Toronto Substitute Teachers Action Caucus
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18 Reasons Why Substitute Teachers Want Change in December:
During the current telephone outreach to members leading up to the Toronto Occasional Teachers' Bargaining Unit General Membership Meeting on Tuesday, December 7, 4:30 p.m. at 60 Mobile Drive, we have been receiving enormous feed-back indicating that many folks are very troubled about the current situation in the OTBU.
Members are especially concerned about the lack of jobs and the lack of basic union democracy. It's clear that many members are planning to attend the December 7 meeting. Many will speak out there. Most are looking for a major change of direction.
Substitute teachers are very critical of the current OTBU President and her Executive. Many will demand the resignation of Jennifer Mills and her Executive for the following reasons:
1. For taking no apparent action on the jobs and income crisis that many OTBU members are suffering. For apparent indifference to membersí plight, and for ignoring reasonable demands that the secondary OT dispatch list be frozen immediately and reduced to under 1200 names.
2. For refusing to address the very poor distribution of daily and LTO teaching opportunities. For failing to try to correct a situation in which teachers with pensions are obtaining a disproportionate share of the available OT jobs at the expense of veteran and young teachers who have no pension or other income.
3. For engaging in collective bargaining (which Jennifer Mills initiated by a super-early request for provincial OSSTF take over of local bargaining) without holding an open meeting where members could elect negotiators, or freely discuss and vote on contract issues and priorities.
4. For arbitrarily changing the purpose and agenda of the Collective Bargaining Committee meeting scheduled for September 21, and for the arbitrary cancellation of the Sept. 21 and October 4 CBC meetings.
5. For the exclusion from OTBU standing committees, from health and safety and labour council representation, and from other OTBU positions, of members who applied to serve but who happen to be critics of the present Executive and opponents of the 2003-2004 Trusteeship. For appointing to all and sundry OTBU positions only supporters of Liz Barkley's ìNew Visionî slate.
6. For conducting Executive and Standing Committee meetings in secret, and refusing to make available the Minutes of those meetings, and failing to publish any schedule of Executive and Committee meetings.
7. For failing to publish the results of the contract issues membership survey, which was conducted by mail in September, and which was done with short notice and a very short deadline.
8. For refusing to answer many telephone and e-mail inquiries. For failing to establish and make known regular OTBU office hours when members can expect to get a live response to phone calls, or when members can visit the OTBU office so as to be able to get immediate professional assistance.
9. For gross political abuse of the newsletter -- employing it to attack members, to argue in print against membersí resolutions, without giving equal space (or any space) to the members concerned to argue for their ideas, or to reply to personal and political attacks. For disseminating libelous and misleading information.
10. For refusing to publish all submitted constitutional amendments, and for refusing to publish the rationale for same, while at the same time publishing in the newsletter Jenniferís polemical attacks on members' proposed amendments.
11. For violation of OTBU Bylaw 3 concerning the membersí petition, submitted on August 17, 2004, requesting that a General Membership Meeting be convened in October. Holding a General Meeting four months after members petition for one is a violation of the intent of the Bylaw and is grossly disrespectful of rank and file members.
12. For establishing the Toronto OTBU office in a private, residential high rise building, in a non-central location, which is inconvenient and distant to the subway system. For putting the office behind a building security system that makes the OTBU office inaccessible to members, except the executive and its invited guests.
13. For convening OTBU membership meetings and social gatherings at 60 Mobile Drive, a non-central location, which is inconvenient and distant to the subway system.
14. For apparent failure to investigate or to do anything about the growing use of unqualified personnel in place of qualified substitute teachers in the secondary schools of the TDSB.
15. For failing to treat respectfully and failing to come to the aid of members seeking assistance when the TDSB dispatch system went down on November 1, 2004.
16. For violating the privacy and confidentiality of members by distributing the entire Toronto OTBU membership list (replete with names, addresses, phone numbers, employee identification numbers and retiree/non-retiree status) to a large number of people including non-members.
17. For providing information about collective bargaining to friends of the OTBU Executive, and to non-members, and failing to provide the same or any information about bargaining to the general membership.
18. For continuing to tax each OTBU member fifty cents each day we work in the form of a "Special Levy", which generates $45,000 a year on top of rebated dues, despite the OTBU having over $100,000 in reserve and in unspent budgeted funds in the bank.
Please share these 18 reasons for change with your fellow substitute teachers and friends.
Now, please confirm now that you will attend the General Membership Meeting on Tuesday, December 7, 4:30 p.m. at 60 Mobile Drive.
And please vote for our candidates for the OTBU delegation to AMPA 2005. They are:
Qaisar Alam
Diana Blauzdziunas
Janine Carter
Tian Ming Chen
Brian Gilbert
Howard Kwan
Navot Sass
Presented by the Toronto Substitute Teachersí Action Caucus
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