admin – Dawson Teachers' Union

October is Halloween month, but no horror movie is quite as scary as the massive budget cuts that the CAQ government has imposed on the cegep network.

You may have already heard that 50% of the capital budgets of all Cegeps was cut over the summer with very little warning. As the Director General informed the community in the Memos sent earlier this semester, this led to the halting of much-needed renovation projects as well as a freeze on the purchase of new equipment such as computers, library books etc

Now, in the sequel, the government has announced a hiring freeze for any personnel not providing direct services to students. The hiring freeze, which was announced only a few days ago, will come into effect on November 1st.

Once again, Colleges have been given little time to react or adjust to these cuts which will have devastating impacts on our educational mission.

As part of a network-wide protest, the DTU is joining with the other employee unions and the Dawson Student Union to denounce the government’s position. On Halloween, we hung large blue squares at both the Sherbrooke and de Maisonneuve entrance to protest the budget cuts – we encourage teachers to join us in wearing a blue square to show your opposition to the cuts.

THIS ISSUE

Budgets slashed across the cegep network
Check your Seniority
Important Changes to Insurance Coverage
Staffing Courses in French
Leave Deadlines
Retirement Seminar
Scholarity Attestations
CI Violations
CSN Campaign – Vraiment Public
Save the Date!

The DTU Executive

Louisa Hadley, President
President@dtu.qc.ca

Brian Seivewright, VP Internal
VPInternal@dtu.qc.ca

Mélanie Beck, VP External
VPExternal@dtu.qc.ca

Antonia Fikkert, Secretary-Treasurer
Secretary_Treasurer@dtu.qc.ca

Emilie Richer, Grievance Officer
grievanceofficer@dtu.qc.ca

Administrative Assistant
Elisabeth Leone
Elisabeth@dtu.qc.ca

DTU email: dtu@dtu.qc.ca

In addition, we are launching a social media campaign called #RIPmonCegep with pictures documenting the dilapidated state of our facilities. We encourage you to take pictures of broken furniture, unfinished or unclean rooms, computer labs with no computers in and anything else that you can think of that demonstrates that public education is in dire need of investment, not cuts!

Post your pictures to social media with the hashtags #RIPmonCegep, #fightforourcegeps and #onselèvepournoscégeps and tag the Treasury Board President Sonia LeBel (Facebook page: “Sonia LeBel, députée de Champlain à l’Assemblée nationale”) and Minister of Higher Education Pascale Déry (Facebook page: “Pascale Déry – députée de Repentigny à l’Assemblée Nationale”) as well as your local MNA.

You can also send your pictures to dtu@dtu.qc.ca if you would like them to be included in a compilation of pictures that we will be posting on the Dawson Teachers’ Union Facebook Page.

Check Your Seniority

On October 15th, the College sent out the Seniority List, which includes the seniority accrued in the previous three semesters (Fall, Winter, and Summer). There is a period of 20 working days for making corrections, after which the list becomes official and is used as the basis for assigning work until the next seniority list is published.

The College’s memo indicated that they have made an error in the calculation of seniority for some Continuing Education teachers which resulted in them being incorrectly attributed with additional seniority. The College has stated that it will communicate directly with the individual teachers involved. If you have received a message from the College regarding this and have any questions, feel free to reach out to dtu@dtu.qc.ca.

It is important to verify your seniority as soon as possible; if you think your seniority has not been correctly credited, you should contact the DTU. The deadline for corrections to be made is November 12th.

Important Changes to Insurance Coverage

There have been some important modifications to the insurance policy recently which will impact both your coverage and your premiums. There are substantial reductions to the coverage in module A, although module B and module C will also see reductions in coverage. We urge you to consult the info-insurance to understand the changes to your coverage and premium, in particular if you are currently covered by Module A. The info-Insurance is available in French and English .

As a reminder, we are self-insured, albeit with a small employer contribution that was a recent negotiation gain. Consequently, any increase in the costs of medications and services needs to be covered by the premiums collected from those enrolled in the insurance plan.

During the month of November, you have the opportunity to make changes to your insurance coverage, such as changing your module and/or opting in or out of dental insurance. Note that a decrease in coverage is only possible after the teacher has had the same coverage for 3 consecutive years. Changes will take effect on January 1st, 2025. Exceptionally this year, teachers will have the right to switch from Module A to Module B even if they have been enrolled in Module A for less than 12 months. If you wish to alter your plan, you should contact benefits@dawsoncollege.qc.ca in Human Resources.

Staffing Courses in French

As the implementation of Law 14 continues, many departments will begin offering courses in French as of Fall 2025. Since the staffing plans for these courses will be prepared next semester, the DTU is collaborating with the College to ensure that departments are best informed as to how to staff these courses.

Our new Collective Agreement includes an entente that aims to establish transition measures to protect teachers’ employment and working conditions, facilitate their francization and permit an equitable implementation of the law.

The agreement addresses how courses in French will be distributed within a department. As a basic principle, the instruction of courses in French is seen as a collective responsibility of the teachers in a department. Furthermore, teaching loads within a department are to be distributed equitably, taking into account language proficiency. The idea is for French courses to be distributed in such a way as to minimize situations where teachers will have their teaching loads reduced because they do not have sufficient proficiency in French. This may mean that teachers who have a certain French proficiency are required to teach courses in French, at least in the short term. There are also some temporary measures to protect the seniority and priority of teachers who are assigned a course in French but do not possess the proficiency required to teach it.

The DTU and the College will be holding joint information sessions for department coordinators on the following dates:

Monday, 18 November, 10:30-12:00; Boardroom (5B.13)

Thursday, 21 November, 15:30-17:00; Boardroom (5B.13)

Tuesday, 26 November, 14:30-16:00; Boardroom (5B.13)

All teachers are welcome to attend.

Leave Deadlines

Professional Development Leave – November 15th
Under the new Collective Agreement, there is now a strict deadline to apply for a professional development leave. The deadline to apply for a leave for the Winter semester is November 15th. The application form is available on the College website.

VWR – November 15th
If you wish to apply for a Voluntary Workload Reduction for Winter 2025, the deadline is November 15th. To be eligible, teachers need to have a full-time workload for the year and three years of seniority. You should email hrfaculty@dawsoncollege.qc.ca to submit your request. We suggest that you copy the DTU on this email at dtu@dtu.qc.ca.

Retirement Seminars

The DTU will be holding a retirement seminar – see the information in the image below. Please register if you plan to attend to allow us to plan.

If you are unable to attend the DTU seminar, there are several other retirement seminars that will be taking place this semester:

FNEEQ is offering an online seminar on November 20th. Although the seminar is in French, there will be an opportunity to ask questions in English.
Beneva is also offering online retirement seminars in English on November 27th and in French on December 10th.

We will be sending out more information to all members about how to register for these events soon.

Scholarity Attestations

Whenever a new teacher is hired, or a previously hired teacher gains additional education, they need to submit the relevant documents to the College so that an attestation of scholarity can be produced. This attestation has an impact on the echelon at which teachers are paid.

After you have submitted all of your documents, it usually takes about 90 days to receive the official attestation. However, once you receive the attestation, we encourage you to contact the DTU if you have any questions or concerns about it. There is a 60-day time-frame in which attestations can be contested, so it is important that we verify there are no issues as soon as possible.

CI Violations

In recent years, many teachers have commented that the number of students in their courses seem to be higher than previously. Last year, we noticed that more teachers than usual had annual CIs above 85, and none of the teachers we communicated with had given their informed consent. We reminded the College that it cannot assign a workload above 85 CI to a teacher without first getting the teacher’s consent, even if the above-85 CI workload is initially only based on projections.

Heavy workloads can generate extra stress on faculty which may have a detrimental impact on our students’ learning environment. Although teachers are paid a “CI violation bonus” whenever their CI exceeds 85, this does not compensate for the additional work. Moreover, since the excess CI is usually a result of increased student numbers in sections, this has a negative impact on student learning and could mean that fewer sections are being opened which generates less work for other teachers in the department.

Although it is the College’s responsibility to ensure that teachers are informed when they are assigned a workload above 85 CI, we recently communicated with all coordinators to ask them to keep an eye on the workloads of teachers in their departments.

If you are assigned a workload that is projected to be above 85 CI, we ask that you contact the DTU as soon as possible. In addition, it is important to keep track of the number of students registered in your course, particularly at the beginning of semester, as additional students in your course can lead to your CI exceeding the 85 CI threshold. As a reminder, you can use the CI calculator to estimate your CI.

CSN Campaign – Vraiment Public

The CSN’s Vraiment Public campaign aims to raise awareness about the impact of increasing privatization in health care and social services. The campaign argues that no-one should be making a profit on sickness, and that the government needs to put a stop to privatization and invest in public services to enable them to meet the needs of the public.

So far in 2024, 744 physicians have opted out of Quebec’s public health insurance system, compared with just 12 doctors in all of the rest of Canada. Closer to home, a new private clinic has recently opened in Alexis Nihon.

The campaign’s newsletter, available in both English and French , includes more information both about the need for this campaign as well as ways to participate. In particular, the CSN is organizing a rally in Trois-Rivières on November 23rd – if you are able to attend, you can register using the QR code in the newsletter.

Save the Date!

Note: the DTU’s annual party celebrating new perms and retiring teachers will be held at the end of semester in May 2025.

Owl Hoots 570

Posted on August 27, 2024November 1, 2024 by admin

IN THIS ISSUE

Law 14 Petition
Upcoming Events
27 Pays – Permanent Teachers
Salary Increases and Retro
French Language Training Release
Student Accommodations and Issues DTU By-ElectionsPARC Activities are now free!

Law 14 Petition

As announced at the DG’s Welcome Assembly, the DSU has launched a petition to exempt Indigenous Students from Law 14 which will be presented at the National Assembly by Jennifer Maccarone – MNA for Westmount-Saint Louis.

To learn more about the impact that Law 14 will have on Indigenous students, you can hear them speak about it in their own words in the following video produced by the anglophone Cegeps.

We encourage you to add your name to the hundreds who have already signed to show your support for our Indigenous students. You can sign the petition here anytime before September 30th.

27 Pays – Permanent Teachers

As a reminder, this year there are 27 pay periods; the College sent out a Memo about this on May 28th. As a result, permanent teachers received an “advance” pay for the period August August 4th to 17th; this “advance” is then spread out over the remaining 26 pays. This is represented on your pay statement as 62.5 hours per pay period. However, it is important to note that permanent teachers earn an annual salary; they are not paid hourly, and the hourly rate that shows up on the pay statement is merely used for administrative purposes. The bottom line is, the annual salary remains the same and thus teacher remains the same (i.e. 32.5 hours per week).

The other impact of 27 pay periods is that there were no deductions for RREGOP or Union dues on the pay of August 15th. The deductions for these resumed as of the current pay period and the annual deductions will be spread over 26 pays.

Salary Increases and Retro

Although the Collective Agreement was signed on June 9th, faculty are still waiting to see the impact of our hard-won salary gains.

Before the faculty vacation period, the College had informed the DTU that they intended to implement the new salary scales as soon as possible; however, in an email sent to all faculty in the summer, the College stated that the new scales and the retro pay will only be implemented on the pay of September 12th.

The Collective Agreement allows for a delay of up to 120 days for Colleges to pay out the retro salary; while faculty at some other Colleges have already received their retro, Dawson’s decision to pay it out on September 12th falls within the deadlines allowed for. FNEEQ has developed a calculator that allows you to estimate the amount you should receive in retro payments for the period of April 1st 2023 to June 9th 2024. (Note: this calculator only works with the latest version of excel, for example using Office 365 available on Omnivox.) The calculator does not include the significant sum of retro pay for the period of June 9th 2024 to Aug 30th 2024.

The salary increase should have come into effect on the date the Collective Agreement was signed, but faculty have waited almost three months for these increases. The Union has filed a grievance on the delay and has informed the College that we expect to receive interest for the period from June 9th to September 12th. The College has not yet confirmed whether it will pay the interest. We hope that it will agree, but if not we will explore the options to pursue this through legal channels.

In addition, for those who were on contract with the College on July 1st but not yet at the top of their salary scale, there should have been an echelon increase on July 1st. It appears that the College has applied the echelon increase on this week’s pay (August 29th). If you have received two separate pay statements for this pay period, then you have most likely received the July 1st echelon bump; the second pay statement corresponds to the retro for the echelon bump from the period of July 1st to August 16th (inclusive). The College has not included any interest with this retro payment; we will be filing a grievance and asking that the College pay the interest for the period July 1st to August 30th. Note that this is not the full retro that you will receive since the College has still not applied the main salary increase. Moreover, if you would normally go up an echelon at the start of the academic year due to your experience accumulation, you will have advanced two echelons. Since the “second” echelon only comes into effect in mid-august, there is no retro associated with this.

You can consult the new salary scales on our website.

French Language Training Release

To assist teachers with the transition to teaching courses in French, English Colleges have secured some funding from the government. The College and the Union have collaborated on a process to distribute these resources so that teachers can be released to take a recognised French course.

Information regarding the application process was recently sent out to all faculty. The release is intended for teachers who need a little additional support in developing their French language skills so that they can be ready to teach their discipline courses in French starting in Fall 2025. If you are in a department that will be providing courses in French as of Fall 2025 and you require some training to elevate your French skills, we encourage you to apply for the release. The application form is available on Omnivox under “What’s New”; click on “1 survey or vote not completed” and it will bring you to a link for “Application for release for French-language training”. The deadline to apply is Monday, 16 September 2024, at 5:00 p.m.

Student Accommodations and Issues

SAAC Accommodations
You may soon start receiving notifications from Student AccessAbility regarding accommodations for your students. While the College has a legal obligation to ensure that students who have a documented condition receive accommodations, the nature of the accommodations should be determined in consultation with the teacher. If there are specific accommodations that are not viable in the context of your course, you should discuss alternatives with either the student or the SAAC Pedagogical councillor listed on the accommodation.

Recordings
Recently there have been some instances of student accommodations requesting that the student be permitted to take photos of or record the class. If you have concerns about this from a privacy or health perspective, we would encourage you to go back to the SAAC Pedagogical counsellor to request an alternative accommodation be found. If no alternative can be found, you can reach out to your Sector Dean or HR to inform them of the issue; you should also copy dtu@dtu.qc.ca.

Absences and make-ups
As announced by the Academic Dean (Aug 21, 2024 Student Memo – Absences of less than five days) teachers can no longer require medical notes for absences of less than 5 days. As of this semester, the College has implemented its own internal system for students to report an absence due to illness for which they are requesting an accommodation. This new process has two important implications for teachers.

Firstly, if a student for whom you received an “Absence Declaration” notification is present in your class, you should inform yoursector Dean. It is important that the College is aware of these situations to correct any issues that arise from the implementation of the new procedures and to avoid possible abuse.

Secondly, teachers may experience an increase in requests for accommodations, particularly for missed in-class assignments or tests. While there is an expectation that we would accommodate students, this does not necessarily mean you need to write a new test or assignment for the student.

You can provide an accommodation in whatever way seems appropriate for your course; for instance, you could add the weight of the missed assignment to a later assignment, you could choose to exclude the weight of the missed assignment from the overall grade calculation (in cases of small assignments), you could ask the student to do a similar but different assignment or task that addresses the same competencies.

In situations where the accommodation does require you to write a new test or assignment for the student, we understand that this involves additional work. A certain amount of this type of work falls within the bounds of what is considered a reasonable part of our workload; however, if you find that the number of requests and the amount of additional work required is excessive, we invite you to contact your Sector Dean to discuss the situation and keep us informed.

Student Behaviour Issues
While we hope that you won’t need it, if you experience issues with a student’s behaviour that are disruptive to your teaching, you can ask a student to leave the class. In addition, if you feel the situation warrants it, you can send an email to studentbehaviour@dawsoncollege.qc.ca and Student Services will follow up with the student regarding their behaviour.

DTU By-Elections

The DTU will be running a by-election to fill a vacant seat in the Senate for the Medical Technologies as well as for the five vacant seats on the Executive Council: Medical Technologies, Social & BusinessTechnologies, Arts Technologies, Retirement Committee Coordinator, and Social Activities Committee Coordinator.

The Senate takes decisions on academic matters that directly impact teachers, so it is important to have representation from all sectors of faculty. Senate meetings are usually held once a month at 4pm on Tuesdays in semester time.

The Executive Council is an important decision-making body of the DTU and directs the operations of the DTU Executive between General Assemblies. The Executive Council meets once a month at 4pm on Wednesdays in semester to discuss issues that are important to DTU members.

The nomination and election period will be announced in an email to all faculty towards the end of September. If you would like to know more about any of these positions, feel free to reach out to dtu@dtu.qc.ca.

In addition, the College has sent out a call for nominations for members to Senate committees. It is important to have faculty representation on these committees. If you are interested in joining any of the following committees, we encourage you to contact Cathy Giulietti:

Institutional Student Evaluation Policy (ISEP); Institutional Policy on the Evaluation of Programs (IPEP); Academic Planning Committee (APC)

PARC Activities are now free!

The College’s Campus Recreation offerings are now free for all employees! You can sign up for group classes such as pilates, yoga, circuit training and Wing Chun Kung or simply to use the gyms. Registration is available online through MyDawson (under Student Services).

Owl Hoots 569

Posted on June 11, 2024June 12, 2024 by admin

IN THIS ISSUE

Important message for non-permanent teachers

Final Grades

Collective Agreement Signed!

Imporant Reminders about your Pay

Faculty Vacation – Transfers of Availability

DTU Office Summer Hours

As always, the DTU Executive invites you to drop by the DTU office in 8A.11. We can answer questions regarding workloads, seniority and priority, schooling and work experience documentation, and anything else related to working at Dawson. In particular, before turning down work we encourage you to come and discuss the implications with us. We always recommend copying us into communications with the College so that we can help to make sure that your rights are protected. You can also call us at local 1799, or email us at dtu@dtu.qc.ca with any questions.

Important message for non-permanent teachers

We urge non-permanent teachers to ensure that they have read the information sent by the College regarding the procedures for accepting and refusing workloads, particularly with regards to the deadlines. You can find this information in the email “General offer of Service and Teaching Workloads – Acceptance and Refusal Procedure” sent by the College on May 10th, 2024. In addition, we encourage you to consult the DTU before you refuse any future hiring priority. Teachers who would like to learn more about seniority, priority, and workload distribution are welcome to stop by the DTU office in room 8A.11, or to send us an email at dtu@dtu.qc.ca.

Final Grade Deadline

The deadline for all teachers to submit final grades is June 11. This deadline is the same whether you teach day courses or Continuing Education courses, and whether or not your course includes a final exam in the final examination period.

Collective Agreement Signed !

As announced by email at the end of last week, the new Collective Agreement has been signed and is now in effect. We wanted to take this opportunity to once again underline all the hard work that allowed us to make such gains – not only the work of the negotiation teams, but also all of you who mobilised and picketed as part of the Common Front.

The salary increases are effective immediately and we have asked the College to ensure that the increases are applied as of the date of signature. However, the College has informed us that the increases will not be reflected on the pay of June 20th.

For the retroactive salary, the College will have 120 days from the date of signature to process the retro pay, which brings us to early October. However, we anticipate that the College will begin processing the retro pay sooner than that. For those who have retired or no longer work at the College, the retro pay will take longer to process; we will reach out to these people when we have more information.

We intend to send out more information in the Fall regarding some of the other important changes to the Collective Agreement.

Important Reminders about your Pay

As a reminder, you will see some differences in your summer pay this year. Below is a very brief summary, but we encourage you to consult the Memo that the College sent on May 28th, 2024.

Strike Reduction
Due to the strike in Fall 2023, our salary was reduced and thus there will be a corresponding reduction in vacation pay. Our vacation pay is calculated as 20% of our earnings, so for teachers who were full-time in Fall 2023, the deduction will be equivalent to 20% of 8.5 strike days (i.e. 11.05 hours). For teachers who were not full-time in Fall 2023, the deduction will be proportional to your workload. We expect the College to process this deduction on the pay of June 20th.

27 Pays
For the academic year 2024-2025, there will be 27 pays. As a result, permanent teachers will receive an “advance pay” for the period of August 4th to August 17th, which will then be recouped on each of the subsequent pays. Non-permanent teachers will have a two week gap in pay between August 4th and August 17th.

Faculty Vacation – Transfer Availability

For teachers with a day contract or a Cont. Ed. charge, and who are not teaching in the Summer, the last day of availability for this academic year is June 13. The vacation period is from June 14 to August 18, inclusive. Teachers are expected to be available to the College until the vacation period begins. Although the nature of our work alters after classes end, teachers are expected to be available to attend meetings, if required. For full-time teachers, availability is 32.5 hours per week. For part-time teachers, availability is proportional to the workload. Teachers who wish to be unavailable to the College prior to the beginning of the vacation period, or after the start of availability but before classes begin in August, can request a transfer of availability. You need to complete the form provided by the College in advance of the period you are transferring. Note that the form asks what activities you propose to make up for the period of unavailability; you do not have to provide too much detail here. It is sufficient to indicate something along the lines of “course prep” or “departmental work”.