All recent news postings are listed here in reverse chronological order. The 'About' tab leads to more info on how to use this site.
You can also follow us on twitter and facebook.
SPRING FACULTY SOCIAL 2012
Please join us for a Faculty Social hosted by the Langara Faculty Association on Thursday, March 1, 2012 from 3:00 - 5:00pm in the Employee Lounge.
All faculty members are cordially invited to join in welcoming new colleagues and catching up with each other. New faculty will receive a complimentary glass of wine or beer.
Beverages and hors d’oeuvres will be served.
Amy Kwan (local 5343)
Langara faculty, staff and retirees:
Friday, December 16, 2011
Bar - 4:30 pm (free admission)
in Employee Lounge
Dinner - 6:30 pm
in Student Cafeteria
Tickets are now available at the College Reception. If you wish to make a reservation, please contact Amy Kwan at akwan@langara.bc.ca or 604-323-5343.
Staff - $5.00
Guest - $25.00
(while quantities last)
Dance & Music provided by a new band, ‘The Epics R&B’ will start at 8:00 pm.
Tickets go fast, please join us for a fun evening on Dec 16th!
This year the LFA Presidents’ Bar & Christmas Dinner will take place on Friday, December 16, 2011. Bar will start at 4:30 p.m. and dinner will be served at 6:30 p.m. For those faculty members who have not attended this event before, this is in fact an annual Christmas gathering solely funded by the Langara Faculty Association to offer an opportunity for all College employees to get together and have fun during this festive season.
Please mark your calendar first and more information about ticket sale will follow.
The Langara Faculty Association will be hosting a Fall Social to Meet our new faculty and Greet our continuing faculty as we are approaching the mid-term.
ALL faculty members are welcome to join us on Thursday, November 3, 2011, from 3 - 5 p.m. in the Employee Lounge. Hors d’oeuvres and beverages will be served.
With compliments of the LFA, new faculty members who are present at the Social will enjoy a FREE glass of wine/beer.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/africa-mideast/canadian-journalist-dorothy-parvaz-released-by-iran/article2026095/
Langara Faculty Association members voted 85% in favour of ratification of the memorandum of settlement.
Faculty can vote on the tentative settlement on Monday, May 16th and Tuesday May 17th, from 10-4, in the LFA office, Room A212.
All LFA members are invited to a membership meeting on Friday May 13th at 2 pm in A130 to discuss details of the settlement reached yesterday. Please check your nonLangara email for info
Following a flurry of discussions this morning, the LFA is calling an end to the current job action.
Effective immediately, the “withhold final grades” job action is lifted.
All faculty will be submitting official final grades no later than 1200 noon Wednesday April 27.
The bargainers are working to set additional dates to finalize the details of negotiations.
Talks Break Down at Langara College
Vancouver, BC –
Lynn Carter, President of the Langara Faculty Association, announced today that negotiations between Langara College management and the Langara Faculty Association have broken down.
“We are no longer at the table,” Carter said.
“Our members need a guarantee that if there is a change in the government’s zero mandate, the Langara Faculty Association will benefit from that change.”
Carter concluded: “we need to protect our members, but the college will not give us that protection. This is the only outstanding issue and is the single item preventing us from reaching an agreement within the zero mandate.”
Langara faculty have been withholding final grades since April 8. Carter refused to confirm that faculty will submit grades by the deadline of noon April 26.
– 30 —
For further information, contact Lynn Carter at 604 323 5895
The bargaining team is back at the table with the College this morning. A General Membership meeting has been scheduled for Thursday, April 21, 2011 at 9:00 a.m. in A130. Please plan to attend.
Those of you with exams on Saturday might want to advise students that the Vaisakhi parade will be happening from 11 am to 5 pm resulting in a number of road closures.
The City is closing the following streets to accommodate the parade:
• westbound traffic on Southeast Marine Drive, from Ross to Main Street
• Main Street from Marine Drive to 49th Avenue
• 49th Avenue from Main to Fraser
• Fraser Street, from 49th to 57th Avenue
• East 57th from Fraser to Ross
• Ross Street from East 57th to Southeast Marine Drive.
The parade draws a large number of spectators (approximately 50,000 people are expected to attend) and moves very slowly. The area around Main Street, from 49th Avenue to 53rd Avenue, becomes extremely congested, as do the surrounding side streets.
Residents and commuters are advised to use alternate routes.
The Annual General Meeting of the Langara Faculty Association will be held on Thursday, May 5, 2011 at 12:30 p.m. in Lecture Hall A130. Agenda packages will be distributed to faculty prior to the meeting.
Following the AGM, the Retiree Social will be held in the Employee Lounge and presentation will begin at 2:00 p.m. This year, retired or retiring faculty members include the following:
Alan Cooper (Math)
Judith Neamtan (Library)
Tim Higgs (Chemistry)
Ariadne Bursewicz (Anthropolgoy)
Zenobia Turnbull (Langara School of Business)
Craig Curtis (Langara School of Business)
Cheryl Nobles (English)
So far Alan, Tim, Ariadne and Judith have confirmed that they will attend the Social on May 5th. We look forward to seeing more retiring faculty members at the event. Please plan to join us. All staff and faculty are welcome. Refreshments will be served.
To:
Paul Faoro (President, CUPE local 15)
Lynn Carter (President, Langara Faculty Association)
David Ross (President, Langara College)
We received the following letter from the LSU and wanted to share it with all faculty.
This letter has been approved and supported unanimously by the Langara Students Union Board of Directors on April 11th 2011
The Langara Students’ Union is deeply concerned with the current state of affairs at Langara College. This letter is meant to express the concerns of the Langara students. We respect the wishes, rights and needs of the College Board, the Langara Faculty Association and CUPE local 15.
We the students ask that the College Board, the LFA and CUPE local 15 keep the well being of the students in mind at every opportunity and with every decision made. We ask that the utmost care is taken to ensure that neither our academic nor financial efforts are in any way damaged. We fully appreciate and support the rights that the LFA and CUPE 15 have to job action and strikes. We also fully appreciate and support the College Board in its continuing effort to conclude these issues.
We require that our academic endeavors continue uninterrupted pursuant to the contractual agreement we enter when we pay tuition. This means that all submission of grades, administration of exams and classes needs to remain uninterrupted. Other academic institutions, employers, family and friends rely on the consistency and reliability of Langara College and its students. If any part of our semesters’ integrity is compromised, the negative effects on the students will be broad and prolonged, not only in their academic and professional endeavors, but in their finances as well. Tuition is very expensive and none of the students can afford to have any of that money misused.
Please consider that we the students stake our livelihoods on your decisions and take them with the utmost seriousness and respect. We ask that every precaution is taken to eliminate all possible negative effects of any and all actions by the College Board, the LFA and CUPE local 15.
Thank you for your time,
Sincerely,
Eli Zbar, Board member at Large/ Media Liaison (ezbar@lsu.bc.ca)
Over 9000 Langara College students and the Langara Students’ Union board of directors
In response to a number of questions about what to tell students about the LFA’s “withhold final grades” job action, here are some suggestions.
1) Please remind students that you are withholding final grades only. These are the grades you would submit using the online Banner class list. Final grades are not due until noon April 26.
2) You may tell students what their grades are, final or otherwise, if you wish. You can use Blackboard to communicate grades, or can use the Course Tools email system.
3) If students have questions, ideally we’d like them to contact Board Chair Dennis Dineen (boardchair@langara.bc.ca) or College President David Ross (davidross@langara.bc.ca). However, you are welcome to clarify that this job action affects final grade submission only.
4) Your Bargaining Team felt strongly that disrupting exams by striking would have a much greater negative impact on students than withholding grades would — particularly if this job action strategy has the desired effect of getting some engagement from the college bargainers.
VIU and the VIUFA have reached a tentative agreement. Classes will resume Tuesday.
There is very little information available online, though you can link to the VIUFA facebook page from their website: http://www.viufa.ca/
We will post more information as it becomes available.
Because bargaining is still going nowhere and we have heard nothing from the College to encourage us that any movement is forthcoming, the LFA bargaining team and executive board have decided that faculty will not submit final grades until further notice.
Do not complete the online grade submission form or in any way submit grades for any of your classes until you hear from the LFA.
Your LFA bargaining team: Fraser, Maureen, Cheryl & Julia
At a well-attended meeting Wednesday April 6, LFA members voted unanimously to honour a CUPE picket line in the event that CUPE Local 15 members take strike action.
Faculty members had a number of questions regarding the implications of honouring a CUPE picket line, including the following:
• What do I do if I arrive to work at Langara and there is a picket line?
Your collective agreement protects you from being disciplined when you do not cross a legal picket line. There will be an LFA representative available to speak to.
• If I do not cross the CUPE picket line, will I be paid?
No. The college will assume that any faculty member not reporting for duty is respecting the CUPE line and will dock pay for the duration of the strike.
However, LFA members have agreed to a modified version of the strike pay plan, which all members respecting the line will receive.
• Should I be doing my marking or other work while CUPE is on strike?
Respecting a picket line is not the same as striking ourselves. However, if you are doing college work while respecting the CUPE line, you will be working for no pay.
• What should I tell my students?
If you respect the CUPE picket line and wish to advise your students that you are doing so, you certainly may. The college will not pay you for this work.
• I teach online. Should I continue working?
Again, if you are working, on or offline, while respecting a CUPE picket, you will not be paid for your work.
• I’ll be doing PD or other non-instructional duty very soon. If CUPE strikes, will I be paid if I respect their picket line?
No. The college will not pay faculty members who do not cross the CUPE line. Here is an excerpt from the memo the college sent to all employees on March 10:
Should job action commence during the week of March 7th, 2011 and beyond, all striking Faculty will be deducted pay with the following exceptions:
1) Faculty currently on pre-approved off-site PD, or on vacation, as identified by the appropriate Dean.
2) Faculty on pre-approved leaves provided the leave was approved prior to March 7th, 2011
3) Faculty who report to work and sign in at the Reception area in “B” building while the college is being picketed.
• What happens if CUPE strikes during final exams?
If you respect the CUPE picket line, the college will have to make other arrangements for your students to write their exams (if necessary) or otherwise enable students to complete the semester once the strike ends and we go back to work.
As always, please contact a member of the bargaining committee or the LFA office (5343) if you have questions.
Fraser Archibald (5285), Julia Denholm (5802), Maureen Maloney (5071), and Cheryl McKeeman (5429).
We received the following message from a representative of the Langara Social Justice Club and re-post it with their permission and our thanks.
Just wanted to let the LFA know that the Langara Social Justice club got 175 students to sign a new letter of support for both CUPE 15 and the LFA. We have given them to the president’s secretary. The text is below.
To: davidross@langara.bc.ca, boardchair@langara.bc.ca
Subject: End the Job Action – Give the LFA and CUPE their Demands!
Dear David Ross, President, Langara College, and Dennis Dineen, Chair, College Board:
I am a Langara student, and I am outraged at your refusal to negotiate with the Langara Faculty Association (LFA) and CUPE 15. Needless to say, the college could not operate without its staff and faculty. They are what make Langara the great place that it is.
It is unacceptable that you are trying impose a wage freeze. Factoring in inflation, a wage freeze is a pay cut. With record enrollment and increasing tuition fees, you should be improving the college by lowering tuition fees, shortening lengthy wait lists and raising wages. If there are tens of thousands of dollars for a new logo and over $700,000 for new administrative positions, there must be something for the rest of the Langara community.
The CUPE 15 and the LFA have each spent about a year bargaining with the college, and getting no where. Despite this fact, our faculty and staff are doing their job, and doing it well. Now it is time for you to do your job and negotiate a fair agreement with both unions. In order to be great place to learn, Langara must first be a great place to work.
As a Langara student, I want you to reach a fair and equitable collective agreement with the LFA and CUPE 15 very soon in order to ensure that there are no more learning disruptions at Langara.
Sincerely,
YOUR NAME
This just posted to the Langara College Facebook page:
STUDENT-STAFF SOLIDARITY - the Langara Social Justice Club will be collecting signatures on solidarity letters in the main hall at Langara College on Tuesday April 5th from 11:30 - 12:30.
Thank you from the LFA, Social Justice Club!
LFA President Lynn Carter was interviewed for the Global TV Noon News during Thursay’s information picket.
Please attend an important LFA membership meeting:
Wednesday April 6, 4:30 – 6:30 in room A130.
Langara Faculty Association president Lynn Carter reported on the status of negotiations at the March 31, 2011 College Board meeting. Below is the text of her message.
Thank you very much for this opportunity to report to the Board.
As you may know, the LFA is bargaining with the College right now, and things are not going well.
Faculty have asked me to tell the government-appointed members of the College Board that the time has come for our Board to step up. We expect you to advocate on behalf of this College, both to government and to your respective constituencies, to bring a satisfactory resolution to this bargaining process.
You have approved the Strategic Plan, and the Strategic Plan is based on respect for the employees at this institution. I have to say that the bargaining process has, so far, not been respectful. Not the people; the process.
Bargaining is all about Faculty and Employer needs. We are not refusing to discuss the Employers’ needs, but the Employer -- that’s you -- has refused to discuss ours. We have been told “our hands are tied.” We have been told “we cannot discuss cost items.” We have been told, “the ‘mandate’ is zero and zero.” We have been told “no” to any discussion of any substantive demands we have brought to the bargaining table. This is not a respectful bargaining environment.
Langara College faculty members and support staff have already stepped up. We have a record number of students and are operating at over 104% efficiency.
We know that there is money in the Langara College budget. We have new administrators, new branding, and flashy new signage. We expect the College Board to step up and unlock the budget to allow Langara employees to bargain freely, fairly, and respectfully.
We expect the College Board to step up and lobby on the College’s behalf so that their own bargainers have the ability to bargain without resorting to excuses like “our hands are tied.”
We expect College Board members to step up and demonstrate their commitment to Langara College faculty and staff, all of whom are dedicated to maintaining this institution’s reputation as the leading undergraduate college in British Columbia.
We expect the College Board to step up, and we expect you to step up now.
Please attend the College Board meeting tonight at 6:00 p.m.
The meeting has been moved to the gymnasium to accommodate the crowd the College apparently expects, so let’s not disappoint them!
Over 200 faculty distributed 6000 leaflets to students this morning while participating in an information picket outside the College. The information picket was the first job action whose main purpose was to help students understand the issues that have led to the labour unrest at Langara.
LFA members were joined by many CUPE 15 colleagues, including CUPE 15 president Paul Faoro, staff rep, Kathy Currie, secretary-treasurer Leanne Toderian, and local executive member Reba Noel.
It was also encouraging to have members of the Langara Students’ Union come out to show their support.
Vancouver South MP Ujjal Dosanjh joined the information picket, promising to call College president David Ross to discuss the state of the stalled contract negotiations.
Students coming onto campus were overwhelmingly supportive and eager to learn more about the dispute between the faculty and the College. Many students also expressed interest in attending tonight’s College Board meeting.
Huge thanks to all of the picket captains, and all the faculty who participated, including many who came in from holiday or non-instructional duty.
We are looking forward to seeing many of you this evening at 6:00 for the College Board meeting, which has been moved to the gymnasium.
The results of the CUPE 15 strike vote are in: 83% in favour! See the news release http://www.cupe15.org/langara-college-members-vote-yes-strike-action:
We are with you, CUPE 15!
please be sure to check your off-campus email
We received the following letter to David Ross from the student who wrote it, and are sharing it with his permission. Thank you, Michael!
Dear Dr. Ross,
Langara College is an excellent educational institute not because of the new library or the new computer labs or the flashy new Langara signage, or any of the other numerous facility upgrades that have been completed in the past few years, but because of its people.
Langara’s students should consider themselves privileged to learn from such a committed group of knowledgeable instructors that genuinely care about student learning.
I have a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Education from UBC and could take my courses there but instead I choose to attend Langara and it’s because of them.
The faculty at Langara are more the foundation of the college than the brick and mortar of its buildings. They bend over backwards to help their students and it is time that they be recognized for their efforts.
I realize that government involvement is a limiting factor but you are in a position to articulate to those in government just how important your instructors are to your institution. So stand up for your faculty because without them your institution isn’t worth the dirt that it is built on.
Sincerely,
Michael Crickmer - current science student
Congratulations to Noel Currie who has been acclaimed as the new LFA VP. Noel’s term will start after the LFA Annual General Meeting (scheduled for Thursday May 5th at 1:00 in A130)
The BC Fed is holding a rally this Saturday April 2 at Peace Arch Park in support of workers in Wisconsin. FPSE is helping to organize representation by members of BC’s labour movement.
For details, see the BC Fed’s announcement: www.bcfed.ca/weareone
This morning, March 29, at 8:00, Lynn Carter (LFA president), Dan McDonald (VIUFA president), and Frank Cosco (VCCFA president) held a press conference at the LFA strike headquarters. Below is the text of Lynn Carter’s presentation. You can also see photos from the event on the LFA Facebook page.
Thank you all for coming this morning.
We asked you to our strike headquarters to announce our commitment to work together to try to reach satisfactory Collective Agreements at our institutions.
The Langara Faculty Association is in solidarity with the Vancouver Island University Faculty Association. What happens at Vancouver Island University has consequences for both us and for the Vancouver Community College Faculty Association.
The LFA, VCCFA and the VIUFA all face similar problems: our employers are refusing to bargain freely with us.
Our employers claim that everything that is important to our faculty members has a cost attached to it, so they are not allowed to bargain those items.
Our College president, Dr. David Ross, is the elected Chair of the Post- Secondary Employers’ Association.
The PSEA is the bargaining agent for our sector.
As PSEA Chair, Langara College president David Ross is in a unique position to assist the other College and University administrations to reach satisfactory Collective Agreements with their faculties.
David Ross is in a leadership position and must lobby government for the needed flexibility to enable negotiators to resolve the bargaining stalemates at Langara and VIU.
VIUFA has been on strike for almost 3 weeks.
At Langara we have had one job action: we withdrew our services for 2½ hours on Friday March 25.
It’s clear that in order to make anything happen at the bargaining table, we will have to increase the pressure and work co-operatively in our efforts to bring about fairly negotiated collective agreements at our institutions.
The Langara Social Justice club has prepared a message for students to sign and send to College President David Ross and Board Chair Dennis Dineen. The text appears below.
For more information contact langarasocialjustice@gmail.com.
Thanks for your support, Social Justice Club!
To: davidross@langara.bc.ca , boardchair@langara.bc.ca
Subject: End the Job Action – Give the LFA their Demands!
To David Ross and Dennis Dineen:
I am a Langara student, and I am outraged at the college’s stalled
negotiations with the Langara Faculty Association (LFA). The college
is operating at over 100% efficiency and has record numbers of
students, yet all of the LFA’s demands are being met with a “no”. It
is also appalling that even though inflation is at 2.4%, any demands
for pay increases in order to restore professors’ standards of living,
not advance them, are also being met with a “no”.
As a Langara student, I have paid the college to provide me with
educational services, which includes negotiating a satisfactory
collective agreement with the LFA. I do not believe that college has
done anything thus far to prevent job action from occurring or to
protect me, as a paying student, from disruptions to my learning.
Saying “no” to the LFA’s demands is not negotiating. I want the
management of the college to actually negotiate a satisfactory
collective agreement with the LFA. What are you doing to ensure that
Langara faculty members are able to fairly negotiate a faculty
agreement?
Langara is facing a funding freeze from the government. What are you
doing to put pressure on the government on behalf of Langara college?
Despite the funding freeze, Langara does have money. The fall 2010
semester saw more students than ever before attending Langara.
Why did Langara spend $50 000 on rebranding during this same semester?
Rebranding the college, when your student population is already at an
all-time high, does not seem necessary in the face of more grievous
concerns, such as underpaid faculty members. More importantly, why is
there $750 000 available to hire new administrators but not to improve
learning conditions for Langara students? Education is the central
service the college offers; the allocation of college resources should
reflect education as the college’s key priority. In order to be great
place to learn, Langara must first be a great place to teach.
I stand in solidarity with my professors, and I support their right to
job action in the absence of any meaningful progress in negotiations.
The quickest and least disruptive way that Langara college can deal
with this job action is to give our valued educators all that they
demand. As a Langara student, I fully expect the management of the
college to reach a satisfactory collective agreement with the LFA very
soon in order to ensure that there are no more learning disruptions at
Langara.
Signed,
YOUR NAME
Images captured by LFA member Karyn Eisler. Thanks Karyn!
According to Donna Petri, TRUFA President, all post-secondary librarians province-wide have decided that they will not assist VIU students when they make library requests that involve access to resources that would have required VIU student registration.
Bravo (more accurately, brava) to the librarians!
CUPE Local 15 has announced it will hold a strike vote Wednesday March 30.
Footage from the VIU Board of Governors meeting Thursday March 24. VIUFA Chief Steward Dominique Roelants can be seen at the beginning serving Board members with a defamation suit.
The Board Chair demands taping of this “private” meeting be stopped (the meetings, like Langara’s, are public). Watch to the end to see a government-appointed Board member refuse to acknowlege the CHLY reporter.
The Langara Faculty Association bargaining team met with representatives of the College today. Although we are making some progress, it remains clear that the employer is unwilling to depart from the “net zero mandate” and therefore is not open to discussing any demands that might be perceived to have a cost.
Today, the LFA Board sent $500 to support the VIUFA in their strike. The VIUFA has been on strike for two weeks.
![[+]](wp-content/images/menu_tree_openit.gif)
