Back at the Table With Workload On Our Mind – Bargaining Begins

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Bargaining Bulletin 3

Highlights:

  • Bargaining begins: Your College Faculty bargaining team met with CEC for the first two days of bargaining July 15-16, 2024, tabling workload, partial-load, and coordinator proposal language.
  • The Workload Taskforce report: will be made public imminently and is one of the largest known efforts in Canada to cohesively analyze workload of full-time and partial-load teaching faculty, as well as counsellors and librarians.
  • When it comes to workload, the status quo doesn’t work: our current workload language is antiquated, established in 1985 and largely unchanged over 40 years of changes to teaching environments and modes of delivery.
  • What’s next: we look forward to the CEC’s response and exchanging further proposals, with seven (7) scheduled bargaining dates remaining in July.

Your College Faculty bargaining team, along with dedicated OPSEU/SEFPO staff, kicked off the 2024 bargaining round on July 15th.

On day one, after acknowledging the traditional lands and the historical role Tkaronto has played for generations of negotiations and agreements, we exchanged introductions and discussed ground rules between the College Employer Council (CEC) and your OPSEU/SEFPO College Faculty bargaining team.

With workload top of mind as we await the imminent release of the Workload Taskforce report, your team tabled your proposals for Workload during our first opportunity at the table. When it comes to workload, the status quo doesn’t work for members.

The Workload Taskforce report will be publicly available soon and was mandated to inform workload discussions in this round of bargaining, and we are confident it will confirm what members have been stressing for years: workload continues to climb in ways our compensation and contracts fail to capture.

A record number of Faculty engaged with the Workload Taskforce and made their working conditions clear. This report represents one of the largest known efforts in Canada to cohesively analyze workloads of full-time and partial-load teaching faculty, as well as counsellors and librarians – and such an effort would not exist without all of you, collectively responding to the call for testimony regarding your current workloads.

The current understanding of workload conditions in our collective agreement is antiquated, cemented in 1985. Despite the last forty years of momentous changes to our teaching environments and modes of delivery, it has received no major adjustments since. Current workload language pre-dates the invention and widespread use of the Internet!

Your proposals are grounded in the important work of the Workload Taskforce and the contributions of every member who participated in its completion. Your team firmly believes that open and transparent communication with the membership is key, which will rely, in part, on referencing the Workload Taskforce in our proposals. We are working diligently to ensure this report is released publicly as soon as possible.

Today, we also tabled language covering our partial-load faculty colleagues, making up 47% of our membership. Partial-load faculty members have been vocal that their workload has become particularly demanding and increasingly distant in practice from the conditions reflected in their contracts and compensation.

Your College Faculty team has now tabled workload, partial-load, and coordinator proposal language to the CEC. We look forward to their response and further engagement at the bargaining table, with seven (7) scheduled days remaining in July.

As bargaining continues, we look forward to tabling our remaining proposals and sharing them with you, as well as receiving further proposals from the CEC that we can share with our members. As stated by our Bargaining Chair Ravi Ramkissoonsingh in his opening remarks yesterday, “our students especially deserve rich and productive discussions at this table over the coming months, so that we can move this system forward together.”

You can read our current table proposals for yourself on our website, here.

Stay Informed, Stay Engaged, Get Involved

When workers take a bold stand for their rights, the employer sees what an organized membership is willing to do. Let’s be a rising tide that lifts each other up! Whether you are working this summer or able to have vacation time, we wish you all the best and ask that you stay engaged with what unfolds at the bargaining table.

In solidarity,

Your CAAT-A Bargaining Team:

Ravi Ramkissoonsingh, L242, Chair (he/him)
Michelle Arbour, L125, Vice-Chair (she/her)
Chad Croteau, L110 (he/him)
Bob Delaney, L237 (he/him)
Martin Lee, L415 (he/him)
Sean Lougheed, L657 (he/him)
Rebecca Ward, L732 (she/her)