I had to get that last post out of my system. A little shouting does one good every once in a while. And today’s special meeting of AUFA was so invigorating that I had to shout about it, even if it was only in CAPS on my blog. The fact is that I have never been prouder to be a member of the Acadia University Faculty Association than I was this afternoon when the packed house reiterated the animating principle of this strike: “Nobody will be sold out.”
        After meeting with the BOG team for 5 days and getting nowhere, AUFA’s team decided to consult with the membership about a new strategy for negotiations. They could see no benefit to continuing on the current path. The BOG team has continually brought to the table packages meant to set us against each other. The question our team must have been asking themselves by the end of each protracted meeting was this: “I wonder who they’re going to ask us to sell out tomorrow?”
        It’s a great strategy when you think about it. Appeal to our dark sides. We all have them, after all. So make us an offer that will benefit a particular group at the expense of another group. It’ll probably have to be a group that has more power than any other, say full-time, tenured people. And once you divide us into self-interested factions, you conquer all.
        The problem with that strategy? We’ve already decided that it won’t happen. We’ve even told the BOG team that we won’t let it happen. But for some reason, they don’t seem to believe us. We’ve spent two weeks walking the lines, we’ve just begun our third, and we’re prepared for as many more as it takes. We get stronger — and more pissed off — every day we’re on the line and not in our classrooms. Yet people in the senior admin and on the BOG team seem to think that the majority of us would vote out of self-interest were we only given the chance.
        Apparently we’ve even had to tell some of the administrators to stay off our lines and stop trying to negotiate with our members directly. What amazes me about these direct interventions — as I understand them, actual breaches of labour law — is the fact that these people think they still have credibility left with the faculty. They must not understand that the stink accompanying their behaviour and this divide and rule strategy will stick with them forever at a small institution like Acadia. It’ll even stick with them after they retire or leave. Alternatively, it might just get some of them permanent positions in the senior admin.

        Today in the meeting, however, we said as loudly and as clearly as we could that we trust our team to uphold the principles animating our strike. And we endorsed their strategy.
        So here it is. The BOG team was given three options: 1. Sign off on our current proposals. 2. Agree to independent mediation. 3. AUFA will file for provincial mediation. We knew option number one wouldn’t fly, but we had to try. Apparently, they would have gone for option number two had we been willing to call off our strike. Yeah. Right. So, no surprise for me at least, the BOG team chose option number three.
        Why is this a step in the right direction? Well, mediators write public reports. While their findings aren’t binding on the parties, the actions and behaviour of the two teams will now become matters of public record. We should have no more verbal agreements one day, then no agreements the next. Mediators won’t let the BOG team get away with that. Nor will mediators let them get away with the asinine notion that they can punish us for exercising our legal right to strike (That’s the way one of our negotiators characterized their reaction to our suggestion that the $800,000 they have now saved from strike is almost exactly what we’ve proposed as an increase to the academic sector for the first year of the new collective agreement. Apparently that money would be better used on the football field.). Most importantly, however, mediators are actually in their positions because they understand how to mediate or bring opposing sides into agreement.
        Eventually, we were going to end up at mediation anyway, unless we caved. So there is no sense in waiting for the province to intervene when we know — no matter what the BOG and senior admin think, no matter how they soft-peddle their proposals through direct interventions — we will not be divided. Nope, ain’t gonna happen.

So it turns out that no news is actually bad news. Note the absence of quotation marks. No irony is intended except in as much as the standard phrase “no news is good news” requires some rejigging and inversion if you work at Acadia University. My guess, though, is that the BOG and their team won’t get the irony even after I’ve unpacked it for them. Because getting it — whatever “it” is — is not one of their strong points.
        So let me make it simple for them. Jim Sacouman, our chief negotiator, stood up at the front the Anglican Church Hall in Wolfville today. Behind him was his negotiating team. But behind them all was the united faculty of Acadia University.
        Nope. That’s clearly too complex and metaphorical for the BOG executive and their team. They won’t understand what “behind” means except in the anatomical sense. And they’ll only understand the word in that way because their heads are so familiar with their asses.
        So let me be a bit more specific.
        Jim was wearing a sign while he stood at the front of the hall. It was a sign that I have worn since last Wednesday, the day the AUFA and BOG teams went back to the negotiating table. That sign contains a simple message, but a clear one. It says, “Nobody will be sold out.” That is a commitment.
        Get it?
        No?
        I’ll make it even clearer:
        THERE IS NO IRONY INTENDED.
        WE ARE NOT JOKING.
        NOBODY WILL BE SOLD OUT!