IN THIS ISSUE
DTU Election 2024-2025
Upcoming Leaves Deadline
General Offer of Service (G.O.S) – Deadlines for Accepting Workloads
Important message for non-permanent teachers
Professional Experience
Collective Agreement and Salary Increases
Hiring Committees – French requirement
Impact of New “drop” Deadline
Double Employment – Department
Faculty Vacation – Transfer of Availability
CSN Campaign: Vraiment Public
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.
DTU Elections 2024-2025
The DTU recently held the elections for 2024-2025: all candidates were elected to their positions. We would like to take this opportunity to thank those who ran for election – it is important that we have faculty representation from across the College in the various decision-making forums. We would also like to thank all those who volunteered to help with the elections, whether by taking a turn at the ballot box or counting the results.
If you would like to find out more about your representatives, check out “Your Union” on the DTU website or stop by the DTU office.
Upcoming Leaves Deadlines
If you plan to apply for a leave or a reduced workload for next year (2024-2025), below are brief details regarding eligibility and deadlines. For more detailed information, please consult the table on our website.
To be eligible for a Voluntary Workload Reduction, faculty must have a full-time workload for the (upcoming) year and 3 years of seniority. If you intend to apply to reduce your workload for either the Fall 2024 semester or for the entire academic year 2024/2025, the deadline is May 15th. Furthermore, if you wish to take an entire semester off through this leave, you will need to apply for an annual VWR and submit your request prior to the May 15th deadline.
Note: Currently there is no deadline for an application for the Professional Development Leave; however, the upcoming Collective Agreement will bring in a deadline of May 15th to apply for a leave for the Fall semester.
Permanent faculty can apply for a sabbatical plan. While there is no official deadline, the College requests that faculty apply as early as possible.
The application forms for these leaves are available on the College website. Please contact us if you have any questions regarding leave options.
General Offer of Service (G.O.S) – Deadlines for Accepting Workloads
As was the case last year, the College and the Union have reached an agreement to have an “automatic” General Offer of Service (G.O.S.) process for the coming academic year. This means that non-permanent teachers do not need to complete a form to exercise their priority for workloads for the coming academic year.
The College sent an email on May 10th containing more detailed information regarding the process; however, we wanted to highlight some elements regarding the deadlines for accepting workloads.
Workloads for an Upcoming Semester
When you receive an official offer of a workload, you will have 10 calendar days to either accept or refuse the workload. Refusing a workload does not remove your priority for workloads that subsequently become available.
However, for the two-week period before the start of a semester (i.e. the first day of class), you will have to respond to an offer of a workload within 48 hours. The College will send an email to notify all teachers when this period starts.
Workloads during a Semester
During a semester, teachers will have 5 working days to either accept or refuse a workload that is offered for the semester in progress.
It is important that all non-permanent teachers check their email regularly to ensure that they do not miss an official offer of a workload.
Important message for non-permanent teachers
We encourage you to consult the DTU before you refuse any workload you have been offered. Refusals can have a substantial impact on your 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.
Professional Experience
The salary scales, for both Regular day and Continuing Education, take into account both education and experience. The teaching that you complete at Dawson is automatically counted towards your professional experience at Dawson; however, if you work at another cegep, you will need to provide them with documentation of your experience at Dawson. The evaluation of professional experience is done locally and not shared between cegeps.
Similarly, if you work elsewhere (whether for another cegep or any other form of employment) you need to submit updated professional experience documents so that HR can evaluate whether it impacts your pay.
We encourage you to regularly update your professional experience as it can happen that a small amount of additional experience is sufficient to allow a teacher to advance an echelon in pay.
If you have any questions about professional experience, you can contact hrfacutly@dawsoncollege.qc.ca, or reach out to the DTU at dtu@dtu.qc.ca.
Collective Agreement and Salary Increases
To date, the new Collective Agreement has still not been signed and there remain several issues regarding the specific wording of certain clauses. At the most recent ASPPC meeting, which brought together the FNEEQ and FEC unions that were negotiating together, an action plan was adopted to put pressure on local administrations to advocate for the texts to be finalized.
Recently, the negotiation team informed unions that the two sides (union and government) are getting closer on agreeing the final details of the text of the new Collective Agreement. It is hoped that it will be ready and signed by the end of May.
The new salary scales will come into effect shortly after the Collective Agreement is signed. Note that there may be a slight delay for the scales to be entered into payroll. For the retroactive salary increases, the College will have 120 days from the signing of the Collective Agreement to process the payments.
Due to the strike in Fall 2023, our salary was reduced and thus there will be a corresponding reduction in vacation pay. The College will be sending out a Memo with more details about this soon.
Hiring Committees – French Requirements
Faculty involved in hiring committees over the last year or so may have noticed that HR have started asking candidates a question in French. While this provides helpful information, particularly in the context of the implementation of courses in French starting in Fall 2025, it raises some concerns about equity and diversity.
The need to hire faculty who can teach in French is not the same for all disciplines. The College recently sent a memo about Faculty selection committee criteria. The College stated that French will be added as an “asset” in all faculty hiring criteria, but that it is not a requirement for all faculty positions given the differing needs of disciplines.
We encourage your department to review the results of the College’s recent survey to analyze the needs of your department. Factors that should be considered include the number of sections in French that your department will be offering as well as the competency and willingness of current faculty to teach those courses. It is important to try to ensure that there is a sufficient “pool” of faculty who can teach in French so that it does not fall to the same few members of the department to teach in French for the rest of their careers. Note also that it is hoped that there will be development opportunities for faculty who are interested in teaching in French but do not feel they quite have the required competency as yet.
It is also important to ensure that candidates that are invited for an interview are informed that they will be asked a question in French as well as the relative importance of that question for your discipline. This information should be communicated to candidates by the Sector Dean’s office.
Impact of the New “drop” Deadline
You may have seen in the media that the Ministry of Education is implementing a new “drop” deadline for all cegep students starting in Fall 2024. We have heard from a few members who are concerned about the possible impact on teachers. While it is not yet possible to predict the impact on student behaviour, below is some information regarding the more immediate impact for faculty.
What is the new drop deadline?
The idea is to introduce a second, additional date by which students can withdraw from a course. This date will be approximately 60% through the course (around week 9). The original, initial drop deadline which comes 20% through the course will remain in place.
What is the difference between the two drop deadlines?
The first deadline allows students to completely withdraw from the course; it is as if they were never enrolled in the course and as such it does not appear in any way on their transcript. The second deadline will allow the student to abandon their course; it will appear on their transcript but with no grade associated.
What is the benefit to students of having an additional drop deadline?
The expectation is that the introduction of an additional drop deadline will encourage students to remain in their courses longer rather than having to make a decision about their future in the course after only a few classes. The hope is that it will encourage students to persevere in their courses.
What is the impact of this new deadline for teachers?
The introduction of this new deadline will not impact the funding the College receives from the government nor faculty CI. The first drop date remains the one that is used to establish official enrollment, used to calculate both the funding the College receives from the government and the official CI of faculty. Once CI is established using the official numbers, it cannot be modified and so students withdrawing at a later date would not impact the CI.
In fact, the introduction of a second drop date might actually be beneficial for faculty. Students who are unsure about the course may decide to stay in it longer, rather than dropping at the initial drop date. This could mean that there are more students remaining in our courses at the first drop date which, again, is when CI is calculate
Double Employment – Departments
The Collective Agreement has specific provisions regarding double employment. It is important that departments understand the impact of this for hiring and the distribution of courses.
Why does double employment matter?
The purpose of the double employment clause in our Collective Agreement is to ensure that public sector funds are used to provide access to full-time work for as many people as possible.
What does double employment mean?
Any teacher who has a full-time contract, either at Dawson or elsewhere, or who has a reasonable expectation of full-time employment during a given semester, is considered to be double-employed when applying for a teaching workload at Dawson. Note that it is the individual teacher’s responsibility to inform the College if they are double employed. For more information on what counts as double employment, please consult our website.
What does this mean for departments?
Wherever possible, departments should avoid going into situations of double employment. When assigning courses, the department has to follow the hiring priority. Once a teacher is assigned an annual full-time workload at Dawson, they have no priority for additional work in that contractual year. If a teacher has full-time employment elsewhere, they also do not have priority for work at Dawson.
If there is no-one with priority who is able to take courses, then the department’s first step should be to attempt to hire.
If it is not possible to hire, either because there are no suitable candidates or because there is no time to hire before the start of the class, then the department should contact its Sector Dean to request approval to go into double employment.
Faculty Vacation – Transfer of Availability
For teachers with a day contract or a Cont. Ed. charge, 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 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”.
CSN Campaign: Vraiment Public
We invite you to click here to read about the CSN’s Vraiment public campaign, an important mobilization effort to protect Quebec’s public services against privatization, centralization, and deterioration. The ‘documents and links’ section contains pertinent information published regularly by the CSN.
