Return to class may be problematic
Even though the election campaign has stirred the news pot here, we’re in for a lot more noise once the putative return to class (to resume the winter term, in theory) in the course of next week is rejected by students and that rejection is supported by professors who have vowed to respect the student strike.
This will rile up a lot of people and provoke a lot of demagoguery on the campaign front, and probably angry commentary on this blog too. Comments are always welcome from civil participants.
Kevin 11:39 on 2012/08/07 Permalink
If less than 33 votes in favour all it takes to put nearly 700 people on strike, I have to wonder why more than 90% of the membership are not voting.
Adam 11:53 on 2012/08/07 Permalink
It’s August 7. How many students are physically elsewhere?
Ephraim 20:11 on 2012/08/07 Permalink
Why are we paying the professors who are violating their own contracts to teach?
Ian 20:46 on 2012/08/07 Permalink
It’s called collective bargaining rights, you may not like this manifestation of the labour struggle but I bet you enjoy 8 hour days, weekends, and that we don’t have child labour. You can thank unions for that; people died fighting for those things.
Bill Binns 21:56 on 2012/08/07 Permalink
@Ian – The last of those important acomplishments were written into law 30-40-50 years ago or more. So what exactly have the unions acomplished in the last half century or so besides destroying manufacturing and funding organized crime?
Marc 22:03 on 2012/08/07 Permalink
Everything unions set out to do half a century ago have come to pass are now the social norms. My father was in a unionized shop for 36 years and the only things they were good at was collecting their money (dues) and defending incompetence. For him and others who were competent and gave a crap, all they got from the union was a flip of the bird.
Jorgh 22:19 on 2012/08/07 Permalink
@Ephraim: actually, the post-strike working conditions for teachers in cégeps and universities likely violate their collective agreements in terms of workload and what not. You can try to give a condensed semester, but it requires either additional teaching staff, more hours per week or fewer evaluations/grading. If the strikes resume, it’s also a major hassle to accommodate non-striking and striking students (you may wish to fail the absentees all you want, but if the student union voted in favor of a strike, there’s room for lawsuits). If you bring security guards to keep the strikers out, they end up bullying the teachers. If you don’t, the picket lines disrupt the classes. It’s just not a proper teaching environment. Blame the teachers all you want, but they are caught up in a mess they didn’t create. And they were not “on vacation” during the strike, they just spent a lot more time in administrative meetings trying to figure out how to deal with the ongoing strike.
Links 8/8/12 « naked capitalism 04:20 on 2012/08/08 Permalink
[...] Carré rouge: “Even though the election campaign has stirred the news pot here, we’re in for a lot more noise once the putative return to class (to resume the winter term, in theory) in the course of next week [...]
Kate 05:03 on 2012/08/08 Permalink
Despise the unions all you like, working people would be much more vulnerable if they did not exist.
Adam 05:20 on 2012/08/08 Permalink
“we don’t have child labour. You can thank unions for that”
Riiiiiiiiiiiiight… because God knows that parents all over are champing at the bit to send their kids to labour camps. It’s just the darn unions that won’t let ‘em.
Really, how ahistorical can you get?
Look up which countries have high rates of child labour. Then look up which ones have low rates. Ask yourself what the difference is between them. Hint: it ain’t unions.
Kate 05:26 on 2012/08/08 Permalink
Adam, hungry people here and in other “civilized” countries used to think it quite normal to send their kids down the mine or to other jobs to help support the family. (People in some countries still do this, because they pretty much have to.)
It was only because unions came into existence toward the end of the 19th century (against fearsome opposition in most cases) that this kind of abuse ceased to exist. What you consider normal conditions now had to be fought for, inch by inch, by organized working people. You are the one who doesn’t understand the history.
Adam 07:25 on 2012/08/08 Permalink
Kate, do you not understand that you are contradicting yourself and making my point for me? Poor people send their kids to work because they need the money. Rich people don’t. No law or legislation changes that reality. Parents stop sending their kids to work when they stop needing the money. The reason that kids in Canada go to school and (some) kids in Bangladesh work is not unions or laws but quite simply wealth.
I really think you should pick up an introductory book on economics sometime. It will open your eyes and maybe help you understand why QS’ economic policies are not only a terrible idea but likely to lead to the exact opposite outcome from what is intended.
Adam 07:29 on 2012/08/08 Permalink
To put it differently: if you repealed the child labour laws in Canada, nothing would change. Parents would not start sending their kids into the coal mines. If you ban child labour in Bangladesh (and enforce it), families will either starve or send their kids to work illegally as prostitutes or something else even worse than a brick factory.
Again, I really very strongly recommend reading up on some introductory economics.
Ian 08:04 on 2012/08/08 Permalink
My grandparents worked in factories. My grandmother often complained that children should “be able” to contribute to family income. This is only 2 generations ago… I have read quite a bit of economics but I think you would do yourself a service to read some history. Every single benefit workers have were fought for, and there are lots of places you can work even in North America where workers’ rights are being whittled away. Is there a major strike the feds don’t legislate back to work? Ever hear of “right to work” legislation in the US, and how there’s talk of bringing it to Canada? These are not issues from the distant past or the sole domain of dusky natives in faraway lands. As far as destroying manufacturing and contributing to organized crime, well, I think you can point the finger to a large extent at offshoring and the foreign production quota system (like maquiladoras for instance) for destroying manufacturing, and the organized crime bit is a bit of a joke considering that we know everyone’s on the take from the cops to the politicians in Quebec. Our entire political system is organized crime. Ignore labour history at your peril, because we’re backsliding fast as far as worker’s rights are concerned. Maybe your grandchildren will be able to contribute to family income.
Ian 08:08 on 2012/08/08 Permalink
You could read this book, for a start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_People's_History_of_the_United_States
qatzelok 08:11 on 2012/08/08 Permalink
@ Adam: My grandmother was forced to find work at 11 years of age back when there were no unions in her part of New Brunswick. Unions made sure that wealth was distributed more equitably, and this allowed poor families to get wealthier, and this allowed them to keep their kids in school.
What part of “unions make the poor wealthier” did you not get from all those Economics 101 texts? Didn’t those books tell you about class struggle, and how it’s necessary to fight for equality (through unions and demos) in order to avoid being exploited by number-crunching tyrants with a psychopathic need for domination over other humans?
david 08:12 on 2012/08/08 Permalink
Adam, in my experience that guy who thinks he’s the smartest one in the room usually isn’t.
Bill Binns 09:18 on 2012/08/08 Permalink
It’s interesting that unions find it impossible to exist in areas where they cannot force workers to join (right to work). I don’t have any problem with “Hey, would you like to join our club?” but “Hey, you’re in our club and we will be taking a piece of your check every week. We better not see you working too fast or doing anything not listed in your job description either” is a different matter.
Ian 09:56 on 2012/08/08 Permalink
It’s interesting that well-off West end Anglos are anti-union. Oh no, wait, it’s just predictable. /ad hominem ;)
In all seriousness, I don’t think you understand what right-to-work laws mean, Bill. Unions still exist in RTW states, but collective bargaining is weakened as bosses can force out unionized workers without penalty. There are lots of mixed union/non-union shops but statistically RTW states have lower wages… you don’t have to be an economics whizz kid to figure that one out.
Ephraim 10:17 on 2012/08/08 Permalink
@Jorgh many teachers supported the strike. There is a price to pay for that. The contract says what course they are required to teach and how many hours they need to be in the classroom. (That’s what my contract said when I taught). They didn’t fulfill that part of the contract. They need to negotiate a way to fulfill the contract without having to resort to repaying the government. I don’t agree with Bill 78. But I do realize that there is a morality in collecting money for not doing your job. Especially when the contract will be up eventually and need to renegotiated. Having the government sitting there across the table and saying that you didn’t fulfill the last contract isn’t going to work well at the table. That’s just reality.
P.C. 13:54 on 2012/08/10 Permalink
@Ephraim: one reason why cegep teachers (like me) did not give their classes is because student unions negotiated an entente with their cegep administration wich permitted certain students to follow their classes (those with training courses) but had the teachers respect the picket lines of the striking students. So might the teachers have supported or not the strike, their administration sent them a message on the first week of the strike telling them not to come to cegep unless they were part of the entente. Some administration tried to bypass their entente, as well as the numerous injonctions but that’s when students and some supporting teachers blocked the entrances reminding the administration and the governement that students were on a legitimate strike. So even though I would have wanted to morally do my job (going maybe against another moral issue, the respect of the democratic vote for strike (and I went to every student vote in my cegep to see for myself how it was done), it was not possible because the cegep first agreed to respect the student’s democratic vote.