Return to work recommendations (with materials from Humber college local 562)

Unfortunately, it seems that the College Employer Council directed all the colleges to issue memos rather than revised SWFs. New SWFs (and contracts for Partial Load and other contract faculty) are required to reflect changes in the work.

SWFs are the corner stone of faculty rights. By unilaterally choosing to ignore provisions in our collective agreement regarding the SWF, the colleges are establishing a dangerous precedent to further erode faculty rights. This is a continuation of the struggle for our rights that gave rise to the strike and that resulted in an 86% rejection of the forced ratification vote province wide.

In other words, the SWF issue is this week’s version of standing up for faculty rights, just as we did last week for the forced ratification vote.

Our recommendation to faculty; Tom Tomassi sent an email to all faculty with similar instructions.

  1. Prepare your workplan for course revisions (see Humber locals document here )
  2. Request an appropriately revised SWF for the rest of the semester ( “First Letter to Manager”  see sample wording here)
  3. Copy the local with your manager’s reply.
  4. If you meet with your manager, let them know the extent of the changes required and the additional hours that should be added to your new SWF, or simply that you want one with the new dates.
  5. If the manager refuses to adjust your SWF, tell/write your manager you want to refer this issue to the Workload Monitoring Group (WMG) (see “Follow Up Letter to Manager” here).
  6. Keep track of the additional work (hours).

Relevant language from the collective agreement:  (Please familiarize yourself with the details of article 11)
“11.02 A 6 (a) In the event of any difference arising from the interpretation, application, administration or alleged contravention of 11.01, 11.02, or 11.09, a teacher shall discuss such difference as a complaint with the teacher’s immediate supervisor.
The discussion shall take place within 14 days after the circumstances giving rise to the complaint have occurred…”
"As a result of the strike, faculty must do extra work that was not originally listed on their SWF or your contract.

The extra work could include the following;

1. Prep time to revise your course(s). You taught for 6 weeks and were off for 5. Entering back into the teaching and learning experience will require thought, energy and course revision.

2. Evaluation Time - Your evaluations may have to be shifted. Many of us were coming back to exams this week and next. This won't be possible.

3. Meeting with Students - Students will most definitely require additional time out of class to support their learning and accommodate their needs.

Thanks to the folks from Humber for sharing their resources.

More on article 11:
A reminder to all that article 11 is very clear that all assigned work must be on a SWF and that the employer cannot assign work in any other way.  I believe that the resistance of the College to issue new SWF’s has more to do with possible refunds to students and as well penalize us for exercising our democratic right to be on strike.  If your chairperson is refusing to issue a revised SWF, I would strongly suggest that you immediately email them and use the language below in challenging your workload and the memo from HR.  Also make sure that you copy the local union at ttomassi@georgebrown.ca, or opseu556@gmail.com so that we can keep track and ensure all issues are addressed in a timely manner and if the chairperson does not meet to address the issue you can go directly to the CWMG for resolution.

 

Taras Gula

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