Finally, the college teacher strike in the province was ended with both sides choosing the Final Offer Selection at the end of the 3 weeks long bargaining. 150,000 students at the 24 colleges got back to class last Tuesday.
Before the strike, no student was told that the strike would be lasted for so long. What they knew was that there would be nothing bad enough to worry about. Their teachers, the members of the teacher union, promised they would do their best to prevent them from any possibility of halt of semester as well the management of school. But soon the students wondered if they were the only people in this dispute who really cared about getting back to class and finishing their academic year.
There was a media blackout of the proceedings which were being aided by a provincial mediator. Many students had to get up at 7:00 am every day to check on line if they need to go to school. But actually sometimes the web pages were just updated after 10:00 am. The negotiators even hadn’t met for a couple days. It was not like they were overworked or met over the weekend. All this made a mockery of claims by all sides in this dispute that their first concern was the students.
The province government directly intervened in labor negotiations last year with the province’s elementary and secondary school teachers in order to arrive at four-year labor deals without a strike. Why wasn’t the same thing done in this case, if they were serious about arriving at a negotiated settlement?
Obviously they picked this time of the year simply to add the threat of spoiling the school year to give them more negotiating leverage, what was at the expense of the students’ future. The teachers asked for more money, less workload and smaller class size. For the sake of good education, they claimed. Ooh…let’s be honest. What exactly are we going to work for when we get out into the work force? Not peanuts, eh? Even though the teacher Pension fund is worth a cool billion dollars, sharing a 1.7 billion investment, the teachers’ offer would still boost salaries 12.6 percent up to 10,000 by 2009, ignoring the 90,000 offered by college association which was already the highest pay for college faculty in . How could they say it was nothing about MONEY?
Meanwhile, the strike has resulted in much financial hardship to many of the students. A lot of students who had already committed to full time summer positions may have to forfeit their jobs ‘cause the classes were made up. The loss of earning time results short of sufficient earnings to pay for next year’s tuition. Some had booked flights home basing on the regular schedule would lose their money as well those would end their rent contract at that time. How about the Parking Pass and Monthly Pass ? Were all these considered when some people were crying out loud the purpose of the strike at this point in the school year was to be good to students? Base on an average tuition of 1,800 each student pays for a 14 weeks semester, the 3 weeks strike all over the province just wasted more than 56 million dollars, and I firmly believe the tuition fee will be hiked up soon to support the raising salary.
Is class size really that important? One of my teacher, a leader of the union, complained that there are 76 students registered in his class although there were usually no more than 30 people showing up. But I think he also knows that in many universities there are some teachers end up with classes of more than 100 students. Does he think that the teacher of college is superior to that of university? I like small class too, but I don’t think it would be an excuse for strike. If you fail your class it’s your fault but not the size of the class. In fact this professor was still so excited when he came back to school and stood before the blackboard in the first class. He told us that in the past 3 weeks there were some people called him every day with the words such as “lazy bastard”, “mother fuck”, “asshole”, etc. His three relatives were studying in college, and they told him “Take your head out of your ass”. But he was still working hard around the picket line every night to prevent anybody crossing it. He’d not shaved and been losing sleep for weeks, but did worry about his students during whole the strike…hold on, my hero, do you know 20 minutes have passed already? The next class he didn’t show up – the class was cancelled, no explanation, and nobody knew that before the class.
Now let me tell you something about another teacher. Just the day the school reopened, I tried to ask him some questions about the assignment after class. He said, “Why you didn't ask that in class?” I said, “I know some people finished it already. I don't want to waste their time.” “No, you should do that so every body would benefit from that.” In the next class, he announced, “I don't like you to ask questions after class or in my office. You should do that in class.” Bullshit! When we want to see a teacher, we have to make an appointment by email but not phone call, and there would be not so much “office time” you can chose(besides class time, many teachers would have only 4-8 hours “office time” a week). But if a teacher doesn't want to talk with you, s/he can just says, “I have another class.” Come on, man, to be a teacher, you must first have the ability and desire to share your knowledge. The second, you must be willing to spend time figuring out how to best get your information across, which including being available to help those need it. THIS IS YOUR JOB! That guy should be ashamed of himself! If you don't want to say you would enjoy knowing some students fail their courses, for the lack of graduates, my point is this problem goes back to the method of teaching and the amount of time spent by a teacher to ensure that a student understands everything they need to, to the incompetent so call professors the college hired.
Don't think students like to stay at home so figure they were happy with the strike. The students are in college because they want to be, because they choose some programs they want. I agree the union is entitled to strike, and it is an efficient way to get what they want. But they’d gone too far this time. It made me sick when they sugared coat it saying for better education. The union should not be for slackers purposefully.
Pardon me? What do I think about this strike? Well, I screwed up, they suck.
I do apologize for my language.
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