping items (such as changing the reference to the CCBA from 1990 to 2008) and a wish-list of potential concessions. After dragging their feet all summer, the Council made their monetary offer in the media on the last Friday afternoon preceding the strike deadline. Clearly the tone was set and the Council was saying that only capitulation by the workers could avert the necessity of strike action, a message that was made crystal clear by the September 9 refusal of the College Employer Council to accept the union's offer to return to negotiations. After the Second World War, a social contract was established in Canadian society in which workers and their families were provided with a modern level of wages, benefits, working conditions, education, health care and pensions, etc., in exchange for the workers accepting limitations to their political demands. In general, although there were occasional sharp conflicts, both sides worked within a set of parameters that recognized the validity of the claims of each side. This social contract reached its most profound level during the Just Society of Trudeau and the reign of Bill Davis in Ontario. This was the time when a regime of labour relations was established in the Ontario community college system and that regime reflected the prevailing mores of the times. The greatest advance was in the establishment of the faculty workload formula in the late eighties as a result of the 1984 strike. However, beginning with Mulroney, the anti-social offensive of the monopolies has slowly intensified. The colleges were increasingly starved of funds during the Rae Days and the Common Sense Revolution of Mike Harris. While the relative economic recovery of the first decade of the twenty-first century allowed the McGuinty Liberals to ease the burden on the colleges slightly, the economic crisis of 2007-08 has been used to impose new arrangements in labour relations in Ontario, notably the repudiation of the 2007 election political bargain to recognize the rights of part-time college workers as part of a review of the whole CCBA. This is justified by repeating that the world has changed, the world has changed! What are college workers to do faced with this situation where the old post-war social contract which provided for good-faith collective bargaining between the employer and labour is no more? Now the employer is seeking to be the sole decision-maker when it comes to wages, benefits and working conditions in the colleges. Workers are to fend for themselves and any rights which workers have gained through collective bargaining are to be negated. Provisions of law that assist the employer to exert their will such as those that enable employers to dismiss workers from a different bargaining unit that engage in sympathy actions are strengthened while those that are of assistance to the workers such as the former prohibition on the colleges employing replacement workers are eliminated. In short, the employer is allowed to act with impunity and the workers are increasingly restricted in the actions that they can take in defence of their interests. New arrangements in public sector labour relations will come into being. The question is: in whose interest will these new arrangements serve: the public and human-centred college education or the monopolies and capital-centred college education. This is a political question and we are in the midst of a provincial election. College workers will make significant advances in advancing their interests if the firmly put the issue of Ontario's community colleges on the agenda of this election, hold the Liberal Party to account for its abrogation of the 2007 political bargain on recognizing part-time rights, and elect candidates who will find a just solution to the problems facing the Ontario community college system by recognizing the rights of all. Fight for the Rights of All! Support Staff Force College Employer Council to Negotiate an Acceptable ContractTaking political action and making Ontario's community colleges an election issue by picketing Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty campaign stops in northern Ontario has forced the College Employer Council to return to the bargaining table, give up its obstructionism, and hammer out an agreement to which the bargaining committee can recommend acceptance. The agreement was reached after a nineteen day strike by more than 8,000 community college support staff. While the agreement must be ratified by college support staff workers, the striking workers returned to work on September 20. Rod Bemister, chair of the OPSEU bargaining team, said in a press release the union managed to secure key contract proposals it had brought forward. "Our position from the start of contract talks was that this round of negotiations would be about preserving good jobs our members currently enjoy, while at the same time ensuring that good jobs will be in place for future college support staff," Bemister said. "We believe we met those objectives." The support staff and their bargaining committee were able to rebuff the attempt of the College Employer Council to erode the contract language, wages and working conditions of existing workers and to impose a two tier system for new hires. The attempt by the Council to introduce changes to working conditions in their proposals for flexible hours of work, a compressed work week, and to allow students to be hired to work full days all year round, was restricted as was the Council's proposal for a lengthened probationary period. The bargaining committee was able to have the letter of understanding on contracting out placed in the collective agreement as an appendix, thereby strengthening its standing. Changes to the grievance process and to the provisions for union time off were agreed to. The wage offer was raised to 1.5%, 1.75% and 2.0%, a significant improvement over the original Council offer. The union bargaining committee put off the issues of part-time rights and retiree benefits to a future date. Dalton McGuinty and the Ontario Liberal Party dread the thought of situation facing Ontario's community colleges being placed on the election agenda and becoming a major issue, as they know this will blow up in their face. In 2007, they promised to recognize part-time rights as part of a review of the Colleges Collective Bargaining Act (CCBA). This succeeded in keeping colleges off the election agenda that year. However, the Liberals reneged on that deal, imposing anti-workers revisions to the CCBA while delaying the counting of the part-time union recognition votes at the Ontario Labour Relations Board. Now, as soon as the Liberals are confronted in the election, McGuinty waves his magic wand and the College Employer Council reverses face, stops acting like it can dictate the terms of the contract with impunity, and in thirty-six hours bargains a contract that the union bargaining committee can recommend to its members. What is the significance of this? At a time when the post-war social contract in labour relations has been declared null and void, the workers find themselves increasingly restricted in waging their economic struggles. Legislation is amended in favour of the employer, the OLRB rules in favour of the employer and Harper threatens to legislate strikers back to work. In these circumstances, college workers cannot afford to limit their struggle to the traditional trade union forms. It is a necessity to fight vigourously on the political front, to give voice to the valid claims of college workers and college students, for a principled solution to the negation of the rights of part-time college employees to freedom of association and of collective bargaining, for an increase in provincial finding for Ontario's community colleges to at least the national average and for a human-centred college education system. There still remains time for college workers to work to keep the colleges on the election agenda. The more this is done now; the more the new government will need to find an acceptable solution to the crisis in Ontario's community colleges.
McGuinty Liberals Held Accountable for College CrisisStriking Ontario community college support staff workers have made their struggle for the rights of all and for a collective agreement they can accept an election issue by confronting Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty at his campaign stops in northern Ontario. As a result, the College Employer Council, which had been refusing to negotiate, has been forced back to the bargaining table. On September 15, three OPSEU members learned that Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty would be making an early Thursday morning campaign stop at the Thunder Bay Bombardier plant. Brandishing placards and OPSEU flags -- and braving a late summer low temperature of minus-2 -- the trio arrived at the factory shortly before 8 a.m. hoping to catch a word with the Premier. After a three hour vigil, Premier McGuinty emerged from the Bombardier plant accompanied by Canadian Auto Workers president Ken Lewenza and approached the trio of OPSEU activists. "We told him we needed him to apply some pressure to get the employer back to the table," said CAAT Support Local 612 mobilizer Elaine Kerr. "He indicated that he would attempt to get a mediator to the table and make them sit in the room together until there was an agreement", she said. The same evening, forty striking support staff workers from Cambrian College held a lively and spirited rally outside a Liberal election event attended by McGuinty at the Caruso Club in Sudbury. They were joined by Sudbury NDP candidate Paul Lowenberg and a dozen supporters. For more than two hours, the grouped marched in front of the hall, waving flags, shouting slogans demanding a return to negotiations and a contract they can accept, singing and making sure that all of the invited Liberal supporters knew of their struggle. McGuinty didn't dare show his face to the picketers and snuck into the hall with his security detail. The NDP were also demanding that McGuinty participate in a leaders' debate on northern issues. Support staff are planning on escalating this political action. On Monday September 19, Conestoga College workers plan to picket Liberal Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities John Mulloy's Campaign Headquarters in Kitchener and Liberal MPP Leona Dombrowsky's Campaign Headquarters in Belleville. On September 20, district labour councils across Ontario have unanimously agreed to stage a Day of Solidarity with striking college support workers at every college site in the province. At a meeting of affiliates of the Ontario Federation of Labour on Monday, representatives agreed to "adopt" a college in their community, or in a nearby community on September 20 where they will rally the support of local labour groups the strike. The crisis in Ontario's community colleges is a political question that the Ontario Liberal Party is desperate to keep off the election agenda. In the current election campaign, the Premier had been silent on the college support strike until now. In the 2007 provincial election, the Liberal Party promised to recognize the right to collective bargaining of part-time college workers as part of a review of the Colleges Collective Bargaining Act (CCBA). The Liberal Party reneged on that deal. They passed several anti-worker, anti-union revisions to the CCBA that were used to impose the Council contract during the faculty negotiations of 2008-09. At the same time, the Liberal Party has been silent as college lawyers stall the counting of the part- time union recognition votes at the Ontario Labour Relations Board. Dalton McGuinty and the Ontario Liberal Party must be held accountable for the crisis in Ontario's colleges. At the current time, when revisions to the CCBA have been engineered to restrict the ability of college workers to wage an effective economic struggle, college workers are defending their interests and those of a human-centred college education system by boldly placing their issues on the election agenda. The denial of part-time rights, the chronic underfunding of the Ontario college system and making public sector workers pay for the fiscal crisis of the Ontario government cannot be justified. The election campaign provides opportunities to raise the political aspects of their struggle. Politicians can be held accountable. By continuing to place the issues facing Ontario community colleges on the political and election agendas, college workers are taking a step forward in their struggle for the rights of all. Break the Silence! A Fight for the Rights of All! Community College Support Staff StrikeOn September 18, Ontario community college support staff reached a tentative deal with the College Employers Council (CEC) and returned to work on September 20. Eight thousand Ontario community college support staff, members of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU), launched strike actions on September 1 at more than 100 campuses of Ontario's 24 community colleges. This was the first strike by support staff workers since 1979. The college workers were forced to take this action due to the intractable stand of the CEC, which refused to bargain in good faith, using delaying tactics, bargaining in the press and disinformation in an attempt to impose new arrangements in labour relations in Ontario's colleges. The community college support staff workers accepted social responsibility and took a courageous stand in defence of the rights of all. At the centre of their struggle was the demand that wages, benefits and working conditions be maintained at a Canadian standard, expressed in their call for good jobs, both today and tomorrow. Their number one demand was for a resolution to the long-existing part-time workers crisis. They demanded that the colleges voluntarily recognize the collective bargaining rights of part-time college support staff workers and provide job security by agreeing that a minimum of 80 per cent of support staff work be performed by full-time workers. The workers also sought a wage increase in pace with inflation, asking for a three per cent increase in each of three years, a modest demand given inflation was running at 3.7 per cent in May. The CEC used the media to make their wage offer of 3.25 per cent in the second and third year of the contract, preceded by a lump-sum payment of 1.5 per cent in the first year, which they agreed to roll into the wage scale only in the waning hours of negotiations. Support staff work in the registrar's, financial aid, payroll and accounting offices; they are departmental secretaries and receptionists; lab technicians and technologists; janitorial, maintenance, groundskeeping, receiving and moving personnel; information technology staff and library technicians; special needs support and daycare workers. More than 10,000 part-time support staff and nearly 20,000 full-and part-time faculty were forced to cross the support staff picket lines and perform their duties under threat of dismissal. A support staff worker on one picket line pointed out the cynicism of the colleges' decision to maximize the use of part-timers when they are otherwise used as casual labour. "It shows that part-timers can do the same job as us but don't get the same recognition or representation," said the picketer. Faculty, students and others at the colleges showed their support by joining the picket lines, distributing food and drinks and discussing the issues with everyone. The Ontario provincial election was called on September 7, the second day of formal classes at most colleges. Funding for college education and the rights of college workers are an election issue.
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