Reflections on the U of L a year after strike/lockout
By Lethbridge Herald on March 21, 2023.
DANIEL PAUL O’DONNELL
Today marks a year since the end of the University of Lethbridge’s first-ever strike and lockout.
I am the president of the University’s Faculty Association and I was our main spokesperson during those troubled times.
Something I am asked often is whether anything has changed.
It’s a good question.
The job action at the U of L came almost two years after our last contract had ended.
As with all universities in the province, some of the disagreement involved finances. And the provincial government was using a secret mandate to make it difficult for us to find the kind of tradeoffs that normally resolve labour disputes.
But there were also internal problems more specific to the U of L. At the University of Alberta and Mount Royal, two of our provincial cousins, negotiators were also stuck on financial questions. There, however, management had used the previous two years to build trust by settling dozens of other non-financial issues. At the U of L, in contrast, we were able to settle only three, relatively uncontroversial, items during this same period. In many cases, U of L management simply refused to discuss — let alone find ways of reaching agreement on — employees’ suggestions and ideas.
Once the strike and lockout started, things got worse.
The Board of Governors, who had threatened to make sure any work stoppage would last a long time, refused to enter into substantive negotiations with us for almost three weeks. They hired an external security company to install cameras and track the comings and goings of employees and students. They refused to cooperate even on trivial things like finding a safe location for picket-line port-a-potties. One national leader told me that he had not seen such aggressive behaviour in at least 20 years.
Eventually cooler heads prevailed. In the fourth week, the lawyers began to talk about mediation. After another ten days or so, we were able to meet. And four days after that, we had a deal — an agreement that was quite similar to the deals other universities had managed to reach, except in their cases without reputation-damaging job action.
And so, after all that bitterness, what’s it like now?
The answer is “so so.”
In some cases, we have seen real improvement. During negotiations, the Board had what they called a “hell no” list of things they refused to discuss. A year later, almost all of these have been settled. We’ve become better at resolving grievances, and some members of the senior administration are taking a new, more cooperative approach to working with our Members.
But we should not underestimate how much damage has been done. A recent survey of academic staff at the U of L discovered that large majorities continue to feel their work is unappreciated, unsupported, and undervalued. Universities are, by definition, institutions that depend on the creativity of their teachers, researchers, and students. An organisation in which as much as 60 per cent of the people responding to a survey say they are feeling undervalued is still facing an existential crisis.
Addressing this problem is going to require much deeper change. For too long now, we have operated as if academic staff and students cannot be trusted to address serious issues on campus. Money and decision-making have been centralized around an ever-shrinking number of people. We have become cautious and bureaucratic where others have been bold and ambitious. Core values are treated as unaffordable luxuries. Our reputation has been badly damaged.
The next year offers an unparalleled opportunity to reset things. We have a new board chair, will have a new president, and are searching for four deans and a provost. Rarely has the U of L seen so much change in its management in such a short period of time.
And this, I think, is the biggest difference since last year. The sense of hope that, perhaps finally, we can put the failures of the past behind us and rediscover our sense of purpose. Our members are bursting with ideas and our students want to learn. The job action renewed faculty engagement with students, community, and other unions in the city. Let’s take this opportunity to rebuild the U of L as a national leader in public, research-focussed, liberal education.
Daniel Paul O’Donnell is president of the University of Lethbridge Faculty Association and a Professor of English at the University of Lethbridge. The opinions in this piece are his own.
20-19
It is always a two way street. Being militant is the easy part for either side. Seems like the adults got involved and figured this out. In every situation there will always be those that are satisfied and those that are not. Those that are not happy in their situation can always look elsewhere for a “better” line of work.