Who You Calling A Jesse?

I still see the SA as a social club. Perhaps it’s just because I have had the luck of being in a department where we’ve not really had strife between management and Staff.
I joined the SA because of the reduction in insurance thru Johnsons.
The increase (those figures are per month?) however negates that so I’m questioning why I should stay in the SA. I see nobody who has benefited; I have seen no direct benefit.

So I’m asking myself what’s the SA good for?

I’m dead set against a union but now having been thru the union drive (and how I wish that we had a less suitable union take a first go at us) I question that.

I think that the SA either needs to certify us or move for a Memorandum such as a the Faculty has. I see no need or reason for 3 negotiating units when we’re all in the same boat!

I see that we have another round of manure shoveling with the university telling us that we have to pay if we want to be paid bi-monthly. We have to reimburse them for the interest that they will not be able to make on our money!? Hello!!! Last time around the stench of their arguement that extra people would have to be hired that the world would have to stop spinning so that electronic payment could be done twice a month instead of once a month …..
Now we no longer have pay stubs – but the savings go to the university as a whole. Yet when the table is turned we get gouged?

Meanwhile most of our buildings have lighting systems (T12 fluorscent) were were obsoleted nearly 20 years ago. Paybacks on lighting upgrades are as short as 1 YEAR in areas and yet the President tells me that we’re doing wonderful things and management, except my own boss, seems to have cotton plugged in their ears. They simply don’t want to save money! They don’t want to enable us to save money – I tried to get a fundraiser for energy saving initiatives going and ran into roadblock after roadblock.

The administration is deaf and dump and unresponsive to our health or our planet or our future. But the SA can’t do anything about that – nor can a union.

That’s what I’d like to see the Staff do around here – make this a better place before world oil production peaks and starts it’s relentless decline (looks like we missed that one by 2.5 years though) and before natural gas production goes into relentless decline (opps – that one is 8 years behind us on this continent). Coal and uranium are going to peak soon and this university is expanding like made – into a future where we will not have the option of burning limitless amounts of energy.

Funny – how the budget around here is something like 80% salaries and 20% buildings. HR works hard to constrain the first and the administration does little to reduce the second except to tell us that we need to keep taking in more students to make up for rising energy costs; that we need to do more with less; that we need to do less with less.

SA is a long way from being a Social Club, but it’s a long way from being a strong voice at this point. A lot of that is because there are so many people who want more ‘bargaining’ power. As many of us ‘boomers’ look at retirement, a contract that would include continuation of things like dental coverage would certainly be attractive. As well, having more ‘status’ if your job becomes redundant, and some more stringent hiring procedures for things such as contract positions would be attractive. Contracts, I believe, have hindered career paths for UW employees, and have also cost UW good employees who moved on, because they were on contract and wanted something more permanent.

A memorandum of agreement similar to the faculty’s is not going to happen. Administration has made that abundantly clear over and over and over again. It is not even a slight possibility.

Certification is a bit scary; but to me it is a lot more scary to become a certified stand-alone staff association such as WLU has, than to become affiliated with OSSTF.

There is no cure-all remedy, but we seem to be at a fork in the road. That’s for sure. We all have a lot to think about.

I have to agree with you on contracts but I would like to understand what people are working around in HR or why they feel they need to hire on contracts. Understanding it would help make sure the fix doesn’t make things worse. Secondments, a major issue that seems to behind a lot questionable contracts, are actually on the table now and the guidelines are getting a major work over.

As far as I am concerned until you exhaust internal applications replacing of secondments or maternity leaves shouldn’t head out to contract until they get down to the lowest possible USG in the chain.

I worry that any future of fixing career paths is threatened by splitting staff into two groups. I would imagine will be odd rules created if USG 1-8 are OSSTF and 9+ are not. It isn’t unusual to see rules like that.

…and yes self certification likely would never work. Not only scary but would likely also turn staff member against staff member.