Meeting With Members at Conestoga College

On October 9th I traveled to the Kitchener campus of Conestoga College to meet with President Lana Lee Hardacre and members of OPSEU Local 237.

Lana Lee Hardacre

Conestoga is a medium-sized college with approximately 9,000 full-time students.  It is also one of the first institutions in the Ontario college system, being established in 1967. Conestoga operates seven different campuses and offers a wide array of programs, including collaborative degree nursing, engineering, architecture, and computer technology.

In my meeting with the officers of Local 237, they described a now-familiar story of college management squeezing every bit of revenue out of operations, while simultaneously cutting costs at every turn.  This funding pressure manifests in growing class sizes in the college's apprenticeship programs.  In several trades programs, classes used to be capped at 24 students, and now have climbed to 42.  In some machining classes, where the past practice has been a maximum of 15 students, classes of up to 37 are now common.

While these numbers may seem low when compared to massive university lecture theatres crammed with hundreds of students, skilled-trades classes involve intensive, hands-on education using potentially dangerous machinery.  The 24 and 15 student limits were in place to ensure two important outcomes: quality of instruction and student safety.  Now that class sizes are being far exceeded, faculty have serious concerns over both outcomes.

Another cost-cutting measure that is affecting quality education is that professors in skilled trades are being replaced with technicians.  Labs that used to be taught by professors are now being staffed with technicians who can't evaluate student work.  This leads to a disconnect between a student's theoretical and practical instruction that again has professors worried about the quality of education students will receive.

Ontario's skilled trades build and maintain our province's infrastructure and drive our economy.  Given this sector's obvious importance, the public should be concerned when professors are being forced to cut corners and sacrifice both safety and quality for the financial bottom line.  Skimping on resources in the classroom makes even less sense when considering the management at Conestoga, who's numbers and salaries have been growing by leaps and bounds.  In 2012 Conestoga president John Tibbits alone took in over $409,000 in salary, after receiving an extremely generous 16% raise in 2011.  Clearly there's been no austerity in the president's office...

La Belle La Cite

On Friday, October 4th, I took the train to Ottawa, one of my favourite Canadian cities, to visit with the faculty at La Cite, Ontario's largest francophone college.  After lunch with locale 470 du SEFPO (OPSEU Local 470) President Benoit Dupuis, I had an engaging conversation with the local officers and stewards.


Local 470 President Benoit Dupuis

La Cite is a relatively recent addition to the Ontario college system, being founded in 1990.  It is a medium-size institution, with approximately 5,000 full-time students, and 300 full-time faculty.  The ratio of full-time to part-time faculty is 50-50, a bit below the system average, but creeping ever upward.

A significant change at La Cite has been a new college president taking over in 2010.  Since this change-over, and a more corporate management style, there has been a definite shift in labour relations.  Chief Grievance officer Pierre St.-Gelais noted that from April of 2011 to September 2013, the union has filed six times the number of grievances it had filed in the previous fifteen years.

Chief Grievance Officer Pierre St.-Gelais

Another issue facing the professors at La Cite has been increasing class sizes.  Class enrolments were once capped by college administration based on "academic quality".  However, the caps have now been removed, as has any mention of academic quality being linked to class size.

As La Cite's priorities have shifted from academic quality to corporate promotion and marketing, their scores on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) have been increasing.  KPIs are student satisfaction surveys used across the college system in the increasingly competitive battle for students.

The current focus on KPIs reflects a customer-service approach to college education, in which attracting students and maintaining them at all costs has come to eclipse an educational approach based on high academic standards and rigorous training.  High KPI scores and swelling enrolments may lead to healthy management bonuses, but Local 470's officers noted that employers on college-industry committees are expressing concerns.  Could it be that larger class sizes, fewer full-time faculty and reduced face-to-face instruction are producing college graduates that are less prepared for the workplace?

A Visit to Humber College

On Thursday, October 3rd I paid a visit to Humber College, another large Toronto-based institution with over 27,000 full time students.  The professors of Humber are led by President Orville Getz and the hard-working team of OPSEU Local 562.

As with most of the colleges I've visited to date, Humber's North Campus was in the midst of extensive renovations.  New buildings have been appearing across the college system, in many cases reflecting badly needed upgrades and expanded capacity.  Modern facilities are great, but has this investment been matched in the classroom?

Expansion at Humber's North Campus

Unfortunately, faculty at Humber have instead seen class sizes balloon from an average of 40 - 45 students, up to 75 - 100 students.  At the same time the College has been keeping a tight cap on full-time hiring.  At the time of our meeting, Local 562 had 595 full time faculty, 600 partial-load, and an equal number of part-time.  Similar to the system average, over 2/3 of the education delivered at Humber is by non-full time professors.

Another powerful challenge to the members of Local 562 has been management's increasing control over academic decisions.  Depending on the area, managers are developing new curriculum and courses, writing course outlines, and determining evaluations.  All of this is happening without meaningful input from college professors - the area experts.

The Officers of Local 562

Every day more faculty are being encouraged by their managers to switch to less time-consuming evaluation methods like in-process (where students are marked on a task as they perform it in class), or multiple-choice testing.  Pressure is increasing to remove more academically rigorous, but time-consuming evaluations such as essays and projects.

To faculty at Humber, academic freedom is not just an abstract term.  It deals with the ability of professors across the college system to control the terms of their work in the classroom, and to maintain the academic standards that will ensure student success...

In the Heart of the City: George Brown College

On October 2nd I arrived at George Brown College in downtown Toronto to visit the members of OPSEU Local  556.  President Tom Tomassi and chief steward J.P. Hornick led a General Membership Meeting (GMM), and the faculty in attendance provided a number of insightful perspectives.

President Tomassi calls the meeting to order

President Tomassi has taught in the college system for over 20 years, and has seen tremendous change.  He noted that George Brown college began operation with approximately 7,000 students and 700 full time faculty.  Today, there are over 25,000 students and approximately 520 full time faculty.  As it has with other faculty locals, the difficulty of teaching more students with fewer full time professors has taken its toll, and professors at George Brown are increasingly concerned about job security.



Faculty get into the issues during the GMM

While they have seen their full time numbers shrink, older members of the LEC have also seen the George Brown management team swell to over twice its original size. Instead of money being invested in the classroom, it has been increasingly spent on marketing, promotion, and management salaries.  Ultimately, these trends reflect a disturbing shift in priorities within the entire college system. 

At my next stop I speak with another large metro college - Humber - and hear about their faculty's struggle to maintain control over course content and evaluation...



An Evening at Niagara College

On Tuesday, October 1st I attended a general membership meeting (GMM) at Niagara College's campus in Welland.  Like many Colleges, Niagara's central campus has recently been re-built, and looks very modern.  Our GMM took place in a second floor board room with a beautiful view of the campus' naturalized landscape.  The room was beside the Health Science centre where Niagara's popular collaborative nursing program operates.

Before the GMM I had a chance to talk with members of Local 242's Executive.  President Sherri Rosen and Chief Steward Irene Sebastianelli weren't available  for this meeting, but Vice President Martin Devitt, Communications officer Debra Grobb, Treasurer Bonnie Martel, and stewards Mary Spehar, Shannon MacRae and Greg Smith were on hand to tell me about some challenges concerning teaching at Niagara College.

Martin and Mary in the Local 242 union office

One of the first topics of discussion was how management at Niagara have been issuing an increasing amount of illegal standard workload formulas (SWFs) that violate "hard ceilings" such as 47 hours per week of work maximum, no more than 44 hours per week for probationary employees, or no more than 12 hours between the start and end of a teaching day.  In addition, classroom overcrowding is common.  To Local 242, these violations are a result of intense cost-cutting pressures that see every employee workload maxed out, and every classroom space overfilled.  Managers hope that overblown enrollment numbers will drop before class starts, but this doesn't always happen.

Debra, Greg and Bonnie offering their insights

Professors also face constant management pressure to perform extra volunteer tasks that aren't included in their regular workload.  College open houses, community events, and committee work is common, and managers use these extra obligations as means of controlling faculty, rewarding "compliant" professors, and punishing those who don't volunteer for unpaid work (these teachers are generally considered "non-team players").  For partial load and part time faculty the pressure to do extra work is even greater.  With no job security, these members feel that they can't refuse management requests.

A final issue concerns managers usurping the academic decision-making of faculty.  Managers with no applicable credentials are doing course development, deciding on evaluations, and choosing textbooks.  The result is a top-down culture of micro-management, in which the professional expertise of faculty is being side-lined.  In one example, a program manager made it policy that professors had to give students as many opportunities to re-write tests and assignments as the students needed.  With these kinds of directives, how can faculty members possibly create a learning environment that is fair to all students, and that upholds academic and job skills standards?

This problem won't be resolved until faculty are able to define academic standards and to act as a counter-weight to college priorities of cost-cutting and profit maximizing. 

Until next visit,

Kevin

Northward ho! Visiting Boreal College in Sudbury, ON

In the afternoon on Thursday, September 26th I had the pleasure of meeting with the members of OPSEU Local 673 at Boreal College.  Boreal is located just outside of Sudbury, Ontario, and is surrounded by beautiful northern countryside.  It had been a few years since I'd been north of Barrie, and on the drive up I was captivated by the beautiful shield rock, birch trees, and early autumn colour.  Beautiful scenery makes a four and a half hour drive (almost) fly by.

Boreal was built relatively recently, in the late 1990s, and the main campus building at Sudbury looks modern and well maintained.  Against its natural backdrop, it looks picturesque.  According to Local 673 secretary Karl Aubry, the natural environment isn't just a beautiful frame for Boreal, but a very interactive part of the campus.  He told me stories of "campus bears" that are so tame and friendly that students and faculty hardly pay attention now when they amble into sight.

Boreal College - can you find the bear?

I met with the Boreal team at their 12:30pm Local Executive Committee meeting.  In attendance were President David Fasciano, VP Josée St-Jean, Chief Steward Jacques Babin, and Secretary Karl Aubry.  Stewards Hélène Coté and Michael Mainville were in attendance via speaker-phone.  Due to their work at Boreal's far northern satellite campuses, driving in to LECs is difficult for Michael and Hélène, necessitating trips of 4 to 6 hours.  This is one of the challenges faced by northern colleges, and in particular by Boreal.  As the sole francophone college in the north they service a vast area.  Although the number of full-time students is relatively low, with approximately 1,000 at the Sudbury campus, another 500 are spread throughout six satellite campuses and dozens of smaller "access centres".  

Local 673 President David Fasciano

Because of the distributed nature of Boreal's instruction, resources are constantly tight, and the pressures being felt by professors throughout the college system - to do more with less - are particularly acute.  The Local 673 executive explained that because providing post-secondary access to small francophone populations is more costly per-student than for the large city-based english-speaking colleges, the smaller communities lose out.  This is concerning given the original mandate of the colleges to ensure access, and to serve the unique employment and educational needs of their home communities.

Today's impoverished college funding model makes the normal challenges faced by a northern, francophone college especially difficult.  Under budget pressure Boreal has relied extensively on part-time professors to deliver its programs, with Local president David Fasciano noting that part-time faculty now outnumber full-time two to one.  Jacques noted that in programs that have been relying heavily on part-time faculty, that student complaints about the quality of education are rising.  The issue isn't that part-time teachers aren't qualified and committed.  The problem is that due to the refusal of management to offer them full-time jobs, or even better paid partial load work, part-time teachers tend to be transitory.  This high turnover rate, coupled with no time to develop, prepare, or evaluate the courses they are teaching,  makes it nearly impossible for part-time teachers to offer the same quality of instruction as full-time professors.  At the end of the day, as the Boreal Executive argue, it is students who are impacted the most.

VP Jose St.-Jean and Secretary Karl Aubry

Funding pressure has also led to challenges concerning academic freedom, and the ability of professors at Boreal to maintain the quality of education in the face of cost-cutting measures.  The executive related stories of professors who were told to use more multiple choice tests and cut out essays to deal with overwhelming workloads.  They also mentioned the difficult double-bind that full-time faculty are put in when managers direct them to hand over all of the course materials they have developed to part-time teachers.  In doing this, they are simply supporting management's refusal to hire full-time positions.  However, to not help our part-time teachers goes against the collegiality that the great majority of professors feel.   Academic freedom isn't an abstract concept - it means the ability to control the terms of our work, to own our intellectual property, and to pressure management into doing the right thing and hiring full-time professors.

In the end, my visit to Boreal was very enlightening.  As a professor at Mohawk College in Hamilton, I teach in a very different environment.  Mohawk has over 12,000 full-time students at a large central campus in a city four times the size of Sudbury.  While there are some similarities in terms of increasing part-time work, budget cuts, and the need for academic freedom, the particular context of Boreal as a northern, francophone college is substantially different.  Canada is an officially bilingual country, and our identity is powerfully shaped by the historical and present-day contribution of our francophone population.  Our college system should be supportive of this community, and of all of the diverse communities that make Canada what it is today.  Sadly, the corporate model being pushed by the provincial Ministry and college management is the antithesis of one that embraces local contexts, supports diverse communities, and ensures that all Canadians can access quality post-secondary education.

Thanks to Local 673 for the hospitality and very educational discussion!

First Stop: Centennial College

Yesterday afternoon I had the pleasure of meeting with the intrepid members of Local 558 at Centennial College.  Centennial has five campuses throughout greater Toronto, and our meeting took place at the Ashtonbee campus, just off of Eglington.  Building 930 at Ashtonbee houses Centennial's automotive technology program, and we held our meeting in a classroom right off of the main automotive shop.

 The impressive automotive technology shop

Thankfully, Local president Jacques O'Sullivan met me in the hallway before I had a chance to get horrendously lost, and introduced me to the other Local officers: 1st Vice President RM Kennedy, 2nd Vice President Derrick Thomson, Chief Steward Patricia Steger, and Secretary Julee Joseph.



Jacques and RM getting the meeting room set up

The officers at Centennial were holding their first Local Executive Committee (LEC) meeting of the year at 5pm, and were welcoming a number of new stewards to the committee.  Between 4 and 5pm I talked with the officers about a number of challenges facing their members.  A significant issue mentioned by officers and stewards in several areas was the growing amount of part-time faculty.  Several programs at Centennial are being run with no full time faculty at all, a situation that makes it difficult to maintain the program's coherence and consistency. 

The lack of full time staff had an impact in other ways.  Due to budget cuts, some programs in business and engineering have decided to not hire any partial load faculty and instead have relied on large amounts of part time and sessional faculty.  Partial load faculty teach between 7 and 12 hours per week, receive a decent hourly rate of pay, and are members of the union with benefits.  In contrast, part-time faculty teach 6 hours per week or less, are paid at a lower rate than partial load, and are not members of the union.  Sessionals teach more than 15 hours per week and receive a daily pay rate.  This rate is also much lower than the equivalent per-hour rate paid to partial load faculty, and sessionals are also not members of the union.  As non-unionized workers, both part-time and sessional professors have no benefits and no job security. 

A steward from engineering related the negative impact that the "no partial-load" policy has had on their programs.  Sessional appointments were being abused, with professors teaching 20 hours per week, 3 different courses, at multiple campuses.  This is an incredibly difficult workload for someone who is not paid for prep, development, evaluation or travel time.  In addition, growing numbers of part-time and sessional faculty place significant strain on the smaller number of full time faculty, who often have to provide considerable support to non full time staff.  One steward remarked that another problem is that, without job security, part time and sessionals won't complain about being over-worked and having insufficient resources.  In addition, they are much less likely to report bullying and harassment of faculty by students or administrators.

RM and Patricia describe working conditions





Another issue facing professors at Centennial are steadily increasing class sizes.  This trend is especially worrisome in hands-on labs, in which students are learning complex skills and need intensive supervision by professors to monitor correct procedure and to ensure health and safety.  Automotive labs have been increasing in size, pharmacy technician lab sizes have also been expanding, and some computer labs have grown to a size that they have become, in the words of one steward "basically unworkable."  In super-sized computer labs students have to wait between 30 and 40 minutes to have a question answered, and faculty members have taken to covering each other's labs to provide support.  The work is simply too much for the assigned faculty member to deal with it alone.

The LEC gets down to business



Despite the challenges in staffing and class size that Local 558 members have been facing, president O'Sullivan and his team remain committed to supporting their members and fighting for the maintenance of academic standards.  The Local has reached out to its membership, created new steward positions, rotated meetings to different campuses, and hired a former chief grievance officer to work in the union office as a member liason.  Their Local newsletter, Unfettered, is also a great tool used for outreach and member engagement. 

Like other academic locals, 558 have got a tough fight on their hands.  It was hard to hear the difficulties they've been facing, but also inspiring to see the creative strategies they have been enacting to deal with budget shortages and a declining full time workforce.  If only they didn't have to spend so much energy making up for a chronic lack of post-secondary funding!

Tomorrow I'll be meeting with the members of Local 673 of College Boreal, in Sudbury.  This will be my first trip to a northern college, and I'm excited to see what they're up to!

'till then,

Kevin