Last night you all should have received an update from our bargaining team, with some important information that was shared in their town halls.
Reproducing the core of the message here for anyone who is not subscribed directly to the bargaining team mailing list:
1) Are the two demands – no layoffs and no campus closures – the thing holding up bargaining?
No. The CEC is trying to divide our union, and weaken the power that we’ve built by misleading the public and our members.
There are dozens of additional proposals – including every measure to protect jobs – that the employer has flat out rejected, or not even addressed yet.
We want to be clear what happened in those last hours before the strike deadline.
The employer did not honour our last package with a response, instead rejecting it outright and asking us to bargain against ourselves. This is not bargaining. The ball was in their court from 4pm to midnight,and they left us in silence up until the strike deadline.
Don’t forget – this is the same employer who has sent letters of intimidation to locals exercising their legal right to strike, and consistently misleads the public with the cost of our demands. We should not be surprised they are now trying to mislead the public about bargaining.
However, their insistence on focusing on these two demands tells us that there are closures coming, there will be more layoffs and that they see support staff as collateral damage. We are in the fight of our lives and we have no choice but to fight back to protect our jobs.
2) Did the bargaining team “reject” an offer?
No.
On August 30th, the employer put forward a proposal, agreeing to rescind some of their concessions on vacation, split-shifts and on-call time, in return for the union dropping all measures to do with protecting jobs.
Bargaining means passing proposals back and forth. Your bargaining team responded with a new proposal, and then had the employer effectively walk away from the table.
This employer does not like to bargain so they will try anything to avoid that responsibility.
This means they might try and force a final offer on us – this final offer will not have anything in it to protect your job when you return to work. A forced offer vote bypasses bargaining and forces us into a vote.
If this happens, we must vote NO. The stronger the NO vote the stronger the message to the employer that we need an offer that gives us job security.
3) What are the next steps and how do we win?
Our power is in our numbers. We need strong picket lines, and we need to be engaging with our community – students, faculty, parents, community businesses – to bring them into our fight.
It starts with telling everyone what is at stake: services will be closed down. Good jobs in our communities will be lost. It is possible entire colleges will be shut down. Our students, and future students, will pay the cost for reckless cutbacks.
When we fight for our communities, we fight with our communities – that’s how we win. Together, we will build the power needed to push the employer to come back to the table. Your bargaining team continues to be ready to return to the table at the soonest opportunity.
Tomorrow, we need to ensure maximum participation on the picket lines to continue disrupting business as usual and keep spirits high.
Hope to see you bring your best energy to one of our pickets through the week. Solidarity to the many who have already showed their support in person.