#JobAction Update #UMFA2020

Friday night, voting closed. By a margin just short of 55%-45% with 85.2% of eligible members voting, the administration's offer has been ratified (accepted) by the union.

In 2016, the University of Manitoba Faculty Assocation @UMFA_FAUM went on strike for 21 days. Central to the collective agreement that came out of that job action was that the opening of negotiations regarding salary and benefits would begin this year, in 2020, ahead of the end of the collective agreement, which is expires spring of 2021.

In 2016, the provincial government improperly interfered with negotiations, requiring public sector unions, including UMFA to accept contracts that offered no increase in salaries or benefits. This edict came down during negotiations, resulting in the administration retracting the benefits offer that was already on the table. Following the end of our strike, the 0% increase was left in place pending legal challenges to the province's interference

In the following year, the provincial government tried to codify this restriction through legislation: the Public Sector Sustainability Act (PSSA). The PSSA was never fully enacted into law, but nonetheless has made clear the province's intent. Under cover of 'austerity', they were intent on 'balancing the budget' on the backs of public sector workers, not only University academic staff, but public school teachers, police/fire/paramedic services, doctors, nurses, healthcare workers, social workers, public utilties providers, such as garbage collection, recycling collection, sewer and water maintenance and on and on.

In June of this year, the PSSA was ruled unconstitutional (and described as 'draconic') as an unwarranted infringement on freedom of expression and assembly. As in 2016, ours is the first public sector union to enter negotiations under these conditions.

The current provincial government, and especially the current Premier, is openly hostile to higher education (having said publically that the Province should not be funding any program that doesn't offer direct job training). He is, like many oligarchs, openly hostile to unions in general, and has demonstrated contempt for public sector workers multiple times.

The pandemic is being used as an excuse to continue this 'draconian' program, despite the PSSA having been struck down absolutely. The argument that the pandemic driven downturn in the economy has driven the 0% increase mandate is unsupportable. There was no such reason in 2016. It was clear through current negotiation that any increase to salaries or benefits, the only issues on the table this year, would be vehemently resisted by the administration in fear of reprisal from the province. (This, I think, is a reasonable fear, given the climate.) How this doesn't comprise interference in collective bargaining is beyond me, but we are assured by counsel it doesn't.

So after months of 'negotiation' there had been no movement at all from the administration. Early in November, the union authorized a strike vote, empowering the bargaining committee to bring the threat of strike to the table. The authorization passed with something over 80% of the vote. The union described it as the strongest mandate ever provided, and by the largest % of members voting. The administration's negotiating team remained incalcitrant. The union responded with a strike vote, authorizing a strike to begin on Nov 16 if there was no progress in negotiation.

This move forced the administration to accept mediation, which I have described earlier. Mediation began on Thursday (or Friday) and continued through Saturday. There being 'some' progress, mediation was continued through Sunday. The result was the 'offer' that was on the table Thursday night, the night of the ratification vote.

This offer consisted of:

• a one-time COVID-19 stipend of $1950 to every member, with the provision that the member could convert that stipend into untaxable travel and expense funds
• retention of our rights to court-ordered remedies stemming from the PSSA decision
• the immediate application of schedlued performance and promotion increments, which were withheld as of April 2020 due to the state of negotiations
• a study on the salary grid and job classification in a report to be comleted before June 30, 2021, to address discrepancies within the UofM's salary structure, and inequities between us and the other research universities

What it does not include is any discussion of salary, let alone even a 0% raise. No increase in any of various other benefits (travel and expense accounts, healthcare spending account, parking costs, etc.) So this agreement, having been accepted by vote of the union, leaves salaries and benefits on the table heading into negotiations over the whole collective agreement next spring. Nor does it include any increase in the COVID stipend for dependent care.

I'm not going to lie, I could use $1950. The result is a total outlay of under $2,425,880. Which is a lot of money, but represents less than one percent of the university's available (unrestricted) funds , i.e the current budget discretionary surplus. And having gone as far as 2.4 million and change, going to a full $2000 for the 1244 members comes to 2.488 million, still less than 1% of the university's $254 million, and a difference of just $62,200. The figure is just suspicious.

Offering a COVID stipend in place of an actual salary or benefits offer is flat out insulting. Most universities, we are informed, have provided similar COVID stipends, including extra payments for dependent care, just as part of the transition to on-line teaching necessiated by the pandemic. Offering, in place of any discussion of salaries or real benefits, a figure like $1950 rather than $2000, when that is still less than 1% of the available funds. No one is saying we should get a big chunk of that money. There are, after all half a dozen other unions on campus that will need to be negotiated with. But if they started with the idea that they could spend 1% of the available funds, $2000 would at least sound like they were not trying to nickel and dime us over $50.

Had the offer not been accepted, negotiations would resume. The strike authorization would remain, with the potential of a strike as early as 23 Nov. This won't happen. The union's board, or whoever, will decide when would be the most effective time to begin a strike. The last three weeks of the term is probably not going to be it. So they're floating the beginning of the winter term, in time for students to withdraw and potentially apply to coursework elsewhere. This term, in spite of the pandemic and the move to almost 100% online delivery, enrollments are up 3%. They were up a bit over 11% for the summer term(s).

So that's basically where we are. Negotiations are over, and will not resume until spring next year, when the whole collective agreement expires. By avoiding as strike, we avoid taxing the good will of students, who would surely be less supportive facing two strikes in two years. (Although by all accounts, the student bodies support UMFA's position and in fact endorsed our move to job action if required.)

On the other hand, salaries and benefits, rather than having been settled, become one of at least a dozen major areas that will be open for negotiation. So the next fight will be even harder, and the need for some kind of job action potentially more dire.

On the third hand, rejecting the offer would not inevitably have triggered a strike. As long as negotiation was ongoing, and remotely productive, strike action could be delayed indefinitely, as demonstated by the scheduled strike beginning Nov 16 was avoided by the administration's agreement to enter mediation.

This is where I move into solidly personal opinion:

• I think accepting the offer makes us look weak, and we need to turn that into looking strategic
• The PR firm (or communications specialist or whatever) the union hired needs to get out in front of this, with information about why this is a strategic move, and express our frustration with inappropriate and possibly illegal government interference
• Wab Kinew and the NDP (official opposition party) needs to do something to trigger a confidence motion in the legislature, if they have any hope at all of winning it, and get Pallister and his more-for-the-rich-nothing-for-anyone-else cronies out of office
• Given the administration's stand (on the province's mandate), there was never going to be a 'good' outcome to this, for anyone. The administration needs to grow a spine and stand up to the province (and be seen doing it) and the provinicial government needs to learn to respect is public sector employees
• I think there's no way to avoid a very rough battle, with a long, long strike, unless things change a lot between now and April

A question of rice

A number of cooking shows/webshows/vlogs I watch, when they make rice, have recently gone on about the 'absorption method' as if it were a new and revolutionary thing. I've been doing some reading and I'm confused.

From what I can glean, (white?) people traditonally cook rice like pasta, in tons of water and strain it before serving.

Where I come from, 'steamed' rice involves bringing rice to a boil in the right amount of water (in Japanese-American households, this is usually 'up to your knuckle'), clamping a lid on, and turning the flame down (or off) for something like 10 or 15 or 20 minutes, then pulling off the lid, fluffing with a fork or rice paddle, and either serving, or putting the lid back on and letting it sit off the heat for a while. From what I can tell, this is the 'absoption method'. It's also the principle behind a rice cooker. You put the rice and water in, you put the lid on, you press the button, and some number of minutes later you have cooked rice, which can be kept warm in the cooker, all without having to fuss with adjusting the heat at the right time.

Steamed rice, apparently, involves boiling rice in some amount of water (not exactly sure how much, sources seemed to disagree) and then somehow loading it into a steamer and setting it over a pot of boiling water to steam. I have never heard of this technique, which strikes me as a waste of time if you've already got the pot of boiling water and the rice going. But whatevs.

My question is the following: Do any of my enlightened friends/readers actually boil and strain rice like pasta? Is the absorption method really new and revolutionary to large segments of people? For that matter, does anyone routinely 'steam' their rice as described above? More importantly is the popularity of the rice cooker incumbent on the convenience of absorption vs boiling and straining? Does that mean Japanese people regularly boil and strain their rice? What about other rice-staple cultures?

Seriously. I want to understand.

I will forgo the 'salt or no-salt in the water' question (I salt mine, but I like my rice to be salted), or the 'butter or no-butter' question (which still confuses me, unless your idea of rice is that a) it's pasta, but b) you don't salt the water, and c) you add butter as a vehicle for salt). Do not get me started.

While my union gently mediates

This is a weird weekend.  We've just had our 'term break', which leaves us with just about 3 weeks left in the term.  We have been online only since March, so all of this term.  Working okay from my end, except basically I prerecord a lecture or give a lecture 6 days a week.  But last week, I caught up on a lot.

In the mean time, we're waiting on the outcome of mediation tomorrow.  You may recall that we (the University of Manitoba Faculty Association) went on strike for three weeks in 2016, in part because the administration withdrew a salary scale offer that had been on the table, among other weird bargaining practices. Part of the settlement to come back involved negotiation this year on salary scales only, ahead of next year when the whole contract comes up for renewal.

I forget the final settlement re salaries in 2016, but basically there wasn't one.  The administration took the line that they had been ordered by the Province to hold salary increases to 0%. The 'Progressive' Conservative government in power here is pretty traditionally NA conservative, in the sense of believing in privatization of as many and as much public service as possible.  This means they have adopted the strategy of defunding everything possible, to the point where it fails, and use that as the opportunity to sell it off. 

Now to be fair, the PCs inherited significant debt following some significant mismanagement by the previous NDP governments. But the PCs decided in 2016 to try to balance the budget on the backs of public sector workers, including, indeed beginning with, UMFA. They proposed the Public Sector Sustainability Act (in 2017) to hold all public sector unions to 0% salary increases.  This bill never passed into law, and was eventually found unconstitutional, as the PSSA would have directly interfered with collective bargaining, which was found to be protected as a form of freedom of expression and association.

The point is the Province illegally, or at least very inappropriately, interfered with collective bargaining by convincing the Administration that they were required to hold to 0% salary increases, prompting the Administration to withdraw their salary offer, relying on the eventual PSSA to back up their position. The court findings (still under appeal) ordered the administration to compensate UMFA and its members for losses incurred by the strike, as well as punitive damages and so on.  

For reasons I haven't followed, this year's pre-renewal renewal of the salary issue, has basically been the administration proposing 0% increase, again, and not bargaining anything. Which seems to me, in the absence of a law requiring them not to bargain salaries, strikes me as bad faith negotiation.  The Union has proposed binding arbitration (in which a disinterested third party listens to both proposals and picks one that is binding on both parties), which has/had been roundly rejected by the administration.

This is interesting for a couple of reasons.  The main one being that it suggests the administration knows they're in an untenable position.  Since they illegally, or at least very inappropriately, refused to negotiate salaries in 2016, and are doing so again, the chances that a reasonable third party would agree with them.  This is in stark contrast to 2016, when the administration was the one pushing for binding arbitration.  Binding arbitration tends to be conservative, in that no change is usually preferred over radical change. In binding arbitration, both parties present their best offers, and generally, the administration's offer will call for less increase in salaries and benefits, and generally be the more conservative. Arbitration over a whole contract is really dangerous for unions, because the arbitrator has to select one or the other offer.  They can't take the salaries issue from one offer, and the benefits issue from another.  Or whatever.

But this year, the administration has blocked binding arbitration. Since the only issue on the table is salaries...well, draw your own conclusions.

Which all boils down this weekend.  Starting Friday, negotiations entered mediation. Mediation is when a disinterested third party helps move negotiations along.  Listening to both parties' proposals and trying to help find a mutually amenable solution. In the last couple weeks, UMFA members voted overwhelmingly to permit the negotiating team to call for a strike vote.  When there was no movement, they called the strike vote, and once again, the overwhelming majority chose to authorize a strike.  These two moves appear to have gotten the administration to accept mediation.  

Mediation began on Friday (yesterday) and ends tomorrow (Sunday).  So sometime tomorrow, the mediator and the negotiation teams will announce either a) a settlement, in which case everything is copacetic, or b) no settlement, in which case we go on strike starting Monday, the day we're supposed to return to classes. I suppose there is a remote possiblity that there will be no settlement but there was enough movement to avoid the strike, but more probably if there is no settlement, we'll go on strike while negotiations continue.

So my stomach is not happy this weekend, since I have to emotionally prepare for classes and other academic stuff, as well as prepare to be on strike.  Because the city is back on COVID-19 lockdown (not quite as drastic as the first lockdown in March, but since the second or third spike depending on who you believe.  The positive test rate (for the province) has risen from 3% in August to over 12% now.  Can't find number specific to the city, but the vast majority of cases comes from the Winnipeg region.  

So a strike won't involve mass picket lines since a) nobody is really entering or leaving campus, and b) picket lines are not great places to try to maintain social distancing.  The union has tried to explain 'strike activities' to us, but I don't really understand. I'm guessing someone will tell me tomorrow when to check in on Monday, and I will spend time on Monday calling or emailing MLAs, public officials, media outlets, and so on, and spreading stuff on social media, or whatever they tell me to do.  

I support my union, not that I feel personally that I deserve a salary increase of any kind, but because as a group compared to comparable research universities in Canada, we are very poorly paid, which has clearly impacted both the kind and quality of programs we can offer students, and how we are able to recruit and retain colleagues.  But really, we're the first post-PSSA union to re-enter salary negotiations, so we're kind of the test case for all the rest. Public employees run our public universities, our public schools, and our public hospitals, not to mention our police and fire departments, our garbage and recycling collectors, our road and maintenance workers. But in particular our nursing and hospital staffs in general, who are overrun on the frontlines of COVID-19 on top of all the usual stuff they deal with, both in terms of patient care and their general physical and mental health.  

Not to mention the expired PPE masks that the province dumped on hospitals (again onto the backs of frontline public-sector employees) months ago, but that's a whole other scandal.

So our main hashtag this year is #UMFA2020.  I assume there will be others announced in the coming days. Expect to see them a lot in my Twitter and Facebook feeds, those being the only social media platforms I use, and I plan to use them primarily for strike things, rather than my usual nonsense, which mostly have to do with food and sleep anyway.

Update: #JobActionNews Mediation has been extended through Sunday the 16th. Work as usual on Monday. The earliest a strike would begin is Tuesday the 17th. But it looks like someone thinks there has been some positive discussion in mediation. Taking a slow deep breath. #UMFA2020

Update: #JobActionNews Tentative agreement has been reached, and will be taken to the union members for a vote. Negotiators/board don't seem enthusiastic, and from what I've seen it's not much of a deal, but at least it's a deal. And given the current political climate (read: interference) I'm not sure how likely we are to get a better one. But that's for another day. Strike action delayed indefinitely, pending ratification vote. #UMFA2020

Adventures in techological achievement

Just to set this up, I'm writing this on Blogger, which, when you write a post, you do within an actual editing environment, in which it happens that 'save' and 'publish' are (correctly) two different things, but if you want to see what the actual post looks like, you have to 'preview' it, which opens up a completely different tab to the Blogger reader interface, which of course doesn't have a way to save or publish the post, which you have to do back in the editing space.

I assume these things are designed by groups broken up into teams.  One team is responsible for the editing space, another for the previewing space, another for the publishing (or 'make public') space.  The worst case is when there is one team that does 'publish' that everyone else is supposed to provide a button to click on, but the different groups put it in a different place.  One at the upper right, one at the upper left, one hidden in a pulldown menu, one hidden under a menu hidden under a separate tab...

If you work for a large organization, like a university, the systems you actually use are usually purchased by administrators (who increasingly fail to be academics having ever run a course before, let alone coordinated several different kinds of courses) without any consultation with on-the-ground users.

So within a product, let's say a Learning Management System, you fall for a sales pitch that involves a whole lot of good ideas (look you can manage gradesheets! look, you can let students see exactly what's happening with their grades! look can make general announcements to the whole class! look you can provide actual information, like instructions on assignments, to the whole class) that are implemented differently by the diffferent teams actually building the front ends.

So for instance, to make an 'announcement' you have to click to go to the announcements tool, which opens a new tab/page.  You type in some kind of headline into one box, and the announcement into another, and then to actually make the announcement, the announcement tab gives you a menu to pulldown to select 'make public' or something like that. Which is fine for an announcement like 'class is cancelled on thursday' or 'there's a typo on page 152 I wanted to point out'.

For more substantive things, you don't make an announcement, you add a 'content'.  A content is like an announcement, in that it involves general information for everyone, but is usually longer and more detailed.  It's also put somewhere else within the course page in the LMS, and does not automatically generate a useful announcement, like 'hey everybody, I've added a 'content' that you really want to pay attention to')

Another random difference between an 'announcement' and a 'content', is that you save a content by clicking a button at the top left of the content-building page, and you make it public by choosing something from a pop-up menu located at the bottom right of the page.  To be clear, these are both reasonable things to do separately (although frankly 'make public' should always automatically generate a 'save').  But the point is that the two tools have different 'make public' procedures, and only one allows you to save something without making it public.

I assume this is due to different functions being designed and implemented by different teams (and at different times) without having an overall 'interface experience' manager to keep track of everything and make suggestions. 

I imagine some scenario such as the following leads to this kind of situation.  MacroFirm produces a suite of products. One does document editing. One does spreadsheets. One does document design (which is different from document editing), and one provides the user with a database-style inteface.  Each product/function is assigned to a different team.

The document editing poeple create 'new' 'open' 'save' and save as' commands, that can be accessed by a row of buttons at the top of the tool.  Your spreadsheet people have similar functions, but for whatever reason (perhaps they don't want to clutter the interface), put them in a menu.  Your document design people have similar commands, but for reasons of their own put them into a command window that you bring up by clicking on something else.  And your spreadsheet people cannot imagine a situaiotn where you would put something to a database and not want to save it, so they do away with 'save' altogether and just have everything written to the database in real time.

Fortunately, you are MacroFirm, and you're smart enough to know that your users are probably all going to use more than one of these products, and would really prefer a consistent interface.  So you set up a new time to devise said interface and then send down an edict to all the other teams that From Now On all our products will make use of the general interface. Including the same keyboard shortcuts and so on.

Now Macroform is fortunate in that The World has already come up with a preferred interface, these being the 'file menu', S for save, N for new, etc. So no reinventing the wheel there.  But then you discover (or decide) that no one wants a 'file' menu separate from an 'edit' menu, etc., so you shove them all into a ribbon.  And just because you know not everyone will want to clutter the interface with a ribbon, you make the ribbon hideable, and create a 'toolbar' where your favorite actions, like open and save, can just sit.  And your user can control where the toolbar sits, and what is on it.

What you can't do, apparently, is create a system where a general toolbar exists across all your products. So the default toolbar for your document editor as new, open, save, undo, redo, and print, as defaults in that order.  Your spreadsheeting product has new and open, but not print (because who routinely prints entire spreadsheets, and moreover does so often enough to having the button sitting and staring at them 100% of the time. 

Your database people, knowing that no one actually wants to save anything, continues its practice of automagic real-time saving, doesn't put 'save' or 'save as' (or for that matter any of the others) in the tool bar.  Fine.

Except your end user, dammit, wants 'new', 'open', 'save', 'save as' and 'print' in that order, more than they want undo (with or without redo) or any number of other commands in their toolbar.  And by the way, since neither the ribbon nor the toolbar can ever show you all of the available functions, you still