Category: Local 125 News

Notice of General Membership Meeting

Date: Thursday, February 10, 2022 
Time: 4:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m. 
Facilitator: Michelle Arbour, Local President 

Our first virtual General Membership Meeting for 2022 will be held on Thursday, February 10th at 4:30 p.m. We welcome all longstanding and new full-time and partial load faculty members to join us for this important meeting where the forced offer vote and a work to rule update will be provided. Members of the Provincial Bargaining Team will be present for a question-and-answer session. 

A Zoom meeting invitation will be sent to all members’ personal email addresses by 4 pm on Tuesday, February 8th. If you do not receive an email and/or have not completed the OPSEU Membership Application, please do so. The application can be found on our webpage https://opseu.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/101membershipapplicationformaccre.pdf and return it to secretary@opseu125.ca. If you prefer to fill out the online form, it is submitted to OPSEU automatically – Online Link – https://hub03.opseu.org/Forms/emaweb. If you have already submitted an application and did not receive the email invitation, please email secretary@opseu125.ca for assistance in gaining access to the Membership Meeting. 

LIVE Q&A for Students on Bargaining

On February 8 at 7pm, the faculty bargaining team, in conjunction with students, will be holding a LIVE Q&A Webinar to talk with students about what’s happening in bargaining, what faculty are asking for in order to better support students, and to answer questions that students may have.  

Faculty are fighting for:

• More time to support students
• Job protections for contract faculty, counsellors, and librarians
• Binding action on equity, Indigenization, and decolonization
• Faculty consent on the sale or reuse of their work

Please share with your students. As a reminder, it is absolutely legitimate for faculty to communicate with students about bargaining issues.  Our working conditions are their learning conditions.

Here’s the registration link for the live student webinar on Feb 8^th (starts at 7pm)

When: Feb 8, 2022 07:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Topic: Student Town Hall on Bargaining
NOTE: French translation and ASL interpretation will be provided.

Register in advance for this webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_FCyOkYe9QGG2Nke4aNEztA

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Local 125 Work-To-Rule Information Sessions

We will be hosting two Work-To-Rule information sessions after the Provincewide Work-To-Rule Information Meeting:

Thursday, January 6 from 4:30 – 5:30pm – check your email for the meeting invite

Friday, January 7 from 11:30am – 12:30pm – check your email for the meeting invite

If you have a question now that you’d like to have answered during the session, please share it with us anonymously in the form linked below. Having your questions in advance will allow us to provide comprehensive answers. Questions during the sessions will be welcome too!
https://forms.office.com/r/wMtN4uM3wq

Work-To-Rule SWF Guide for Full Time Faculty

The Work-To-Rule SWF (Standard Workload Form) Guide attached below highlights the workload limits for each week so you can keep track of the time spent on preparation, evaluation/feedback, and complementary functions. We recommend using Toggl, a free and easy to use app that you can use from your computer or phone. For a detailed overview of the SWF, please watch the series of videos here.

Work-To-Rule SWF Guide

Message from the Bargaining Team

You may have received a message from your College, “Your Right to Choose Regarding Work-to-Rule.”  

We appreciate the College Employer Council’s latest update, in which they remind faculty members that every college employee “has the legally protected right” to engage in work-to-rule or other labour action without fear of reprisal.

As the CEC correctly identified, faculty are in a legal strike position, and the protections of the Colleges Collective Bargaining Act (CCBA) and Collective Agreement apply.  Faculty should, therefore, not experience reprisal from the colleges for participating in the work-to-rule action.  

From a union perspective, solidarity is the foundation of our strength, and participation as a union member in job action is required to demonstrate that strength.  While the CCBA allows individual faculty the ability to cross a picket line by performing struck work, doing so undermines the very solidarity required for successful job action.

Today’s message from the CEC was clearly intended to stoke fear and division among faculty, and is likely attributable to the incredible strength and solidarity faculty are currently demonstrating during our first ever work-to-rule job action.

In one key respect, we agree: no college should reprise against faculty for exercising their rights, or participating in their union.  

In solidarity,
JP, Jonathan, Katie, Michelle, Ravi, Rebecca, Shawn