Hi Russ,
What a difficult time for you guys! I'm on the steering committee of the
faculty committee here at Carleton, and in November 2006 I was in the hotel
where our last round of union-management negotiations were playing out at
2:00 a.m., just a couple of hours before our picket lines were scheduled to
go up. We ended up settling that night/morning at about 3:30 a.m., but it
was really grueling. And then our office staff did go on strike here last
September, and I could see how rancorous and draining that was for the
employees. All to say that I can imagine what you're going through at St.
Thomas.
I'm wondering whether I might be able to forward your message, or at least
paragraphs 3-5, to our union Executive Director? I could see her using the
information (not the actual text) when the steering committee meets with the
union council on Friday to talk about approving additional financial support
for your union.
Hang in there.
Take care,
Graham
----- Original Message -----
From: "Russ Hunt" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 22, 2008 10:04 AM
Subject: Inkshed 25 and the strikeout at St. Thomas: an update
I had planned to put together, and issue, a call for proposals for Inkshed
25, and the
information about the venue and costs, over Christmas. But, as I said in my
last
communique from my foxhole, things intervened.
For three weeks, I've been thinking, well, in the next day or two, or by the
beginning of the
week, or, well, look, within a few days . . . I'll _know something_. But it
simply hasn't worked
out that way. Yesterday, for a couple of hours, I thought we were within
sight of an armistice,
but today I'm far less sure.
Here's the short version (if you're interested, I've put a couple of links
below to further
information: I think this has resonance for all of us -- all of us who are
academics, anyway. As
a long-time union supporter, and one of the founders of the union here, I'm
thinking hard
about the traditional industrial model for bargaining in this context).
St. Thomas and the union have been negotiating for ten months. At the end of
last term the
process went into conciliation, which failed, and then mediation, which
failed as well. The
Union called a strike vote for three days after second term was scheduled to
begin. In
response, the administration imposed a lockout -- the motive being to
prevent the union from
going on strike a week into the new term, and stranding a couple of thousand
students in
Fredericton (there was, in my view and that of many others, no possible
question that the
union intended to go on strike). As a consequence of various fits and starts
at negotiation,
the administration postponed the start of the new term for a week (till
January 10), then to
January 14, and then indefinitely. The union declared a strike during that
process.
As a result of this, I have no access to my STU email, or to my records, or
to the server the
Inkshed Web site is on (thus I can't even transfer it to inkshed.ca, which
was on my Moebius-
strip list of things to do). Further, the delay in the term may mean -- I
can't tell, because
there's no information on what will be done to squeeze a term in once we get
back, if we do --
that we can't hold the conference where we'd planned, and which we'd booked,
at the St.
Thomas Conference Centre -- which is actually a pretty nice facility. If St.
Thomas's
convocation schedule gets moved, we'll be bumped; it was clear that that was
the case when
we booked it, but it's never happened before.
So here we are. I have a union meeting in an hour, at which I'm pretty sure
the
recommendation is going to be to vote against the administration's "final
offer" (the second
mediator gave up on the process Sunday night, and said in his report the
administration's
offer was the only one that made any sense, so the administration is asking
the Labour Board
to force a vote). The vote will be Monday, probably, and if it's No my guess
is that we'll lose
the term (the first time in Canadian history, anyway, that a labour dispute
has shut a place
down). What _that_ would mean for our booking at the conference centre, I
have no idea, but
my expectation would be that a lockout would be put back in place and the
administration
would wait for the union to collapse. Or maybe we'll go on negotiating into
the term, though
on what basis isn't clear to me.
Yes, I know, this is not believable.
I should put off sending this till after the union meeting, I guess, but I'm
not going to
procrastinate yet again: probably at the end of the meeting I'll really know
no more than I do
now.
Let me say this: We'll have Inkshed 25 in Fredericton, and it'll be the
scheduled dates, May
15-18 (I know there've been questions raised about the dates, too, but I
don't think there are
realistic alternatives), and there'll be a call for proposals in the next
few days. Bear with us . .
.
-- Russ
For further information:
My position at the outset of this (short version: a plague on both your
houses) is here:
http://tinyurl.com/3bljch
A pretty full analysis of what's at stake, really, is here:
http://tinyurl.com/2xqwk3
And a summary of the mediator's final report is here:
http://tinyurl.com/27ccb7
Russell A. Hunt
Department of English
St. Thomas University
http://www.stu.ca/~hunt/
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
To leave the list, send a SIGNOFF CASLL command to
[log in to unmask] or, if you experience difficulties,
write to Russ Hunt at [log in to unmask]
For the list archives and information about the organization,
its newsletter, and the annual conference, go to
http://www.stu.ca/inkshed/
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
To leave the list, send a SIGNOFF CASLL command to
[log in to unmask] or, if you experience difficulties,
write to Russ Hunt at [log in to unmask]
For the list archives and information about the organization,
its newsletter, and the annual conference, go to
http://www.stu.ca/inkshed/
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
