Sorry everyone,
My last message was obviously meant for Russ alone.
Graham
----- Original Message -----
From: "Graham Smart" <[log in to unmask]>
To: "CASLL/Inkshed" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 22, 2008 5:31 PM
Subject: Re: Inkshed 25 and the strikeout at St. Thomas: an update
> 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/
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
