Dr Steven Lukes calls this the third dimension of power.
The strike has been created using that dimension.
The strike is particularly difficult for me because of the lack of interest my union is putting into controlling the message that is getting out in the media.
It breaks down like this...
College Management wants the Faculty to be out on strike because they are dissatisfied with the funds the provincial government has dedicated to the implementation of the Rae Report.
For more than a decade the funding of Colleges in Ontario has been declining on a per student basis. This decline has created the lowest rate of funding in the country. For the richest province in the country to be funding higher education in such a limited way is inappropriate in so many ways that they don't need explanation here.
Along comes Bob Rae - former premier of the province who explains in a very detailed report - a report that the province adopts - that our college system needs more faculty, more faculty time for students outside of the classroom, and smaller group learning situations.
These are, by the way, the reasons faculty are out on strike.
The province then allocates $6+ Billion dollars over the next five years to go to the college system. ( Interesting way of saying it...)
Management is dissatisfied with this sum. It is not enough to put the system back on track and accomplish all the recommendations outlined in the Rae Report.
The College Management approached the Province and explained this. The Province has become very good - since the days of Mike Harris - at ignoring the words of the College Presidents and as such, no more money is coming.
So along comes collective bargaining for the Faculty. It goes badly. It goes badly because College Management only tables packages that they KNOW the faculty cannot accept.
The result of any of those proposals would be retrograde motion. It would be taking away good working conditions that were achieved through earlier bargaining. These proposals make less time for students and result in salaries falling farther behind the salary midpoint between university and high school salaries.
In fact, at 9 pm March 6th, the eve of the strike, after a lot of somewhat productive bargaining and the real prospect of settlement in reach, the College Management takes back an earlier agreement and puts increased teaching time back on the table. They do this knowing that it would never be acceptable to the faculty.
They created a strike after they got bargaining to the point of knowing what it would cost them to give the faculty what they would be willing to accept. At that point, the College Management put back on the table something they knew would never be acceptable.
That is why the college Faculty association is saying that the Management is guilty of bad-faith bargaining. That is why they are saying Management wanted the strike.
Nonetheless the result is that the Faculty go out on strike.
This is what management wants and needs. Yes it is what the management NEEDS.
Every time there has been a faculty strike at a college or university in Ontario it has ended with the provincial government legislating the faculty back to work. The College Presidents know this. The Faculty know this.
The Faculty Association is expecting a three week strike because the provincial legislature is not scheduled to sit for another two weeks.
The Management wants the province to legislate Faculty back to work so they can use that act of the legislature to leverage pressure on the premier and the government to give them more money to accomplish the goals of the Rae Report and more.
"You sent them back to work so you pay for it takes to settle this bargaining."
They know they are saving about 2% of the total salary budget with each week of strike. Which covers the 2% each year they are offering in salary. They are calling it 12% over four years, but what it is, is 2% per year compounded - but that is what we will talk about tomorrow.
Now they begin to frame the issues by saying that the "teachers" have an "average class size of 28" and will get pay increases of 12 % by 2009 which would make them the "best paid" "teachers" in the country.
Hence the lack of support for the Faculty and the pressure on the province to legislate them back to work.
Management won't come back to the table or bargain face to face. Nobody is working to settle this.
So before I start to explain the power in information and the framing of the issues, go write an email to The Premier Dalton McGuinty and tell him you can see through all of this and to stop letting the Management use the Faculty who are using the Students.
Send them all back to work.
And seeing the power dynamics and plans of the Management, Faculty should never have gone on strike. It is what they wanted. Faculty should have worked to rule. That would have cost College Management money and put McGuinty on the hot seat instead of the Faculty.
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