As of March 2, the faculty union has ramped up its labour action effort to lobby college employers for the need to return to negotiations.
Following the rejection of the Forced Offer Vote (FOV) by the union, the CEC has refused to compromise and continues to maintain its position. In a statement released today, the bargaining team asserted that they have been forced to escalate given the circumstances.
“Typically in bargaining, following a failed final offer vote, the employer concedes that they need to move on workers’ demands. As this Employer team continues to stonewall instead, we have no choice but to increase pressure through the next phase of work-to-rule,” the communication said.
OPSEU-O has published a document on their website outlining what this will mean for faculty. Union members will continue to “avoid struck work” as in the previous two phases, but the bargaining team has now expanded the list of actions that faculty are to evade.
These measures are mostly concentrated on three types of activities, namely class mode of delivery, the grading process, and tasks outside of teaching.
Staff participating in the work-to-rule movement will now be expected to reject teaching online and in-class simultaneously known as the multimodal “hy-flex” delivery method.
Faculty are advised not to prepare for courses, evaluate assignments or update grades over Intersession Week, nor attend any meetings or orientations that may occur. Beyond this, union members will now simplify their marking so that they may grade only within the hours allotted for this task, and not a minute more.
Striking members have been advised to avoid publishing on college systems such as Blackboard. They are to refuse consent to record or post classes on the site, but other modes of sharing this content including YouTube or a cloud-based platform will be acceptable.
Furthermore, staff are asked not to allow grades to be stored on the college’s servers for a prolonged period. The posting of grades on Blackboard for example will be temporary, although alternative methods of providing more permanent feedback such as e-mail will be admissible.
Union members are also discouraged from attending grade appeals and maintaining little involvement in academic dishonesty investigations.
Final grades will be submitted to the college in a simplified manner with no grading breakdowns, and will be written by hand. This will then be dropped off, mailed, or e-mailed as a photo to the college at the preference of the union member.
The bargaining team has noted that all of these strategies “specifically focus on administrators, and minimize impact on students.”
Staff will still be expected to keep students informed and continue to support their educational needs as much as they possibly can to reduce disruption by union actions.
