Re: [SFUFA] Risks of Unionization Panel, Resources

[Harald Hutter <hutter@sfu.ca>]

Dear colleagues,

Brian recently sent links to presentation slides pointing to some concerns about certification. I found them well worth reviewing. Here are a few things that caught my eye. Some of the points were summarized previously on the academic-discussion@sfu.ca forum.

- unionization seems to be a one-way-road, for all practical purposes, i.e not something we can try out and go back to the status quo, if it doesn't work out.
- unionization will not just change the relationship between our representatives and our bargaining partner.
- it will also change the relationship between members and our leaders - we will hand more power to our representatives (current and future, forever) and we will limit the ability of minorities to 'ignore' a majority opinion. Example (from my perspective): in the case of a strike decision (would be our majority decision), the university might respond with a lock-out (of undetermined length). Having a research lab in the Biology department, this is a potential disaster scenario for me (much worse than a power outage, where everybody works to fix the problem as quickly as possible). I know, it's a worst case scenario, but I would like to have the freedom to cross a picket-line (or not being locked-out), if I have a good reason for it.

Of course, my egoistic concerns have to be considered in the overall context. So what are the advantages?
- another aspect of the presentations was that the benefits of being unionized are not that clear. Basically, we are not part of a money-making industry, where the question arises of how the profits are distributed (workers vs owners of the company). Bottom-line: our primary bargaining partners don't really have the power to give us more (money, etc).
I'm also not sure the union model fits our 'job description' - as highly skilled professionals? How do you define workload? or other issues? across all faculties? 
Difficult decision ...

Best,
Harald





On 2014-02-17, at 8:27 AM, Brian Green wrote:

> Dear Members:
> 
> Materials from the January 30th Forum on Risks of Unionization are available on the SFUFA website.
> 
> On the site's "Unionization - Resources" page, please find:
> a presentation by Glen Chapman on general concerns about certification;
> a presentation by Krishna Pendakur on how certification affects faculty salaries.
> 
> The page can be accessed at the following link:
> 
> http://www.sfufa.ca/current-issues/unionization/resources/
> 
> As always, your questions or comments on this or any other matter are very welcome.
> 
> -- 
> SFU Faculty Association
> 778-782-4584
> brian_green@sfu.ca
> 

_________________________________
Harald Hutter, Department of Biological Sciences
Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada
phone 778-782-4803, email: hutter@sfu.ca