Video: Sex work and sex workers

I’m currently working with a subject matter expert to develop and launch a course about sex work and sex workers (LBST 415). I'd guess we are about a year from launch, but who knows. In the interim, this video does a nice job of introducing the topic of sex work (specific to the UK).

 -- Bob Barnetson

55 picket Athabasca U’s contract stalling

On Tuesday, 35 members (including 10 first timers!) and 20 allies of the Athabasca University Faculty Association (AUFA) picketed an Athabasca University meeting at the Matrix Hotel in Edmonton. This was AUFA’s fourth information picket and we ran out of signs!

The purpose this picket was to show AUFA members’ continued displeasure with AU’s foot dragging at the bargaining table and that a work stoppage will result in both operational disruption and reputational harm. Passersby were handed leaflets outlining AUFA’s concerns.

AUFA and AU are scheduled for two days of informal mediation on June 17 and 18. AUFA’s most recent settlement proposal is:

• a two-year wage freeze,
• a clear process by which long-serving term employees become permanent, and 
• two further years of waged to be negotiated (and resolved by arbitration).  

This proposal is broadly consistent with other provincial settlements as well as the settlement recently reached between AU and its support staff.

The Board of Governors bargaining team has stalled bargaining since May 2018. It delayed the exchange of proposals, it advanced unreasonable proposals (that it has since abandoned), and it has been unavailable to bargain multiple times for periods of up to two months. It has also stalled the negotiation of an essential services agreement (which is a pre-cursor to formal mediation).

AUFA appreciates the participation of members and/or representatives from the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, the Confederation of Alberta Faculty Associations, the MacEwan University Faculty Association, and the NorQuest College Faculty Association who joined our picket line this afternoon.

-- Bob Barnetson

Athabasca remains non-compliant with OHS Act

Creative Commons:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/pasukaru76/5105427484

Last fall, Athabasca University (AU) failed an occupational health and safety (OHS) inspection and was issued several compliance orders. Many of the requirements AU violated came into effect on June 1, 2018, after legislative changes were passed in late 2017.

The more substantive compliance orders were:

• The employer could not provide proof that workers are aware of their rights and duties under the OHS Act, Regulations, and Code, breaching s. 3(1)(b) of the OHS Act.
• The employer could not provide proof that a new worker orientation or other safety training is provided to workers, breaching s. 3(2) of the OHS Act.
• The workplace violence prevention plan (policy and procedures) did not meet the requirements of Sections 390.1 & 390.2 as required under Section 390 of the OHS Code.

In April, AU was still not compliant with these requirements. AU is apparently in the process of hiring a training vendor so OHS extended that order deadline to July 28, 2019.

AU’s experience with the OHS regime suggests several things:

1. Even large, sophisticated employers with dedicated OHS staff don’t necessarily comply with the law unless the law is enforced. AU had plenty of warning of these changes and took no action to comply until the faculty association complained to the government. Absent a complaint, AU would likely have remained noncompliant.
2. OHS basically won’t enforce the OHS Act. Instead, it issues orders and grants employers extensions. AU’s joint OHS committee was told by the employer co-chair that, even if AU missed the July deadline, AU will just get another extension. Absent government consequences for violations, there is effectively no law. Which maybe helps explain Alberta’s high level of workplace injury and death.

AU may, of course, just be stalling in the hope that the UCP government rolls back worker safety rights in the spring session. Overall, AU’s behaviour on OHS is clearly contrary to AU’s espoused “I-Care” values of integrity, adaptability, and respect.

-- Bob Barnetson

National workplace fatalities and injury report

Sean Tucker and Anya Keefe (University of Regina) have again released a national overview of occupational fatality and injury rates in Canada. This report usefully aggregates national data, with 2017 data being available. 

Looking at fatality numbers, we see that Alberta had highest number of injury related fatalities while Ontario had the highest number of disease-related fatalities.

When fatalities are corrected for population size (fatals per 100,000 full-time workers), Alberta continues to have the highest rate of fatalities caused by injury among provinces with more than 100,000 workers. (Both Saskatchewan and Alberta have seen further increases in 2018.)

Looking at fatalities caused by occupational disease, Newfoundland and Labrador lead the way in 2017 (9.1/100,000), followed by Alberta (4.5).



Looking at lost-time claim rates, Manitoba lead the way in 2017.


Alberta’s historical rates are displayed graphically below.

One of the challenges noted by Tucker and Keefe is the limited quality of the injury data (derived from rolled up WCB stats) and the need for better metrics. There is, of course, also a need for more effective prevention activities.

-- Bob Barnetson

Athabasca hides cost of bargaining

Athabasca University is refusing to divulge how much money it was spent driving bargaining with the Athabasca University Faculty Association (AUFA) to impasse.

The university’s unwillingness to quantify the costs of its behaviours suggests that those costs are high. An estimate would be along these lines:

Activity	Cost/Day	Days	Cost ($)
Bargaining	$6800	20	136,000
Preparation, ESA, Misc Litigation	$6800	20	136,000
Communications Consultant	n/a	n/s	10,000
Total			282,000

These are intentionally conservative estimates and include lawyer costs and staff time. I’d be happy to publish the actual number if AU wants to make it available.

That AU has spent nearly $300,000 to reach impasse is pretty galling, given that the provincial settlement pattern is obvious and this could have been wrapped up in two days of bargaining last summer.

$282k is a lot of money and could have been used to: 

1. Waived tuition and fees on a course for more >400 undergraduate students,
2. Hired three additional professors or professional staff,
3. Provided decent and free meals for graduates at convocation, or
4. Provided a $700 signing bonus to all AUFA members.

 Attempting to frame AU’s profligate spending on bargaining as being done with the “utmost respect” for the bargaining unit and for students is transparently false.

I look forward to seeing the results from the impending climate/engagement survey that the university is planning on doing. Twenty bucks says they are worse than last time, when only 25% of staff had trust in senior executives.

-- Bob Barnetson

Day of mourning; Why do workers keep dying?

This past Sunday was the annual day of mourning for workers who were injured or killed on the job. The Alberta Union of Provincial Employees hosted a ceremony on Friday the 26th and asked me to say a few words.
__

One of the things we don’t usually talk about at the Day of Mourning is why these workers—our friends and partners and our parents and sometimes our children—died on the job.

We don’t talk about that because, maybe, it’s kind of gauche. Or it feels a bit disrespectful.

But we should talk about it. We should talk about why they died because that’s the starting point if we want to protect the living. So that next year we’re mourning fewer workers.

So why did 162 workers die—and tens of thousands of others get terribly hurt—on the job last year in Alberta? And why does that happen every year?

In part, it’s because our employers organize our work unsafely. Basically, they’re endangering us. They put hazards in our workplaces that they know can injure and kill us.

How many of you routinely face understaffing? So you have to handle a patient or a client or a prisoner or a project by yourself. When really there should be two or three of us doing that job.

In the private-sector, employers understaff to make a buck. It’s the profit imperative: their trading our health—and sometimes our lives—for money

In the public-sector, it’s a little different, right? We face understaffing because there is no political will to pay the true cost of public services. So the costs get offloaded to us. We see it in the form of wage freezes. And we see it in the form of hiring freezes.

Hiring freezes and understaffing that they create translates into injury and sometimes death for public-sector workers. In effect, our bosses and Alberta politicians they report to are trading our health to minimize public expenditures so they can cut taxes for corporations and for the wealthy,

Even more frustrating, the government let’s our employers injure us. The inspection cycle in Alberta workplaces is roughly once every 17 years---and that’s way better than it has been historically. And, despite hundreds of deaths and thousands of injuries each year, the government prosecutes fewer than 20 employers each year.

So if you’re an employer thinking about ignoring safety rules because they’re a hassle or whatever your excuse is, you know there’s almost no chance you’re going to get caught. And if you do, there’s almost no chance of a consequence. You’re just gonna get told to follow the law.

And that an insane way to enforce laws that protect people’s lives. It doesn’t work and we have 162 examples of that here today. Maybe we figure that our fellow government workers—Alberta’s health and safety inspectors—are likely doing the best they can.

And, you know what, probably true. They are doing the best they are, given the circumstances. But what needs to change are those circumstances.

It needs to be unacceptable to injure and kill workers in Alberta. Not “oh, that’s too bad” unacceptable. It needs to be “well, you’re going to jail.”

So how do we get there?

We can start by demanding that every workplace gets inspected at least once every five years. It’s really the least the government can do.

We can demand inspection reports get publicized—just like food inspectors publish their inspection results—so we know which employers don’t care about our safety.

We can demand employers get fined for every violation that puts a worker in danger.

And we can demand that employers who injure and kill us go to jail.

These are the things we could do to prevent workers from dying in this next year.

Achieving those things requires concerted effort by workers. And it requires political courage—something that no Alberta politicians because we don’t take them to task for their cowardice. But we should.

-- Bob Barnetson

AUFA pickets Board Chair's place of business

This afternoon, 20 members and 4 allies of the Athabasca University Faculty Association (AUFA) picketed the place of business of Athabasca University (AU) Board of Governors (BoG) chair Vivian Manasc. This was AUFA’s third information picket. We had 12 first-time picketers, including one who said "Is it a little weird that this is the only time I get to meet my colleagues?"

The purpose this picket was to show AUFA members’ growing displeasure with AU’s foot dragging at the bargaining table and demonstrate that, should a work stoppage occur, it will be most unpleasant for individual BoG members. Passersby were handed leaflets outlining AUFA’s concerns.

The most interesting part of the picket was an interaction with a worker from Manasc Issac who, while walking through our picket line, volunteered that we should go picket the workplace of AU President Neil Fassina because he is the one who is calling the shots in bargaining. This is the first independent verification we’ve of our suspicion that Fassina is the architect of AU’s bargaining strategy. 

This picketed coincided with AUFA’s 20th (!) day of bargaining. AUFA’s most recent settlement proposal:

• a two-year wage freeze,
• a clear process by which long-serving term employees become permanent, and 
• two further years of waged to be negotiated (and resolved by arbitration). 

This proposal is broadly consistent with other provincial settlements as well as the settlement recently reached between AU and its support staff.

Bargaining was halted after two hours this morning because the employer, who requested the additional session, had no meaningful proposal to make when AUFA got there.

The BoG bargaining team has stalled bargaining since last May. It delayed the exchange of proposals, it advanced unreasonable proposals (that it has since abandoned), and it has been unavailable to bargain for long periods of time. It has also stalled the negotiation of an essential services agreement (which is a pre-cursor to formal mediation) and has now stalled informal mediation until mid-June.

The next dates for bargaining appear to be June 17 and 18 with a mediator. AUFA will be hosting more picketing events between now and then.

AUFA appreciates representatives from CUPE 3911, the Edmonton and District Labour Council, and the Confederation of Alberta Faculty Associations who joined our picket line this afternoon.

-- Bob Barnetson