Across Ontario, the college support staff union has spent weeks bargaining with colleges. A total of 24 college union groups, known as Locals, are involved.

There are three areas support staff have been looking at during the bargaining process: wages, benefits and job security. Local President of the union for Fanshawe College Marg Rae described how the college is no longer renewing permanent positions, and is replacing them with temporary staffers. "We're looking at trying to focus on more good jobs and sustaining those good jobs," she said.

Fanshawe College President Dr. Howard Rundle said the statement is "absolutely not true. That's totally wrong. I don't think in the last five years we've had a year where we haven't increased the number of full-time support staff jobs, so that's just a nonsensical statement."

Jeff Sage, Manager of Marketing and Communications for Fanshawe, agreed that that doesn't seem to be the case. The Human Resources department told Sage that in the past three years, Fanshawe College has hired approximately 90 net new full-time service staff members, and plans to hire 30 more net new staffers in the 2011/2012 school year. "Typically, they wouldn't look to replace a full-time position with a part-time worker, it's not a good long-term strategy," said Sage.

The union has also raised concerns about the two-year pay freeze the Ontario government has imposed on support staff workers. "We see that to get the economy back up and running should not be put on the backs of public sector workers. We didn't partake in any actions that would cause the deficit," said Rae. According to Rae, the money saved by this pay freeze is to be used to create new jobs, but Rae said that isn't actually happening.

For Rundle, giving the support staff workers a salary increase would prove problematic for the college itself. "We have a letter from our Deputy Minister saying that they expect there to be no salary increase for two years, and if we do agree to a salary increase they won't give us the grant to cover it. So that makes it difficult: (that money) would have to come from the money we're getting now. So what are we going to cut in order to give a salary increase?" said Rundle.

Adding to the tensions of the bargaining situation is the alleged censorship of the union by the college. Rae explained, "In 2007 I, as Local President, sent out a communication to the membership about a manager that we had issues with. The college did not like the email." Rae was then suspended without pay for three days as Local President, and the union's local109@fanshawec.ca e-mail was removed, leaving the union with no official way of communicating with its 500 members.

Rae has recently been reprimanded for using her personal fanshawec.ca e-mail account for union purposes, resulting in the college allegedly threatening to remove her own e-mail as well. "It struck me as very funny because of the job that I do for the college; I'm a computer technologist. I look after nine computer labs," said Rae, concerned with how the removal of her e-mail will affect her ability to provide service to the staff and students at the college.

Sage pointed out that the faculty union created their own e-mail account, and though they have a local110@fanshawec.ca e-email, they prefer to keep their union business separate from the college by using their own account. "If there's some sort of sanction made with someone's email, typically they've violated an email policy," said Sage.

Additionally, Rae claimed that the college placed a note in her personnel file specifying that she is not allowed to leave the premises for union duties without prior permission from her manager, even though she is allotted 18 hours per week for union purposes. "We not only have London but Simcoe, Woodstock, Tillsonburg, St. Thomas and Citi Plaza (the downtown London campus), and to try to represent our members when they're refusing to allow us to leave the campus without prior approval, it's just nasty."

"We try our best to do the work that we do, but until, in my opinion, we have a change of leadership, this is going to continue. It's harassment and censorship of the Local — it's just out and out violation," said Rae.

She claims to have tried numerous times to meet with Rundle, but "he refuses to get involved. He won't even take a meeting with me, the leader of his support staff — 500 of his staff members," said Rae.

Rundle, however, had no recollection of a time where Rae tried to meet with him. "First of all, I'm not aware that she's asked me recently. I can't think of a single instance. She has an unfortunate habit of bringing to my attention things that I either know nothing about or that I'm not involved in — usually by e-mail, not asking for a meeting but asking me to handle something that I don't handle or that is being handled somewhere else in the organization," he said.

The support staff union has not had a strike in over 30 years, but just in case, the college has created a contingency team. "Basically, we all just get together and say, 'What's the best we can do to mitigate if there is a labour disruption? How can we still serve the students?'" said Sage, who advised students to continue on, business as usual. And if there is a strike, "Plan as if school's going to run and you're going to go to class, because that's what we're planning and that's likely what's going to happen … the contingency team will work to ensure there's as little disruption as possible for the students," he said.

Given the time-sensitive nature of the bargaining situation, visit fsu.ca/interrobang for updates on this story, and read our September 12 issue for a follow-up.