- Week 4: Day 5

Moved, Motivated and Determined to REJECT


Greetings Colleagues,
Best Sheridan meeting I ever attended – and it was a union meeting!
What brought 400+ Faculty together on the first wintry night of 2017?
Union busting! Don’t screw with us!
Those of you who are not taking this seriously, you’re lucky we are. Join us!
And you – the College Employer Council (CEC) - Don’t tell us to get back to work until we vote! We are the voice of Labour. We voted already! Against you!
Don’t tell us what’s good for our students!
We know what’s best for their curricula, and how to deliver it!
We know that precarious contract work limits the human contribution to education!
It limits the human condition.
I know these are rough figures but they paint the picture! The Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Development (MAESD) is saving approximately $17,000,000 a week on our pay – for 500,000 Ontario students. Hmmm…$34.00 a week is all we spend on teachers for our college students? No wonder they can’t afford full-time hires!
We know the best way to evaluate learning – and it’s not about a cheap delivery!
Money should not be the bottom line for our children’s education!
We want the most important say in how we teach, evaluate and graduate!
What a croc of BS that a manager can change our marks!
No, we’ll tell you when conditions are right to get back to work!
It’s our calling! It’s our reason to be! Don’t tell us you, who have never taught a day in your life, know what’s best for our students!
Kathleen Wynne, don’t tell us you don’t want to interfere. The CEC is appointed by your Ministry! And you have nothing to do with it? I can’t wait to tell my students about it.
Take your politics and blow it through your windmills and gas plants.
Nine hundred and fifty-million wasted on canceled gas plants in Oakville and Mississauga, but not an extra cent for the college that educates and trains the college students in our own tale of these two cities.
Next week we vote!
We must show our students that we
Stand by our convictions against corporate abuse,
That we don’t cave in to cynical narratives of bottom lines,
That we know right from wrong is more than whose side you’re on,
That we are willing to sacrifice, that some things are worth it,
This strike might be the most important lesson we have ever taught,
If we vote NO. If we REJECT their offer. If we stand by our honour!
We were going to enlist more phone ePicketers. Too late, twenty signed up before they left tonight, and are going to work tomorrowand this weekend.
Write letters, make phone calls, if each of us who attended tonight gets one person to vote NO, vote REJECT, like us – we will be close to the 90th percentile delivering a REJECT by Sheridan,
Check out what our online picketers have been doing:
www.local244.ca - website
https://opseu.org/news/ - all the news that’s fit to read
The room we were in tonight is the room where Celebration Sheridan, honouring Sheridan employees, is held annually. Tonight, was the best and most important Celebration Sheridan ever.
Thank you, colleagues, Brothers and Sisters,
In solidarity,
Jack
P.S. Tony Tarantini captured my sentiments exactly in this cartoon – see attached.

Jack Urowitz,
President, OPSEU Local 244
Sheridan Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning
(905) 845-9430 Extension 2832
Union Office 4065