Celebration and Reflection

By Tracy Whalen, Secretary

This final UWFA newsletter of the 2010-2011 year is one of both celebration and reflection. As many Members know, this February marked the thirtieth anniversary of the certification of our Association by the Manitoba Labour Board. Sandra Zuk, who was a negotiator for the UWFA team, communicated this memory to me:

One memory I have from the weekend marathon negotiations that resulted in agreement on all outstanding articles was everyone’s appreciation for the buffet of food set out at midnight Sunday by Gerry Sweet.  She dashed out to buy food and had the negotiation table laid out with juice, donuts, fruit, etc. when the teams returned from a caucus.  The gesture lifted all our spirits and gave us the energy to continue negotiating through the night, concluding around 7:30 a.m. Monday. We all watched the sunrise over Wesley Hall, where then President Robin Farquhar was camped out in his office to provide any direction as required by the Board team. Quite a night to remember!

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Taking a Look Back at the First Agreement

Thirty years ago, the Association was certified by the Manitoba Labour Board. On 16 September 1982, the first agreement between UWFA and the Employer was signed. When one looks at the first agreement and the one signed just last month, the similarities are striking. Though there have been substantial changes in the intervening years, the first negotiating team set the foundation for the strong Collective Agreement we have today. Sandra Zuk, who was one of the negotiators at the time, provided us with these photos of the bargaining teams.

UWFA Team - Front (from left): Sandra Zuk (Library), Claudia Wright (Chief Negotiator, Political Science), Geraldine Sweet (Geography); Back (from left): John Cote (Psychology), John Ryan (Geography), H. Vincent Rutherford (History)Employer Team - Front (from left): Robert Dyck (Chief Negotiator), Stephen Coppinger, Michael McIntyre; Back (from left): Larry Didow, A. Ross McCormack, John Clake, David Dyck

Marching to Strike Headquarters

By Allen Mills, Vice President

That march to strike headquarters on the Monday before the strike deadline was something I will not soon forget. It was easy to worry about its possible success. Had it been too hastily organized? Had the message gotten out in time and had the messengers gotten the word out to everyone?

We needn’t have worried. It was likely that all that needed to be done had indeed been expertly done by all the messengers. But even so, there was a sense of the existence of a galvanizing resolve among the Members who in their respective ways had decided that the issues were big enough to take a stand upon. They needed no encouragement. They were ready to go. Everyone was one and the planets were aligned. Even the police cooperated. They hurried to make the permit for the march an immediate reality and even though we had trained everyone to respect the traffic lights crossing Portage Avenue there were the police cruisers, unannounced and unrequested, stopping the traffic at the intersection. That long line of people made an even stronger statement as we walked without interruption.

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Memories of a Picket Coordinator

By Pauline Pearson, Psychology

What was my experience as picket coordinator?  In a word, outstanding.  The adventure began midday on Sunday, February 27, when a call on my cell interrupted my out-of-town lunch.  I knew trouble was brewing as soon as I heard that familiar British voice asking, “Is this Pawleen?” I signaled to the waiter to bring another beer. During my flight back to Winnipeg, I read the CAUT strike manual and tried to draw up as many documents as I could based upon the advice that I found there—picket passes, attendance sheets, incident reports, proposed picket locations and shift times.  How was there ever going to be enough time to get the work done? 

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Historic Underfunding, Redressment and a Sense of Ourselves

By Mike McIntyre, Psychology

The University has struggled, since shortly after its transformation from United College, with a funding base more suited to a college within a university than to an independent university.  This under-funding has restricted the budgetary freedom of the University to bring our salaries in line with similarly sized and mandated universities.  It is very much in the interest of the administration to have salaries for faculty and staff that are distributively just.  Just salaries enhance recruitment and retention and foster morale.  The monies available to redress injustice, however, are limited.  Grant and tuition increases typically allow us barely to keep pace with inflationary pressures and provide very little room for discretionary improvements.  The main source of funds beyond the percentage growth provided by changes to the grant and tuition monies is provided by fall-in from the existing budget.  For example, the retirement or resignation of a senior professor who is replaced by a junior professor may save as much as $75K in salary and benefits. This type of fall-in constitutes the major source of funds for the University to make progress—perhaps, tediously slow progress— toward institutional goals. What is required is a commitment by the University to establish a distributively just salary structure and to make reaching this goal an institutional priority.  The more senior amongst us may remember that Dr. Duckworth made such a commitment and that it motivated the 12% increase in the first Collective Agreement.  Every nook and cranny in the University’s budget was searched to secure adequate resources.  Essentially, all the fall-in for a period of years was devoted to making the salary structure of the first Collective Agreement possible.

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"The Sphere of the Sun," or, The University I Would Like to See

By Jane Barter Moulaison, Theology

In the past dozen years or so, I have grown accustomed to the patterns of life as scholar and mother. Days pass before me through the regular vistas of mini-van and computer screen.  Increasingly, however, I am compelled to turn my view to my mobile device, with its hazard lights ever flashing: “Be always on guard!” Life is full and life is good, but, lately, there is one ball that is dropped in this, my frenetic act.

In the eleventh Canto of the Paradiso, Dante and Beatrice travel to the fourth sphere of the heavens, the sphere of the Sun. The Sun, a little higher than Venus, the sphere of lovers, is where the scholars reside. Above the Sun is Mars, the sphere of the glorious martyrs.

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Pondering the Word Untenable

By Margaret Sweatman, English

I’ve heard the argument in diverse contexts that Canadian universities are “untenable.”  It’s a canny choice, the word “untenable,” in the company of professors, tenured and otherwise.

Doubt is necessary, unless it’s insinuated into a workplace with the intention of making people frightened.  Or unless the people in the workplace let themselves be frightened.

I’m writing this at night after a long day of mostly pleasurable work.  I’ve still got work to do tonight for tomorrow.  The roof is leaking and my car is broken.  My entire working life has been untenable, though I come from a generation of five-hundred dollar yearly tuition, of bursaries given to students from rural areas, of bursaries even for the offspring of the middle class. That economic situation made my untenable career – and the careers of many of my contemporaries of many disciplines – possible.

Our students’ working lives are now untenable.

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A Steep Price for a Miracle

By James Christie, Theology

Story is to religion as mathematics is to science: foundational.  Trust me on this. 

The story of The University of Winnipeg is the story of a miracle – and the price that miracles can exact.

Once upon a time, there was a little college that could …

United College was born in 1938, a “church” college, the consequence of the establishment of The United Church of Canada in 1925.  Its alumni register reads like a who’s who of great Canadians: Ted Scott, Lois Wilson and Lloyd Axworthy.  United College was the successor of two great pioneer schools: Manitoba College, Presbyterian, established in 1871 and memorialized in Manitoba Hall; and Wesley College, Methodist, established in 1888. Alumni and graduates were, if possible, even greater, including J.S. Woodsworth and Salem Bland.

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Examining Privilege and Power

By Lee Anne Block, Education

At the center of the work to transform knowledge ought to be all of those who have been on the margins…   

-Elizabeth Minnich

“Transformative” is a word I have used in describing my experience as an Arts student at the University of Winnipeg in the 1970s. It is not a word I use lightly. Despite a somewhat privileged background and education, I found that the transition to the university was a shift in perspective, a glimpse of wisdom and an incitement for change. There was so much to learn and it was a great time to be in university as the social changes of the 60s were manifest. Feminism was not part of that experience, although I had two of the handful of female faculty members of the time. When we discussed representation in classes, it was literary or in government.

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And Another Thing... A Rant

By Andy Park, Biology

There’s an old saying about changing what you can, but having the grace to accept the things that you cannot.  Fair enough. But that’s no reason not to have a good old therapeutic rant about some of those (apparently) unchangeable but annoying aspects of university life.

In the wake of our recent near-strike experience, however, a bit of blue sky thinking may also be in order. Of course, our administration is not immune to blue sky thinking.  Consider the recent Academic Renewal Exercise (remember that?), which established strategic goals across the University of Winnipeg.  There was tons of stuff in there about increasing diversity, maintaining our (presumptively) high teaching standards, encouraging non-traditional students, and community learning (whatever that is). 

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