Thoughts at the end of week 2

Technically, week 2 ends with Monday, since we started on Tuesday the 2nd. But in my head it's the end of week 2.

This week, live picketers concentrated on the Leg/Ledge/Legislature Building and the constituency offices of various MLAs and ministers, primarily from the "Progressive" Conservative party, which gets less and less progressive as time goes on. (The analogous federal party, known simply as the Conservative Party (of Canada) went through a few pains on their way from "Progressive Conservative" to just "Conservative". Lately a new party, the Canadian Citizens' Party, has popped up to fill the nationalist void, but that's another random political story I don't know enough about.)

As readers of this blog will be aware (for instance, from my Open Letter to the Premier, and elsewhere) the PCs have been illegally (technically 'unlawfully', but I'm not sure of the difference at this point, or whether I care) interfering with collective bargaining for basically as long as they have been in power this time. They are smart enough not to have put anything in writing (which is what usually qualifies something as a 'mandate' coming down from above (as opposed to a 'mandate' from the voters upward, which requires only enough votes to get into power). Since such mandates constitute unlawful interference, the new PC trick is to communicate its wishes by telephone, backing up any contravention of those wishes by reducing the province's financial contribution by the same amount.

This is precisely what happened recently with the city of Winnipeg's negotiation of the contract with aS 7ambulance services. The province funds an outfit called Shared Health, which doles out money to local agencies for contracted ambulance service. The city recently agreed to a 2% increase in salaries. In order to ensure 'sustainability' (which is apparently the PC buzzword meaning 0 growth in expenses), Shared Health reduced its ~$50 million coverage of Winnipeg ambulance services by $861,854? Does that number look suspiciously specific? It should. It's exactly the amount that the salary increase costs. It amounts to something similar to 2% of the actual Shared Health contribution, but it is transparently an effort by the province to not pay for salary increases for public sector workers.

So it's pretty apparent that what the province is telling employers is that not only will they not pay for salary increases to unionized employees, but the employer is going to be penalized by the same amount. You spend an extra couple million on salaries? Kiss four million goodbye from you operating funds. (That's the amount of money the salary increases will cost you, plus the additional penalty pulled out of your operating funds.)

Because these things are conveyed 'informally' through direct conversation, rather than in writing, apparently indemnifies the province (thinks the PC party) from unlawful interference. But just because they avoid creating the paper trail, doesn't mean they aren't interfering. It just makes it harder to prove, since they can claim 'there is no mandate', any advice 'privately' conveyed to the university administration through conversation is presumably protected speech, and anyway, when they reduce the budget, it won't be because of salary increases, it'll be because of 'sustainability'.

It's been about a week since the university admin rejected UMFAs latest offer, but according to the mediator, they haven't put forward a new proposal. They're sticking to their previous proposal. We're sticking to ours, and frankly it's up to them to counteroffer at this point. They've also announced what kind of 'repair measures' will be taken if the strike ends on this date, or that date. Upshot is they are now advertising that classes will continue to 23 December, with finals and stuff happening in January. This is what they did in 2016 after three weeks. Even though this is sort of the end of week 2, there were no classes scheduled for this week (midterm break or reading week, or something) so technically they've only lost one week of classes. Sounds like they're settling in for a long one. And so, so am I.

Investment and return

This little factlet is based on information from the University of Manitoba Economic Impact Analysis (2019). Tuition and fees continue to climb. Full-time faculty, instructors, and librarians' salaries are being artificially frozen. So who is making this investment, and who is benefitting from the economic activity. Not UMFA members, and not students. So who?

Just a quick note: Tomorrow there will be no strike activities, owing to the Remembrance Day holiday.  Please take a couple of minutes at 11:11am to reflect on the sacrifices which have been and continue to be made by servicepeople and their families. 

Nursing in focus

 As we begin our second full week on strike, I am left running out of interesting things to say in this blog.  According to the intended academic schedule, which still holds for courses led by non-UMFA members, this is fall term break. Which means what little traffic there is in and out of campus will be that much more sparse. What's the point of picketing when there's no traffic?

But a-ha! UMFA is composed of scholars, i.e. relatively smart people, and they have anticipated this problem.  This week, in addition to online and 'virtual picketing' activities, they are moving the regular picket lines to political hotspots.  Yesterday was the constituency office of the Premier, today was the Minister of Mental Health, Wellness, and Recovery. I forget who tomorrow's favored target will be, which is just as well since I'd just be spilling the beans.

In keeping with directed protest in the direction of the Minster of MHW&R, a lot of us are concentrating our information on the 'looming' nursing crisis in Manitoba. Hundreds of FTE nursing positions are presently vacant in Manitoba. The need was so great that the province required the College of Nursing to double its intake of students, with concomitant increase in instruction and practicum hours. Which of course requires qualified people to teach teach and oversee them, and hopefully minimizing endless fruitless searches for replacements who leave for more money, better conditions, and less stress.

We know that nursing is a difficult and often thankless profession. Burnout is high. During the pandemic, nurses and nursing students were even more overworked (and in greater personal danger) than usual; and frankly if there's one group you want not foregoing sleep or food, it's your front-line nursing staff.

So let's hear it for nurses, and those who train them. Let's hear it for front-line nurses who risked physical and mental health keeping the rest of us safe and alive during the pandemic, in spite of not having a contract for over four years (finally settled this past October). Remind the province that interference in collective bargaining is both unlawful and antithetical to keeping high-quality nurses on the job and satisfied. Remind the province that quality health care, as well as quality education, is going to cost money, and if they want nurses in particular, it's worth investing in the system that produces them. Remind the university administration of the same thing, and that it's their duty to act in the best interest of the university and the community.

My open letter to the Premier

 Dear Premier Stefanson

I came to Manitoba from my home in the USA in 2000, to join the faculty of the University to Manitoba. As was expressed to me then, and which has been amply demonstrated since, recruitment and retention of new faculty is of huge concern. Building and maintaining a world-class university absolutely requires a steady intake of truly exciting and innovative researchers.  The salary grid at the University of Manitoba remains at the bottom among comparable universities, particularly at the early and mid-career levels, and thus is presently an impediment to that recruitment and retention.

 

It is vitally important that university president Michael Benarroch be allowed to bargain in good faith with his unions, with the best interests of the university, its growth, and its reputation foremost in his mind.  As you know, policies and attitudes inculcated by your predecessor, with his well-demonstrated disdain for education, higher education in particular, and his obvious antipathy to public sector unions, resulted in bargaining mandates which have twice been found to be unlawful interference in collective bargaining. I am extremely concerned that under your watch, these policies are continuing.

 

The University of Manitoba Faculty Association is presently in its second week of strike action largely due to the intransigence of the administration in negotiation, in matters of governance as well as in compensation.  President Benarroch has claimed that he is constrained by provincial mandate. Your Ministers of Finance, Scott Fielding, and Advanced Education, Wayne Ewasko, have both claimed that there is no such mandate. The absence of a written mandate is not in itself evidence that undue pressure is being placed on President Benarroch from somewhere in your administration.

 

Are you able to state, publicly and unequivocally, that President Benarroch is somehow mistaken about such a mandate, and that no undue pressure or threat of reprisal is coming from your government, your ministers, or their aides? Do you repudiate the unlawful attempts by your predecessor to interfere in collective bargaining? Would you publicly encourage President Benarroch to bargain freely and fairly, in good faith, with only the best interests of the university in mind?

 

Respectfully

The strike as an exercise in critical thinking

 Late on Sunday night, after mediation had broken down and the strike was unavoidable, the Dark Side sent out a piece of propaganda (we're unclear what happened to the communication blackout at that point) that our bargaining team had rejected their last offer.  Which they went on describe, shall we say 'creatively', their offer of a 9.5% increase in salary.  This was at best a misrepresentation. It was transparently an attempt to confuse and mislead UMFA members. You've read me rant about that.

 Now, here's where the critical thinking/reading/writing skills should (and for many of us did) kick in. What are those skills? Among other things, we always ask our students to consider a) who is providing the information, b) what do they want you to believe, and c) what are their starting assumptions.  Had we all done that, we would have cut through some of the confusion and wouldn't have started this job action in the state we did.  

a) who is providing the information?  The Dark Side. Hardly a neutral, disinterested party.  (As I hope I have said, or implied, UMFA's information is also cherry-picked and spun in the directions that we want people's thinking to go. And I hope it's clear that I am squarely in the camp of the union, which also cannot and should not be regarded as a neutral, disinterested party.)

b) what do they want people to believe? They wanted us to believe that, after 50-odd years of poor increases, and several years of 0% offers, the Dark Side had magically and magnanimously come up with 9.5% (over two years) across the board, that the union's bargaining team wase unable to recognize the amazing offer for what it was, and that they rejected said offer out of hand without bringing it to the membership. Since the only thing in the propaganda was about the supposed salary offer, that this is all about salaries.

c) What to they assume? The media, the public, and (apparently) some of my colleagues, are distracted and not cognizant of the myriad issues up for bargaining; that in the absence of that knowledge, it's all about salary; that people won't look past whatever surface information they provide

To counter this, how do we apply critical thinking? Well, what are the odds that this information, coming from an involved party (after weeks of silence), is unadulterated and easy to understand at first blush? Well, presumably poor. Consider the source, and what they want you to believe. Consider the absence of any supporting figures, like how much the whole proposal would actually cost in dollars, whether it would be distributed equally, or equitably, or (as they apparently wish to represent) across the board?

Their goal in deploying this 'information' was to destabilize the union membership's resolve, weaken our position, and make us look greedy and out-of-touch among the public and the media. They were unfortunately successful.  It took a couple days for UMFA's information to come out, which exposed the disingenuous smoke-and-mirrors nature of the 9.5% figure. Which I'm glad they did, even if a little late to counter the damage done.

There are always people who don't respect the strike.  That's fine.  Their business.  I mean, not fine, but their business, so whatever. After the confusion caused by the Dark Side's clumsy propaganda move, many more people considered breaking the strike, and in fact we know of some who actually did.  I really hope I don't learn who these people are because I don't want to libel anyone.  But I don't trust them. And I especially don't trust their critical thinking.  

You wanna talk salaries? Let's talk about salaries

 Monday night, as a last move before the strike, the university administration (hereinafter to be known as the Dark Side) sent out a message which was a transparent attempt to undermine people’s faith in UMFA and the job action we were then about to embark on. Or at least I thought it was transparent. The result was quite a number of people choosing to break the strike and a (presumably overlapping) setoff people forcing a vote on that proposal.

 First of all, proposals on both sides are typically withdrawn upon the end of mediation and the beginning of strike action.  Second of all, these people are (presumably) scholars, who make their living reading critically, questioning and evaluating claims, and considering sources.

 If the issue were salaries, which I admit are part of it, what are the odds, that if the administration were really offering everyone what amounts to an astronomical increase in salary that our bargaining committee would have rejected the offer out of hand?

 All information is propaganda, spun so that people will believe what we want them to believe. Sometimes that works. Sometimes it is obviously a disingenuous ploy.  It isn’t always easy to tell the difference, true. But, as I say, these people should be practiced, if not good, at it.

 

This by the way is the value of the university. Practice and critical reading, critical writing, and perhaps most importantly, critical thinking. But I digress.

According to the Dark Side’s announcement, the last-minute offer was for a 9.5% salary increase. (To quote a random commenter on the CBC news website, “when was the last time you were offered a 9.5% raise?”  Which is precisely why this should have been seen for what it is. In the words of my union president, it’s “smoke and mirrors”. Or more charitably, it’s creative use of cherry picking and statistics. 

 Again, I point out that all information is propaganda.  I have no reason to believe our information is any less cherry-picked or ‘spun’ than the Dark Side’s.  I hope, however, that our information is at least more complete, and less disingenuously deployed.  We shall have to see about that.

 What the Dark Side actually offered, according to UMFA, is a 2.8% increase over two years.  Which is not to be sneezed at. The remaining 6.7% or so is in fact money that the Dark Side is already obligated to pay. In every contract there are built-in ‘increments’, small increases to your salary (called your ‘base pay’, if I have understood the explanation) given to all employees.  Increments differ depend on length of service, which salary grid you’re on (currently professorial staff, full-time librarians, and full-time instructors are all paid on different grids), what level you are on each grid (an Instructor I in her first year gets a different increment than a full Professor in her 30^th year), and other factors.  There are also ‘merit increases’ which can be added on top of these, again depending on a) whether the appropriate Dark Side minion™ things you deserve it, and b) where you are on which grid, and so on.  As I understand it, that 6.7% is composed of the entire fund required to meet existing obligations.  So as you see, these are distributed unequally across the salary grids, and effect only base pay.

 Instead, what we want, and what we’re striking about, is not base pay.  The issue is the salary grids.  What we’d like is a “reasonable” increase, to all grids, and all levels, equally. This would also include an increase in salary minima and threshholds.

 While obligated to increase yearly salaries (base pay) to all existing employees, the Dark Side is not obligated to offer incoming employees (remember, the ones we’re trying to recruit) more than the minimum base pay (at the relevant grid-level, very typically Assistant Professor or Instructor or Librarian I), because the bottom of each grid-level won’t change, just the amount of each individual’s base pay form year to year. Since the Dark Side can offer the minimum (at the appropriate grid-level).  Sometimes they offer more than that, if they are particularly interested in recruiting someone,  but this introduces intrinsic inequities  between individuals doing, presumably, the same job. And results in greater inequities experienced by women and visible minorities compared to white men which persist (surprisingly to some of us) even to this day.  But that’s a different rant.

What UMFA wants, as I say, is for all intents and purposes, a bump to the entire grid system (and the shuffling of Instructors onto the same grid as Librarians, which effectively raise their pay considerably). 

 This is one of the many issues involved in this negotiation. It is almost certainly the one that involves the greatest capital investment. But the Dark Side’s proposal addresses only salary, and does so inequitably across the grid-levels. UMFA’s priority is a structural change to the grids.

 According to the Bank of Canada, the current rate of inflation is 4.4%. The Dark Side’s proposal would see a ‘raise’ of 2.4% over two years, over and above scheduled obligatory increments.  I have been at the University of Manitoba for 20 years.  My first UMFA strike was in 2001, where I learned that in something like the previous 30 years, increments and increases hadn’t ever kept up with inflation.  (In 2001, inflation was somewhere around 2.3%.  Since then, I think we had one year, maybe two, where increments and increases have come anywhere close to the rate of inflation.  Over a career, that is a very real loss of buying power, of pay-off-the-mortgage money, of send-the-kids-to-school money. Add to that the overall economic reality, with young people stuck in lower-paying jobs, unable to rent or buy their own homes, and boomeranging home.  Add to that the increasing reality of many of my colleagues taking care of dependent parents and others.  And we haven’t start to talk about perks, like our parking subsidies, our prescription and other healthcare insurance coverage, and on and on.

 There are also non-monetary issues on the table, like what kind of information can and cannot be used in what kinds of personnel decisions (there may not have been a ‘permanent record’ in school, but there is definitely one for university employees). Whether we can be forced (absent a public emergency) to teach by remotely, or conversely in person, and who owns material we develop for our courses.  And countless other things that I know even less about.

 And this is the strength of having a union, collectively bargaining for us, in good faith. Individually, we don’t have to worry about these things, or ensuring that gains made are equitable. The union also sees to the enforcement of our rights and provides assistance when there is need to protect or enforce our rights.

 We are absolutely cognizant (or at least I am) that we are, generally speaking, well-paid compared to most workers in our city and province, where university education is not the expected norm, and thus the public at large may not understand the value of the university quite the way we’d like.

 But I would prefer not to work at a university whose quality comes down, even just a little, year after year, while student fees increase, even just a little, year after year. Where the ability to offer competitive salaries to incoming colleagues erodes little by little, year after year. Where we continue to lose colleagues to institutions that can offer more money and lower costs of living (here, I obviously exclude cities like Toronto and Vancouver, where costs of living really are unsustainable). Where quality of life, in addition to buying power, continues to decline.*

 *It must be said, that there is a lot about Winnipeg that I have come to love. But especially to new colleagues, the fact that it costs about $300-500 more to get anywhere from here (owing to having to fly through a ‘real city’™ to get anywhere, or a 4-hour drive only gets you to a city the size of Fargo, and only if you cross an international borde.And don’tget me started on the winters, although we do not have it worse, perhaps we even have it better, than most of Canada, if not most of our competing cities. But again, that’s a different rant.

Who owns our material?

 I learned yesterday that the university administration has somehow blocked UM Learn (the learning management system, or LMS) access to materials pertaining to many UMFA-led courses.  As of this morning, for some reason, I still have access and I presume my students do as well, but that could change at the press of a few buttons. Apparently.

This highlights one of the many non-salary issues that are on the table during this bargaining: Who owns course content?

For years, we were encouraged to develop courses and content that could be delivered remotely, through Distance (continuing) Education.  Most of us have resisted because a) it’s a lot of work, b) it’s not our job, and c) it isn’t clear who owns that content.  In many universities, the administration tries to retain ownership of the material, meaning they can offer the course without having to pay a person to actually teach it. Imagine developing a course, something moderately popular, and then getting fired because now that the university has all your materials they don’t need you anymore. And there aren’t any residuals packages or anything to keep generating money for anyone except the university.

With the pandemic, of course, many of us were forced into developing material like that, or at least recording lectures and so on, that could be used later, by ourselves or by someone else.  One of the issues that wasn’t clear at the time, and isn’t now, is who owns those materials and what can they be used for. 

Many of my colleagues see this access issue during the strike as a signal that the university intends to own and control our content. It’s difficult to see what other benefit, to themselves, they could be trying to produce. The students are angry, we’re angry, and they’re sitting on our copyright material.

You’d think that preventing us (striking UMFA members) from accessing our course materials, like our offices and so on, would be a reasonable way to punish us for being on strike. Many of us took down our own materials ahead of the strike to avoid exactly this situation.

The only ones being punished by this are the students. One can’t see this being a great PR move on their part, especially with many of us having decided to leave what’s in the LMS up for students.

So to be clear, if your course has disappeared from the LMS, it’s because the administration has blocked your access, not your UMFA-represented instructor. (The most we can do is remove or make invisible the material.  We can’t actually block the course.)  Hopefully this is just some kind of glitch, but it’s timing is awfully suspicious.

Picketing in a pandemic and a Premier premiere

#UMFA2021

My union is now on strike.  This is an emotional and anxious time for all of us.  I just finished my first online picketing meeting and heard from a number of colleagues about  hardship, uncertainty, family situations, and so on that are weighing in peoples minds.  I am fortunate to be single, with no dependents, reasonable mortgage terms, and a strong union representing me.

I have something to say about 

• misleading propaganda (from many sources) and spun information
• what this dispute is all about (it's not just about salaries)
• why I am supporting and will continue to support my union
• what I think about people who are breaking the strike

But I want to check a lot of my information first, so I'll save those for another post.  Today I want to talk about strike activities being undertaken (picketing in a pandemic) and the new head of the Progressive Conservative (PC) party who takes office today.

Picketing in a pandemic

If you go toward the University of Manitoba on University Crescent, Chancellor Matheson Blvd, or Kings Drive, there will be physical picketers, as in a conventional strike.  UMFA members, instead of sitting at home or in offices surrounded by books or some other comfortable surroundings, will be standing, walking, carrying signs, and handing out information, to passing vehicles. They will be slowing access to the University for all employees who are going there (there are a few in-person classes going on, and employees represented by other unions or not represented by unions are more or less obliged to go to work. But what we've learned in the pandemic is that we can do a lot of day-to-day stuff from home. So I' wondering how much traffic there will actually be, especially since one of the entrances/exits to campus (Freedman Crescent) is closed for construction at the moment.  So residents who may pass through the University to get to work or home may be taking other routes anyway.  Stay tuned.

Owing to my bad achilles tendon (and others due to whatever circumstance) will be picketing on line. We're still working out exactly what that means, but in my case it means I'm going to try to blog every day about the strike and about the issues involved.  We're also posting and cross-posting to social media platforms, creating banners, phoning and emailing politicians, and other things that we'll have a better idea about in a couple days.  So for now. watch this log, my tweets, and my Facebook.  Someday, when I learn Instagram, I'll go there too, but that's not a priority for me.

 A Premier premiere

Today, Manitoba's new (and first female) Premier will be sworn in. In fact, in a couple hours.  Some UMFA demonstrators will be there. They may be there already.

Heather Stefanson has been an MLA (member of the legislative assembly) for the Tuxedo riding and recently one the leadership of the PC party (not without challenge, but sources seem to indicate that those challenges won't get very far). I don't know anything about her, except she pledged to kill Bill 16 (the one that was withdrawn by the interim Premier a few weeks ago, that would eliminate local school boards and so on). One can only hope that she will address and redress the previous Premier (Brian Pallister)'s openly hostile positions to education and to unions.  But that remains to be seen.

One thing she's walking into is this collective bargaining process.  Pallister famously tried to interfere with influence the 2016 negotiations, attempting to dictate (as it turns out, illegally) 0% salary increases for all public sector unionized employees.  The administration's continued reluctance to bargain salaries is seen by many (particularly as interpreted by UMFA) as a response to continued pressure from the Province (described as a mandate) to deny or limit salary increases. In other words, to interfere with influence the current negotiations.

 

Minister of Advanced Education Wayne Ewasko claimed there was no such mandate refusing being too busy to meet about the issue, referred us to Finance Minister Scott Fielding. When contacted, Fielding's office said to talk to Advanced Education.  

Knowing weasel words when we hear them (and use them, which we do) we can interpret there being no mandate as there being no written order to the university administration.  It doesn't mean no pressure, or no influence.  The Province needs to stay out of collective bargaining when they are not one of the parties directly involved.

So Ewasko is blaming Fielding, and Fielding is blaming Ewasko. Which sounds to me like there is some kind of pressure being put on the university administration, but no one wants to take responsibility for it.

This is all to say Premier Stefanson has some housecleaning to do.  The decisions she makes in the next few days will show us what she's all about.

Here we go again (maybe)

Well, we've had a strike vote authorization, and a strike vote.  We now have a strike deadline.  Midnight (or 11:59pm) Sunday, 31 October. All Hallows' Eve.  Perfect.

Mediation begins (began) today (Monday the 25th), and unless there is some kind of progress (exactly what constitutes progress, but presumably it means 'a reasonable offer', or at least 'an appearance of legitimate intention to reach some kind of mutually acceptable decision', is up to the bargaining committee).

If at that time mediation has failed, Monday will be spent 'setting up', and picketing (and other activities) will begin Tuesday morning.

The University of Manitoba Faculty Association represents full-time faculty (professorial), instructors, and librarians, so it is we (they) who will be withdrawing course-related and administrative (committee) work for the duration of a strike.  

Part-time instructors, sessional employees, graduate student instructors, etc. are represented separately, and will not be going on strike.  This might lead to the situation we had in 2016, where some classes (those taught by people who weren't on strike) went on 'as usual', while other classes were put on hold. Which in itself isn't a huge problem, except that the strike went on for three weeks, which made the university reschedule the remainder of the term for those classes.  Which meant that we were having class meetings in December while other people were giving finals, we were giving finals in January, and the whole of Winter term was delayed by something like three weeks.

2016 negotiations were severely hampered by political interference the Public Services Sustainability Act, which was brainchild of the previous Premier (the not much missed by anyone as far as I can tell) Brian Pallister.  Pallister was openly hostile toward a) education and b) unions, and the PSSA was his way of trying to dismantle collective bargaining.  It mandated 0% wage increases across the board, among other offenses, for all public sector employees (road workers, elevator inspectors, tax collectors, and other people who work for the government, but also primary and secondary teachers, university faculty, nurses, police, fire and EMT services, and on and on and on.) 

Even though the PSSA was never actually passed, the previous University administration took it as a binding directive, taking salaries off the table. Litigation since has found that the PSSA is/was/would have been unconstitutional (in particular the Charter of Rights and Freedoms which one way or another protects unions and unionized workers and their role in collective bargaining. UPDATE: On 13 Oct the Manitoba Court of Appeals overturned part of the lower court ruling, finding that the PSSA was not unconstitutional. However, they specifically found also that there was unlawful government interference in the 2016 negotiations, and that the government 'forcing' the university to withdraw salary offers on the table did violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms protection of our right of assembly. IANAL but I assume that 'assembly' here means our write to have a union and have that union bargain for us.

The previous Premier (Pallister) rode into office a tide of anger at budgetary mismanagement by the previous government, which left some serious debt behind (don't want to overlook this, it was a b*ttl**d of deficit), and felt it was his mandate to balance the budget at all costs. The PSSA was his attempt to do so on the backs of public sector employees. Having been thwarted by findings about the PSSA, he introduced two bills, Bill 16 and Bill 64.  Both would have introduced sweeping changes.  Bill 16 was an attempt to break bypass unions' role in collective bargaining, in particular eliminating the unions' ability to call for binding arbitration if a strike has gone on for 60 days.  (Apparently, Manitoba is the only province that allows unions to unilaterally force arbitration after 60 days.) Bill 64 also had a number of effects specifically related to the public school system. Among other things, it would have eliminated elected local school boards and essentially hand questions of curriculum, discipline, and collective bargaining to the province.  Pallister resigned, thank &deity;, and his (interim) successor withdrew both bills.

So we have a new premier (at present an interim premier who has expressed no interest in running for leadership of the party, which should be decided on or after 30 October), if not a new government per se, and we also have a new university president.  Word from the union is that nothing much has changed at the bargaining table, but hopefully the province will keep its authoritarian mitts out of university business, and the new president will insist on his own independence from direct provincial interference pressure as regards bargaining.

Stay tuned. 

Burning off some anger at well meaning but objectionable FB people

Another one of these things is floating around facebook and watching the commentary about it made me angry. SO here we are. The original looks something this: 

9 = 90
8 = 72
7 = 56
6 = 42
 
3 = ?

And as typical, there are a variety of answers, and as usual, most of them seem to make 'sense' to the commentator, but are untenable in any respectable arithmetic system, which is one in which the following hold

1. we're working in base 10, and not hexadecimal or something (I can't do bases in my head fast enough to know if, given the equations we know, the answer would be different in hexadecimal or something)
2. arithmetic operations are vaguely consistent
3. that the operator/symbol = means 'is equivalent to'
4. arithmetic operations respect RST, that is Reflexivity (that α must be equivalent  to α [i.e. itself]), Symmetry (that α+β must be equivalent to b+α), and Transitivity (that if α is equivalent to β and β is equivalent to γ then α must be equivalent to γ)

In such a system the answer is (and pretty much can only be) 12. 

Now I'm happy to discuss possible arithmetic systems until the cows come home. I'm happy to discuss possible operations. I'm happy to disagree about the right answer. What made me angry was the people who were trying to be 'reasonable'. "Well," they suggest, "the answer is 12, but I suppose the answer could be ... if ..." But it couldn't be. Here's why.

First, a word on notation. There is no sense in which the expression 9 = 90 makes any sense, in a system where the = operator means 'is equivalent to '. If 9 = 90, then what does = mean? If = means 'is equivalent to' we can assume that there is some unexpressed function being applied to the numbers on the left, resulting in the numbers on the right. Let's use the notation f(x) for this operation, so the list should read f(9)=90, f(8)=72, etc. So let's assume the best of intent, that = means =, that RST hold, and so on. 

Given the four examples we know the right answers for, it would appear that f(x) is represents the operation x*(x+1). In which case f(3) is clearly 12. f(x) could only yield the equations it does, i.e. f(9)=90, f(7)=56, etc. and f(3)=18 if the f(x) operation was actually x*(some number above it in the list). This is not what I would accept as a coherent function in any reasonable arithmetic system.

But arithmetic operations cannot be defined in terms of what's around them, or any circumstantioal information.  If f(x) were anything like the above, then changing the order or spatial arrangement would yield idiotic results:

f(9) = 90
f(6) = 54
f(7) = 24
f(8) = 56

But if that were so, we'd have violated RST because f(6) cannot be dependend on to equal f(6). It makes no sense to refer to circumstances in the definition of arithmetic functions. You can't define + in terms of what's around it, or where it is on the page, or even whether you're adding apples or oranges. α+β cannot equal one thing at the top of a page and something else in the middle, any more than it can (reasonably) equal one thing on Tuesday, and something else on Thursday, unless it's a leap year, unless the leap year ends in 00.*

*I suppose there is a case to be made that operations could refer to intrinsic properties of its operands, i.e. f(x) is a different operation if x is even vs odd, or positive vs negative. But that involves universal properties of numbers (in the system in question), i.e. something which are deterministic and 'available' by virtue of the number system you're using, and totally independent of the context in which the number appears**

**I'm not sure this would actually make sense, but I asked someone earlier how you multiply or divide Roman numerals.  I mean, I get that your average Roman kid probably didn't have arithmetic homework in which they regularly had to multiple 46 by 331 or something.  But someone must have had to work out how many denarii to charge someone buying XLII eggs and III denarii a pop. The vest answer I could find needed to refer to whether or not the operands (or their derivatives in the procedure) were even or odd (in the sense that the procedure described halving some numbers and if the number was odd, they had to remember to deal with the remainder.  But I digress.

And even if we did allow that kind of variability, there's still no way to interpret both f(9) at the top of the list and f(8) in the middle of the list, since there is no definable object to use with the f(9). 

If we decide to allow that like the blank space above the top of the list allows for some other, unknown, object to be part of f(x) at the top of the list, then I want to know whether than exception to f(x) also applies in the case of f(3), since there is equally a blank space above the f(3) line and the f(6) line. Which would still be inconsistent with f(3)=18 (f(3) would equal 30, I guess).  In fact f(3) would have no determinable answer, and the arithmetic system being described would fall apart; RST would not and could not apply.***

***I haven't thought seriously about RST and they means in an arithmetic system since high school. Long before my present understanding of number theory set in. This has actually been kind of fun, in the way that potentially learning how to multiply and divide Roman numerals was fun. But I'm still angry at these "well, I guess it could be 18..." people.

So the answer has to be f(3)=12 give my assumptions, and anything else results in an inconsistent and untenable arithmetic. Thus spaketh Hagiwara. Go in peace.