Munfa Strike: Letters

LETTERS & ARTICLES

A HISTORY LESSON
November 10, 2000
Submitted to : The Editor, The Telegram, St. John's.
The arguments surrounding the MUNFA strike at Memorial University tend to concentrate on a range of technical questions relating to salary levels, market differentials, pension benefits, workload and so on. But there is a larger question which also needs debate: What has caused a large number of mostly middle-aged, middle class, intelligent, responsible and sane faculty members, some of them with 20 to 30 years experience at Memorial, to walk out and stand on picket lines in nasty November weather? This is not a hot-headed radical group of leftist firebrands, not the sort of people to be led by the nose by a union executive. Obviously, something has gone badly wrong at Memorial University, and the Newfoundland public should be very concerned.
The roots of the current crisis go back into Memorial's history. It grew up as a paternalistic, somewhat authoritarian institution in which the administration knew best. Faculty members were expected to know their place. The administration of the 1970s and 1980s was prepared to talk to a suitably deferential and cooperative faculty association, but the word "negotiation" was prohibited. Most MUNFA members had come to understand by the mid-1980s that the only way to improve pay and conditions, which were by then archaic by Canadian standards, and to be treated with a degree of respect, was to certify as a union. A paternalistic system was inefficient, inappropriate, capricious, and no way to run a large, modern university.
The university administration fought a long, hard, hugely expensive and ultimately futile battle against certification. This irresponsible waste of public funds delayed but did not prevent certification, and a first collective agreement was concluded in 1989 after difficult negotiations and a strike vote. Relations between MUNFA and the university administration have been strained ever since. There have been an excessive number of expensive arbitrations which could and should have been avoided. There was a near strike in the early 1990s, and in 1996 the administration tried unilaterally to abrogate the collective agreement using tactics that can only be described as dubious.
There was a real hope within the Memorial faculty that recent changes in the senior administration would end this deplorable history, and that the contract negotiations, which began 13 months ago, would be swift, non-confrontational and productive. MUNFA was led to believe that this would be the case by the senior administration itself.
Instead, the current round of negotiations has demonstrated that little seems to have changed. The university administration insisted on opening up every clause in the agreement, and its negotiators have proved to be sometimes ill-prepared, hostile, at times dilatory and unwilling to engage in genuine negotiation. Indeed, it is hard to escape the suspicion that the administration's real objective in this exercise is not to improve the lot of academic staff members, librarians and students, but to bring supposedly recalcitrant faculty members to heel.
The fact is that a new collective agreement could easily have been negotiated by now. The university administration has chosen not to do so, thus precipitating a strike by frustrated academic staff members who, after waiting a long time, have simply had enough of condescension, confrontation and mismanagement. At the core, that is what the strike is about, and that is a major reason why a bunch of highly-qualified professional people are on strike when they would far rather be in their classrooms and laboratories. No matter what the university administration says, this strike is not just about money.
Article: 14720 of mun.general
Path: coranto.ucs.mun.ca!plato.ucs.mun.ca!rgosine
From: Ray Gosine
Newsgroups: mun.general
Subject: Occupational adjustment for faculty near retirement ...
Date: Thu, 9 Nov 2000 22:16:20 -0330
Organization: Memorial University of Newfoundland
NNTP-Posting-Date: 10 Nov 2000 01:46:22 GMT
X-Sender: rgosine@plato.ucs.mun.ca
In-Reply-To: <3A0B4196.AAD1DBE4@physics.mun.ca>
Xref: coranto.ucs.mun.ca mun.general:14720

Negotiating News 32 is now on the MUNFA WWW site and it makes a reasonable suggestion regarding dealing with the matter of the occupational adjustment for faculty members who retire during the life of this collective agreement. MUNFA states that: 'If the administration will not front-end load salary increases for everyone, let us work out a way to front-end load the salaries of people who retire over the life of this Collective Agreement. The cost would fall dramatically.'
In an earlier NN, MUNFA indicated that 20 faculty members will reach normal retirement age during this collective agreement and the occupational adjustment is about $5K for a total cost of around $100K per year for this group.
Such a compromise might represent a cost-effective way to bring closure on the major issue of faculty salary scales and the timing of salary adjustments for faculty members who would retire before the administration's proposed date for the adjustment.
Ray Gosine

November 9, 2000
10:00 AM
AN UPDATE FOR THE PREMIER, MEMBERS OF THE PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT, AND MEMBERS OF THE HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY
MUNFA continues to believe that a satisfactory settlement in its dispute with the university administration can be reached quickly - but that it is up to the university administration to take a more constructive and flexible attitude. MUNFA is surprised that the university administration has allowed the strike to last for as long as it has.
MUNFA is very disappointed that there was no progress towards a solution of the current dispute when its negotiating team met with representatives of the university administration yesterday afternoon (November 8). The university representatives simply refused to discuss any of the outstanding issues.
MUNFA resents administration accusations that it is intransigent and greedy. We have shown flexibility and an ability to compromise which has not been matched by the other side, and we do not think that attempts to find a fair settlement for all our members constitutes greed.
MUNFA must also point out that the university administration (in the person of Dr. J. Strawbridge) is somewhat misleading in saying that the offered salary package "provides average increases of more than 20 percent ... over the three-year contract." A substantial number of MUNFA members will receive significantly less than 20 percent. And at the end of the contract, MUNFA members will still, on the whole, be paid less than their counterparts at comparable Canadian universities. We look forward to the resumption of genuine negotiations, and an early return to work.
Contact: Noel Roy at 737-4311 or 685-3567.

From the Times of India, November 2nd
Teachers strike shuts down Canadian university
ST. JOHN'S, Newfoundland: A strike by university professors over salary increases that differ accoring to education levels shut down the largest university in Canada's Atlantic coast provinces Tuesday.
All classes at Memorial University in Newfoundland were canceled for 16,000 students and 760 faculty members after an all-night bargaining session failed to reach agreement on salary scales for professors.
The university then rescheduled a mid-term break expected later in November to begin Wednesday, which meant no further classes would be held during the week. Negotiations were expected to resume Wednesday.
Professors at the university earn an average of $35,000 a year with the top pay just over $60,000. The average pay is about 20 percent less than the average for professors at similar universities elsewhere in Canada, and the university has offered a 20.6 percent increase over three years.
Union leader Noel Roy said the Memorial University Faculty Association turned down the proposal because it included larger raises for professors with doctoral degrees, offering them 22 percent increases compared with 15.7 percent for faculty members without doctoral degrees.
"It splits the union," said Roy, who has a doctoral degree. "So we've put up the lines. We're on strike."
About 70 percent of faculty members at Memorial have doctoral degrees, and 60 percent of the union membership voted to strike.
"About 30 percent of us ... are getting minor increases," said Jon Church, a spokesman for the union's negotiating committee. "I don't want to work at a university ... where there are going to be high-paid, high-flying research-type professors and low-paid grunts that do all the teaching." (AP)
A REPLY TO PROFESSOR JOYAL
St. John's, Newfoundland
October 29, 2000
The Editor,
The Telegram, St. John's.

Sir:
In your edition of 28 October, you published a letter from Professor Mark Joyal and others concerning the current dispute between the Memorial University Faculty Association (MUNFA) and the university administration. The letter is sufficiently misleading to warrant a response.
The university administration made its first salary offer to MUNFA negotiators almost one year after negotiations began, and then only after MUNFA had requested conciliation. This long-awaited offer of the first scale increase in eleven years recognizes that academic salaries at Memorial have become embarrassingly uncompetitive, but it is surrounded by conditions: MUNFA should drop its other contract proposals, and should agree to a salary distribution which discriminates against important segments of its membership. In addition, the administration has refused to consider improving the low per-course stipends paid to the increasing number of sessional instructors. The administration has offered little in response to MUNFA's proposals on other aspects of the collective agreement.
The salary offer came only after MUNFA had become convinced that the university administrations's apparent inability to negotiate in good faith required outside intervention. When the conciliator eventually reported that an agreement did not seem likely, MUNFA - after a general membership meeting to discuss the impasse - held a strike vote. A clear majority of MUNFA members upheld the executive's position that the conditions attached to the salary offer were divisive and unfair, and that other, non-salary issues had to be addressed. MUNFA has not "turned down" the salary offer: it has insisted on negotiation rather than dictation. To say there has been no response to the offer is simply untrue.
Since Professor Joyal did not mention non-salary issues, your readers should be aware that, on behalf of himself and all his colleagues, MUNFA is trying to negotiate pension reforms that will benefit him and all MUN employees, as well as workload provisions that safeguard and encourage productive researchers like himself. Improved - or at least maintained - insured benefits constitute another issue. In addition, MUNFA endorses the administration's aim to "renew" the faculty. This could be encouraged by the early retirement and severance packages which MUNFA has proposed, and which the administration refuses to discuss. Professor Joyal apparently has no opinion on these matters, which relate directly to the maintenance and improvement of academic quality at Memorial University.
Professor Joyal then goes on to attack MUNFA for its advice to the membership on what to do in case of a strike. All that the September 26 memorandum said was that MUNFA members should understand that they would not have access to their offices (unless they crossed picket lines), and that they should govern themselves accordingly. Professor Joyal has misrepresented the meaning of that advice.
Another misconception is that MUNFA has improperly prevented its membership from voting on the administration's salary offer. This offer, a response to MUNFA's proposal, is currently under negotiation. Following normal practice, it will be voted on in due course as part of the entire contract.
No member of MUNFA wants a strike. But MUNFA has a duty to try and negotiate a settlement that is fair to all its members, including Professor Joyal, and which will enable Memorial University to attract and retain academic staff members of high quality. This goal is in the best interest of students present and future, and of the province as a whole. It is bitterly ironic that administrators and academic staff who should have identical aims and aspirations cannot reach a fair and equitable collective agreement without a crisis of this nature.
James Hiller, Department of History
Ted Hannah, Department of Psychology
Tony Chadwick, Department of French and Spanish

2 November 2000
To: Federal Election Candidates
Province of Newfoundland & Labrador
As a result of the failure of the Memorial University administration, after 13 months of negotiations, to settle a new contract with its academic staff (represented by MUNFA), it has closed the St John's and Corner Brook campuses until November 6.
If the strike is not settled by that time, students from all over the island and Labrador may be disadvantaged - though professors have taken care to try and minimize the strike's impact on students' academic programmes. MUNFA hopes that the university administration will use this window of opportunity to demonstrate the creativity and flexibility which President Meisen says are needed to reach a settlement. So far, the performance of the university administration's bargaining team has shown little evidence of these qualities.
MUNFA believes a settlement can be reached quickly, so long as the university administration is serious about genuine negotiations.
This crisis is directly related to the failure of the federal government to maintain an adequate level of transfer payments to the provinces in support of post-secondary education. As a result, academic staff salaries at Memorial have become seriously uncompetitive, facilities have become outdated, and students are burdened with huge debt loads. It is time for the federal government to reinvest in the basic support of post-secondary education.
MUNFA would like to know how you stand on this issue. Your comments will be placed on the MUNFA web site, and given appropriate publicity.
The major outstanding issues in the Memorial strike are:
The need for a package which will restore the competitiveness of MUN salaries, but which distributes the increase in a fair and equitable way

Improved pay for sessional lecturers
Reform of the university pension plan
Issues relating to workload
Insured benefits

Contact us for further information.

Profs don't need a PhD to add value 11/2/00
As a retired MUN faculty member, it is gruelling to witness the incredible institutional blunder the current university president seems bound and determined to make in deliberately insulting and devaluing a great many senior faculty at Memorial who have had much to do with making Memorial the institution it is.
There are thousands of fine academics, both here and abroad, who did not, for any number of reasons, acquire a PhD. They have served nonetheless as professors of reputation, department heads, head librarians, senators, deans, chairs of major committees, vice-presidents and even presidents, and achieved as much recognition as any in their fields as producers of milestone research, writers of books and all the other measures of real excellence.
I think of a former mentor and friend, Mose Morgan, whose memory is surely sullied by current policies. Perhaps the most productive president the university ever had, he had one major flaw: he was nothing but a miserable master of arts in classics. Which means, were he still with us, he would not rank equally in Dr. Meisen�s book with a junior appointee fresh out of McMaster.
While longstanding in certain fields, it is well known the PhD requirement has only recently been demanded in others. In some areas the degree has only recently become generally available � one thinks of music, nursing, social work, library science and certain of the humanities.
Otherwise, the master�s degree has been, depending on the individual, a standard widely accepted in this country and abroad until recently, and it is only in light of the current surplus of candidates that universities generally have come to insist on the PhD across the board.
To changes in convention one can perhaps have no objection. But if Dr. Meisen is so naive and disrespectful as to think he can bring distinction to Memorial�s faculty by imposing retroactive qualifications designed to punish a generation of first-class senior academics, educated and appointed at a time when even master�s degrees did not come easy, and academic bureaucrats were less inclined think degrees alone maketh the academic, then we have reason in Newfoundland to be disappointed in his credentials as a wise or even a prudent administrator.
Lin Jackson, MA, retired professor of philosophy, Portugal Cove

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