Media release: More than 95% of the members of the Dalhousie Faculty Association have voted to reject the offer made by the Dalhousie Board of Governors during conciliation last week.
“When our faculty lack the support needed to maintain a reasonable work-life balance and implement effective virtual learning, our Board and Executive team have a fiduciary responsibility to step up and support them. Instead, the Board is largely ignoring our faculty and trying to mess with their benefits, just like they ignore students and increase their tuition year-after-year,” writes Noel Guscott, a student at the university.
Conciliator-led talks between the Dalhousie Faculty Association (DFA) and the university’s Board of Governors have failed, which means that in roughly two weeks time faculty members could be walking the picket line. We talk with DFA president David Westwood to understand the issues.
A group of researchers from Acadia University are studying work and health during COVID-19 through the experiences of grocery and retail workers, long-term care workers, and teachers in Nova Scotia. Although the study is ongoing, the preliminary findings offer insight into the daily struggles of Nova Scotia’s retail and grocery workers, teachers, and long term care workers, as well as the pandemic’s impact on their mental health and stress levels.
Conciliation between the Dalhousie Faculty Association and the Board of Governors has failed. “While today was the first of two days scheduled for conciliation, we reached an impasse this morning,” says DFA President David Westwood. “The Board presented their best offer, and they have not moved on a few critical issues related to our pension that are unacceptable to our members. At a time when the university needs everyone working together, the Board is choosing to push our members to the brink.”
There is something rotten in the state of NSCAD, and the rot is centered at the top. It is a Necrotizing fasciitis that takes root and grows in the dark, and the time has come to shine some sunlight upon the problem.
An overwhelming majority of members of the Dalhousie Faculty Association are willing to go on strike if the university’s Board of Governors doesn’t compromise on its current bargaining stance. “We’re still not sure why this is the year they’ve chosen to try to force through these changes, other than that they don’t believe we have the strength to fight back because of Covid fears. To try to take advantage of the pandemic in such a way is just terrible,” says David Westwood, president of the faculty association.
Questions around the relationship between the spread of Covid and class sizes caused these mathematics professors to run some simulations. The model made a very surprising prediction: as class sizes go up, the negative impacts of COVID-19 go up exponentially faster. The worst scenario, by a wide margin, was the 30:1 ratio in the primary school setting.
Collective bargaining at Dalhousie University has reached an impasse, and the Dalhousie Faculty Association (DFA) has filed for a provincially-appointed conciliator.
School has started, but it’s not too late for governments to listen to the experts (teachers, medical professionals, parents) and make plans to transition to smaller classes now before a second wave hits us and forces us to shut down schools entirely, writes Molly Hurd.