We hope this finds you well and ready for the coming year. The Divisional Executive has been working steadily on several issues this summer, but the most pressing is the ongoing fight to protect the gains from our last round of bargaining.
As we all know, we’ve been facing a worsening crisis in post-secondary education with the election of the Ford government. His continued attacks on students and precarious faculty, while deeply unpopular, are continuing. The gains we made ensuring equal pay for equal work and paid sick days for our contract faculty have been rolled back via Bill 47, and some colleges are rescinding the modest gains that took contract faculty wages up to the rate of their partial load colleagues’ wages.
Most disturbing is that the College Employer Council (CEC) is using all means available to block the contract faculty vote to unionize from being counted, including spending impossible sums of money querying every single ballot in order to delay and stall the process. If we cannot move this organizing drive forward, our next round of bargaining becomes that much harder for FT and PL faculty.
We need your help right now to push back. If we have learned nothing else this past year, it’s that the Ford government caves to public pressure.
OPSEU, together with our allies in 15 & Fairness, has launched the following electronic petition which will be delivered to the College Employer Council, and the Presidents and Board of Governors at all the Colleges. A message will go to all members from OPSEU centrally later today.
PETITION LINK
ENGLISH:https://www.15andfairness.org/fairness_for_contract_faculty
FRENCH: www.15andfairness.org/equite_colleges
In solidarity,
The CAAT-A DivEx
RM, Martin, Heather, JP, Pearline