It's Looking Pretty Bleak

It's Friday and the strike is called for Tuesday. Granted they have 3 more days to talk but nobody around the college, faculty or management, seems to hold out much hope for the situation. I have set up this blog as a place for faculty to vent, assuming the worst case scenario. The last two strikes went on for 4 and 41/2 weeks, so to expect much less is being hopeful. There is certainly talk that because there is much more summer activity now than there was in the last one (1989) that the time frame may be more critical and that the CRC may therefore intervene sooner, but nobody really knows in this type of situation.

As I'm on the 7:30 a.m. shift I expect it will be pretty cold, and unfortunately (at least day one) there will not be a trailer set up yet. After the last threatened strike the Local paid $1000 for a trailer that was never needed, so this time they decided not to set it up ahead of time. Understandable, but it may make for a very chilly Tuesday morning. The good news (of sorts) is that apparently the portapotty was to arrive yesterday, so at least we'll have that.

As usual in these situations, rumours abound. Once we were told to submit all grades to date, the rumour flew around that they were going to grant aegrotat standings to all students and then operate the summer semester with nothing but p/t and sessional (since they are not covered by the contract). Ok enough ... I just wanted to get this set up at this point. Will use it if necessary starting Tuesday. Let's hope the negotiators make this unnecessary.