Sent on behalf of Kimberly Ellis-Hale, Contract Faculty Liaison
Hello to you all,
I know that this is a busy time of year for many of us, but I ask that you take a moment and read the following.
Like all of you, I have been receiving emails from the group Caucus for a Democratic Union. While I admire their commitment and passion, I have an issue with the lack of full disclosure in their last email.
They said that, “Moving to a new union isn’t about losing any of the strengths we currently have in our contract… Legally we will be bargaining for a new contract from the same position of our current contract as if we had stayed with WLUFA” (Email, 2016-02-28). This is not true.
There are two ways that CUPE could mount a takeover. One will result in our Collective Agreement ceasing to exist at the moment of decertification (s. 63 (1) of the Ontario Labour Relations Act) and the other, informally known as raiding, would most likely result in a one year freeze on our current terms before they cease to exist (s. 7 (4) of the Ontario Labour Relations Act).
If CUPE is successful in getting Contract Faculty to decertify, all that we have gained has to be re-negotiated. If their raiding works, then we would have but a year to negotiate all the terms of our employment from scratch – with an administration that clearly already has it in for CUPE (see the outsourcing fight administration is in with CUPE represented custodial staff).
I am not saying that things can’t be better – much better – because I believe they should be, can be, and will be, BUT a raiding union that doesn’t get its facts straight is not one that I am willing to trust.
In my work with WLUFA over the past three years I have gotten to know its faults, but issuing misleading statements is not one of them.
Sincerely,
Kimberly Ellis-Hale
Contract Faulty Liaison