For foreign students in Ontario, Canada, their studies, part-time work and visas are on the line because their teachers are now on strike. Twelve thousand professors, instructors, counsellors, and librarians began the strike late Sunday after negotiations between them and their labour union broke down, according to The Star. While Canadian-born students are as concerned about how the strike will affect them, the concerns are of a different kind when it comes to foreign students. We are very sorry that you may experience some disruption during the strike period.
The vast majority of staff will be working hard to ensure that any impact on the student experience and your learning and teaching is minimised. In 'Academic support and resources' Academic support and resources Contact your school Back to 'Student intranet'.
Again, this strike has been called by UCU and will take place on the following dates: Thursday 20, and Friday 21 February Monday 24, Tuesday 25, and Wednesday 26 February Monday 2, Tuesday 3, Wednesday 4, and Thursday 5 March Monday 9, Tuesday 10, Wednesday 11, Thursday 12, and Friday 13 March We are disappointed that UCU has taken this decision given that significant progress had been made with talks to try to bring the dispute to an end.
Topics include: Questions about why the strike is happening Questions about strike days including picket lines Questions about the impact of the strike on your academic work Questions about where to go for further information, support, or to make a complaint Questions about why the strike is happening The strikes are about two on-going national disputes — one is around pay and conditions and the other is about changes to the USS pension scheme — both of which can only be settled at national level, which means that individual universities like ours have little or no local influence on the outcomes.
Our position at Birmingham In line with other universities, at Birmingham we want to provide a work environment where all people feel valued and are treated fairly and with respect.
Rallies will be held on the following days: Thursday 20 February, At the current time we do not know which individual staff members will take direct strike action. Your lecturer might tell you in advance that they either will or will not be teaching on a strike day but the legal position is that they are not obliged to tell the University in advance. This means that you may not find out about any cancellations until the day the session is due to take place.
The University will make every effort to make alternative arrangements for any cancelled events, including lectures, seminars, individual appointments, lab sessions etc.
This might include scheduling additional sessions at other times and making supporting materials available that you can review through Canvas. This will help to ensure that you do not miss any of the essential content for your course.
If you have any specific concerns about particularly important laboratory work or other time-sensitive activities, then you should contact your Head of School. Once the strike action has ended, Heads of School will ask all lecturers to prioritise the recovery of teaching above all their other normal activities. Teaching will be recovered in a variety of ways as appropriate to the discipline, the amount to be recovered and the timing of assessments.
Your academic School will be providing details once they have more information about which students have been affected.
Some international students are required to have their attendance and engagement monitored as part of their visa conditions. Do not worry. You should always plan to attend every scheduled session and any specific check-ins but if any of these are cancelled, we will make alternative arrangements to make sure your attendance record is kept up to date and there is no impact on your visa conditions. We will work very hard to ensure that any disruption does not adversely affect your completion or graduation.
We will closely monitor the impact of strike action across modules and programmes and we will ensure that students are not disadvantaged in pursuit of their postgraduate studies. For all students, at any level, there are specific mitigating actions we can take within our regulations and under our emergency powers to ensure the successful completion of your degree. If you do have any specific concerns about the progress of your studies you should contact your Head of School in the first instance.
If you are scheduled to have a supervisory meeting over the duration of the strike, some or all of your supervisory team may not attend, and you may not receive advance warning of this. In such an event, please do not worry about compliance with monthly supervision forms GRS2 or about the underlying Tier 4 visa monitoring.
Our records will note that your supervisor was striking, and that the absence of the meeting was beyond your control. It would be a good idea in these circumstances to email your supervisors and request a new meeting date be mindful that they may not reply until after the strike action has ended , and to contact your School or Department administrator to let them know that a meeting has been missed. If you have any questions or concerns in the meantime, staff at the University Graduate School will be here to help.
They can be contacted either face to face on weekdays between and by visiting Westmere, or by email graduateschool contacts. You can contact staff as you would normally do, although for staff taking strike action there may be a delay in them responding to you.
If you have an urgent academic query you can always contact your Department or School office. Formal notice of dispute letters were sent to university employers last Wednesday, with strike ballots due to open in universities on 18 October, in the latest chapter of a bitter and long-running dispute over pensions, pay and working conditions, including workforce casualisation. After all their efforts during the pandemic, Grady said members were angry, morale was at its lowest point ever and she was confident there was huge support for industrial action.
We are taking action because of the decisions of management. Students should be aware that calling a vote for a strike mandate like this is very common in such negotiations and is nothing to be alarmed about. In fact, the strike vote may actually help resolve the problems because it shows the administration that faculty are serious.
When the vote is called, faculty association members typically vote in favour of a strike because if they vote against it, their bargainers lose almost all their power: they have to show the administration that, at the end of the day, they are willing to walk.
That is the only real power faculty associations have. If no agreement can be reached — and pending a variety of mediations that may be mandated by provinical laws — faculty may strike. They leave the university, cease their teaching and typically set up picket lines on campus.
Depending on the particulars, the university itself may remain open so that students can go to the library, work in computer labs and so on, but those details will vary from one university to the next.
Check the web sites of the university and of the faculty association itself to get information about your case. Faculty generally do not strike in the summer because the university can simply let them stay away without losing much revenue or causing a public uproar. Consequently, many associations try to time their job actions for the middle of the term to create fear that exams and courses might be in jeopardy if the situation is not resolved.
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