Re: unionization process

On 2014-02-04, at 6:43 PM, JD Fleming wrote:

Dear Neil,

The issue, of course, is not whether or not to restart the old forum. That is a distraction. The issue is: ensuring that SFUFA members can make an informed decision about unionization. This entails being informed about the potential downsides, not just the potential upsides.

So far, you and Brian Green have repeatedly and carefully communicated to all members rosy claims about unionization. Coffee klatches aside, it is notable that you have frequently chosen to get these messages across through the most effective medium available: mass email on the all-SFUFA membership list. You have made no analogous effort to communicate sceptical claims. Now that some of us are asking to have such claims communicated, in the same efficient manner, you are actively and even dismissively resisting our request. This is not what I would call even-handed democratic leadership.

If you and Brian did not want to take on responsibility for informing members fully, you shouldn't have started telling them all about one side of the issue. Having started--as President and Executive Director of SFUFA, with responsibility to all members equally--you must finish. You must use your control of SFUFA communications to ensure that all members are informed about the other side of the argument.

Otherwise, you risk tainting, even vitiating, the very process you care about.

Sincerely,
JD Fleming

From: "Neil Abramson" <nabramso@sfu.ca>
To: "SFUFA Forum" <academic-discussion@sfu.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, 4 February, 2014 11:28:28
Subject: Fwd: forum yesterday

Sent from my iPhone

Begin forwarded message:

From: Neil Abramson <nabramso@sfu.ca>
Date: 4 February, 2014 9:54:56 AM PST
To: Brian Green <brian_green@sfu.ca>
Subject: Re: forum yesterday

Hi Barbara, JD, other colleagues;

My personal reason for supporting the closure of the old Forum was the death threat. If you remember, at one time there was a big debate on Israel/Palestine with advocates on both sides. Eventually one person, a friend of mine actually, threatened the life of someone on the other side of the debate. And this was in the context of SFUFA coming to understand that it was legally liable for opinions expressed on Forum if anyone objected and decided to sue.

At the same time, there were a number of individuals who wrote copiously on Forum, and also at times rather abrasively about others who disagreed with them. Personally, I had no difficulty deleting such comments. Once I even set my spam detector to automatically delete a couple of senders.

But a lot of our colleagues had a different solution. They demanded their names and emails be deleted from the list. Towards the end of Forum, my understanding was that more than half of all SFUFA members no longer received Forum.

Now we have the new Forum - Academic Discussion. To get on, you have to sign a form taking legal and ethical responsibility for your own comments. SFUFA is protected from too enthusiastic debate and discussion. I understand that about 25% of SFUFA members have signed up.

I think people have to recognize the collective responsibility for the administrative heritage that Forum bears as a result of its history. If 50% of SFUFA members withdrew from the old Forum, often expressing dismay about its comments, then it isn't really surprising they still haven't joined the new Forum. And I suppose it isn't a surprise that those few who aren't willing to be entirely civil don't want to have to sign to take personal responsibility for what they say.

It doesn't seem to me that its reasonable for SFUFA to force members to participate in an e-discussion when they have already opted out, and declined to rejoin a reborn Forum. The new Forum will have to rehabilitate itself over time by proving itself to be a discussion tool that people want to join.

As for the certification discussion, I myself am pleased to contribute to the new Forum and communicate with the 25%. And we have been, and continue to be organizing a whole series of face2face events to promote discussion. We will have more coffee clatches, and plan to have monthly lunches. We supported a meeting last week for people opposed to certification that only attracted about 25 colleagues even though it was beamed to downtown and Surrey from IRMACS Theater. I'd encourage anyone who wants to discuss certification to attend these meetings as they occur.

All the best
Neil Abramson
President SFUFA
Beedie School

Sent Fromm my iPhone

On 2014-02-03, at 1:47 PM, Brian Green <brian_green@sfu.ca> wrote:

Hi James and Barbara.
I am copying Neil Abramson on this message so that he also hears your request.
I do understand and appreciate your concern. My response on this is in no way intended to be dismissive.
However, I can only reiterate what the Association decided about this long ago - while there is indeed a lot of value in a forum for members to share ideas and communicate directly with one another, we cannot require all members to engage, and we cannot establish a mandatory list to compel members to receive emails from colleagues. The SFUFA list is retained for official business of the Association or announcements that every member needs to be aware of. You might note that members of the executive and the SFUFA president do not have access to the member list for personal statements of opinion. Neil Abramson, for example, periodically writes member updates which do go out to everyone - as have presidents in the past. However, there are also times that he writes commentary on various things, and is limited to the faculty-forum list.
While I appreciate that the issues discussed on the list are of concern to many faculty, I hope you can appreciate that a large number of members have stated quite clearly that they do NOT want to receive emails from the list. We do encourage people to join the academic discussion list and to participate in it actively. We cannot, however, compel them to do so. There have also been legal issues that have arisen in the past, even from the maintenance of an opt-in forum such as this. We have tried to strike a balance to maintain some system for members to talk to one another while also being mindful both of our legal liabilities and the rights of members to NOT receive email commentary should they so choose. It is not a perfect system by any means. But it is also not a system that I am able to over-ride.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Barbara Sanders" <bsanders@sfu.ca>
To: "JD Fleming" <jfleming@sfu.ca>, "Brian Green" <brian_green@sfu.ca>
Sent: Monday, February 3, 2014 12:52:54 PM
Subject: Re: forum yesterday

Thank you JD.

Brian, this message (if not all other messages related to unionization) absolutely has to get to the full membership. Constraining it to the Forum and suggesting that those who are not on this mailing list do not wish to hear these arguments is ludicrous and reflects very poorly on the SFUFA executive.

Best regards,

Barbara Sanders, MSc, FSA, FCIA
Assistant Professor
Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science
Simon Fraser University
----- Original Message -----

From: "JD Fleming" <jfleming@sfu.ca>
To: "SFUFA Forum" <academic-discussion@sfu.ca>
Cc: "Brian Green" <brian_green@sfu.ca>
Sent: Friday, 31 January, 2014 09:26:42
Subject: forum yesterday

Dear all,

I'd like to express my thanks to Hilmar Pabel, Glenn Chapman, and Krishna Pendakur for organizing the panel on unionization concerns yesterday. Although I had to miss the third presentation (Pabel's), I must say that the first two (Chapman's and Pendakur's) left me at a loss to understand why unionization is a good idea--let alone an urgent priority.

Chapman reminded us, among other things, that a union structure for SFUFA would require far more work on the part of faculty, for example in defining proper workloads for departments and faculties, then monitoring faculty work to make sure those workloads are being met but not exceeded. A union-to-member disciplinary vector also opens up here. No more would SFUFA be an organization of a couple faculty and staff members. No: it would become a much more complex organization of committees, duties, etc.

Pendakur's analysis showed that, while unionization appears to compress salaries somewhat (moving top and bottom toward the middle), its effect on raising them overall is either minimal or nil. I find this point especially compelling since Neil Abramson and others have repeatedly compared our salaries to UBC's, confidently claiming that the unionization of the latter's faculty explains the differential. This claim now appears to be, to say the least, questionable. As Pendakur pointed out, the reason is not mysterious: Unionized faculty don't get more money because there isn't any more money to get. We are not working in a profit-making economic sector where collective action can redistribute wealth. Rather, we are working in a profit-losing sector where the wealth has for the most part already been distributed, or is beyond our control. Unionized or not, we have no power over the money the government gives us; student fees are already too high; and the administration, even if bloated, is little more than a minnow compared to the Jabba the Hutt of our current and future salaries and benefits. Finally, there seems to be an idea that a union would claw back market differentials from the 50% of colleagues who have them, merrily redistributing that money to the 50% who do not. Since the richer 50% are also SFUFA members, with a right to have their interests represented, I find this scenario completely unintelligible--quite apart from the handicapping effect it would clearly have on hiring, in fields where academics have rich offers elsewhere.

In short, I am now more opposed to unionization than I was before. For what it's worth. Best wishes, JDF

PS Only 25% of SFUFA members are on this list. I still think an all-faculty discussion of the union issue is critical, not optional, and that an email list is still the easiest and most effective way to achieve it--especially since the SFUFA exec and director are explicitly partisan. It's like an election campaign where the government controls all the TV stations. I again call upon Brian Green to open up the discussion to all. This can be done very easily, Brian, if you just copy messages like this one to the sfufa-members list. You will still have absolute control over what does and does not get sent, thereby eliminating concerns about offensive messages etc.

--

J ames Dougal Fleming
Associate Professor
Department of English
Simon Fraser University
778-782-4713

" Upstairs was a room for travelers. ‘You know, I shall take it for the rest of my life,’ Vasili Ivanovich is reported to have said as soon as he had entered it."
-- Vladimir Nabokov, Cloud, Castle, Lake

--
James Dougal Fleming
Associate Professor
Department of English
Simon Fraser University
778-782-4713

"Upstairs was a room for travelers. ‘You know, I shall take it for the rest of my life,’ Vasili Ivanovich is reported to have said as soon as he had entered it."
-- Vladimir Nabokov, Cloud, Castle, Lake