McMaster alumnus continues to find ways to bring families together during the pandemic
By: Nisha Gill, Contributor
When the COVID-19 pandemic began, many people tried to look on the bright side, seeing quarantine as an opportunity to tackle personal projects and spend more time with loved ones. However, as time marches on, many are becoming restless, trying to find activities to keep themselves occupied, especially those with young children.
Programs such as Friendly Fables, a book subscription service and YouTube channel, help parents and guardians in their struggle with trying to fill the time, filling it with positive and heartfelt programming throughout the pandemic.
Friendly Fables was created by McMaster alumnus Alexis Alexander. Though the program didn’t begin until many years later, Alexander has said that the creative foundation for Friendly Fables started in his dorm room at Brandon Hall.
“I had a friend in commerce who would produce beats and we would write poetry and songs to record over them in between studying at Mills Library. I loved 90’s hip-hop and music consumed me in first year like most students. Popular songs at the time became the chorus for my university life. Writing those rhymes and immersing myself in music while at McMaster greatly influenced me later creatively with Friendly Fables for sure,” Alexander explained.
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Photos C/O Sabrina Byrnes
After graduating from commerce in 2004, Alexander founded Iconic Group, a digital advertising agency specializing in designing websites for Canadian companies, with two fellow McMaster grads. While the company is still thriving today, in 2017, Alexander left his job to be with his newborn son as he recovered from surgery at SickKids hospital.
During this time, he began to write rhyming stories for his children to help them through the difficult time. These stories, based on his children and their adventures, were the beginning of Friendly Fables. Since then, the project has grown.
“Friendly Fables has evolved into a rap-a-long concert performance, a series of animated cartoons and a live-action YouTube TV show for kids,” Alexander explained.
Despite the changes, the one constant throughout the years has been the aim of the program, which has always been to inspire children and make them smile.
C/O Sabrina Byrnes
Prior to the pandemic, Alexander had been planning to make a film using the characters from Friendly Fables; however, his plans had to be quickly altered as the pandemic spread. Instead, he combined existing concert footage with new scenes shot following social distancing guidelines. Alexander and his team succeeded in putting together A Magical Concert For Kids Stuck at Home, which was released on YouTube.
“We’re already seeing positive results from our early digital initiatives. I was so caught up in my live performances at schools, I didn’t realize how many more families I could reach by putting my songs and concerts on YouTube,” said Alexander. “I think it’s even more important now to continue with our programming for kids. I think parents, like myself, had a lot of early zeal during the quarantine. We were doing a lot of crafts and activities but as time has gone on . . . [parents] are struggling to find quality activities to keep our children entertained.”
"I think it’s even more important now to continue with our programming for kids. I think parents, like myself, had a lot of early zeal during the quarantine. We were doing a lot of crafts and activities but as time has gone on . . . [parents] are struggling to find quality activities to keep our children entertained,” said Alexander.
In uncertain times, we often hear a lot about the importance of resilience and being able to adapt to new situations. In the particular instance of the pandemic, there is also a lot of pressure not only to adapt, but to also use the newfound time in productive ways. However, there is also something to be said for finding ways to be happy and to make others happy during such times; finding ways to spark joy in yourself and others can be far more meaningful than just being productive. Alexander’s work at Friendly Fables has not only done exactly that, bringing families together in these difficult times but also encouraging the spirit of community that drew him to McMaster in the first place.
“Keep dreaming. Your dreams will unknowingly define you. Don’t ever lose sight of them and know that one day, in order to achieve them you may need to pivot and walk an uncertain, scary path,” Alexander said. “Trust in yourself and don’t take ‘no’ for an answer. Sometimes the most rewarding paths are the hardest to walk.”
Floating in the window of an Ottawa Street storefront is a crocheted pool float in the shape of a pink flamingo. The sign at the top of the store reads “The City & The City Books”(181 Ottawa St. North). Owned by Janet Hoy and Tim Hanna, this independent bookstore opened last spring.
The store is located right next to Cannon Coffee Co., so if you like to study in coffee shops, then just a quick trip from Cannon will let you pick up a book and support this local business.
The City & The City Books gets its name from the 2009 book by author China Miéville.
“[Miéville] writes what’s called the new weird. He defies genre. If you go into a bookshop all of his books could be in a different section. They could be in literature, they could be in science fiction, they could even be in mystery,” said Hanna, “Something we’re interested in is books that defy genre, or not having genre. I always say to people: in an ideal bookshop there wouldn’t be a literature or science fiction section, there would just be stories.
This is clearly evident in the store. The book sections intermingle together. Philosophy and literature rub elbows with science fiction and mystery. New books are located on white shelves at the front and used books on black shelves at the back, making it easy to navigate between the two. Hoy points out that one of the benefits of offering used books is the affordability.
“It’s great seeing someone get excited because they just found War and Peace for $5,” said Hoy.
Hoy jokes that she does have one regret about the name of the store.
“Writing an ampersand is hard,” she said.
Hoy and Hanna are hoping that the store can help make buying school books easier for students.
“When you get your syllabus for the beginning of the year and the list of books that you need, if we know what people are looking for we’ll be out looking for it,” said Hoy.
Come the winter semester, if you’re struggling to afford textbooks, it’s definitely worth a look to see if The City & The City Books has what you’re looking for. Hanna emphasized that, for students, they were going to try and have everything possible from spirituality to philosophy and political science.
The store isn’t limited to just books. There are eclectic socks, cards and most importantly, cat tarot decks. That alone is worth the trip down to Ottawa Street. Not to mention, Ottawa Street has art galleries, a board game cafe, thrift stores and restaurants. If you’re planning a day trip out with your friends, it’s a must-try hotspot. While you’re there, stop by The City & The City Books to have a look around to see where the words can take you.
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At the recommendation of a friend, I started 2016 with a series called All For The Game. The first book was free on iBooks, and the other two books in the trilogy were less than a dollar each.
Although I was confused why they were so cheap, I didn’t pay much thought to it. It wasn’t until I was halfway through the second book in the trilogy that I found out it was self-published, and at that point the occasional typos and the unexpectedness of the character backgrounds started to make sense. A particular one was that the trilogy, in the barest of summaries, features a sport loosely based on lacrosse. In this case, however, the author took some liberties and applied her own changes. The most significant changes were that each team can be open to both male and female players, and that each team can contain a mix of both. In fact, one of the founders of the sport itself is a woman.
This was information I tucked away for further musing until earlier this month I stumbled upon another self-published book, The Posterchildren. It’s a superhero story with a POC main character and diverse sexualities throughout the board. A friend informed me, after I’d started telling them about the book, that the author had gained a substantial following in the fanfiction community, and that the book itself was largely influenced by already existing material from the DC Universe.
This got me wondering, then, if an author needed to self-publish to guarantee that their book, which features people of colour identifying as members of the LGBTQ community, will be published. I think the answer might be yes.
Some mainstream authors look down on what Forbes is now referring to as “indie publishing.”
Of course, there are non-self-published books out there featuring diverse characters. That’s not to say, however, that the world of fiction isn’t lacking at all in diversity. The LGBTQ genre of fiction mostly features gay men, and a significant share of the genre are stories with unnecessarily tragic endings to cater to a teenage audience ready to gobble it up and cry about their doomed OTP. There’s also always the well-written coming out stories, and while some of these stories are needed, it doesn’t make sense that the genre is, quite literally, defined by coming out and tragedy. It doesn’t make sense that, while the rest of the YA genre gets yet another girl-falls-in-love-with-bad-boy series, the LGBTQ genre continues to struggle with redefining itself with other aspects of fiction such as lesbian superheroes. As a consequence, some authors have to resort to self-publishing to incorporate some diversity into a genre that’s overshadowed by mainstream stories.
Some mainstream authors look down on what Forbes is now referring to as “indie publishing.” A lot of the publishing process can be credited to the editors and publishers themselves, but I highly doubt it’s fair to dismiss self-published authors for that reason. Yes, there might be typos and awkward parts due to lack of professional editors, and it might be hard to find these stories without it being through a recommendation. However, no matter how much more diverse the fiction world is beginning to get, it will still be difficult for some authors to find the grounding they need to provide the representation they can. Getting published is hard enough as it is, and harder still for authors trying to release protagonists identifying with the asexual spectrum and sports with strong female players playing alongside “the boys.”
We shouldn’t look down at these self-published authors and scoff at them. There might come a time where self-publishing is the new mainstream, but I hope that, if that time does come, diversity and representation of minorities will have been properly incorporated into mainstream fiction.
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Being in university, we’ve all grown accustomed to reading research papers and academic studies. Unless you’re taking English or literature courses, your novels are probably collecting dust or waiting to be read during a break. But when that time comes around, you’re so tired of reading that you’d much prefer an activity that doesn’t involve consuming long passages of text for hours on end. Last year, when I was drowning in scientific papers and textbook readings, picking up a novel felt less like a leisurely learning experience and more like a waste of time — something that would distract me from my other courses. Reading fiction is often associated with entertainment rather than learning, however — as I have discovered — it is probably the most eye-opening and true-to-life literary genre.
The amount of reading required in our academic careers can be overwhelming. It’s easy to see why some people would underestimate seemingly superfluous genres. We think of fiction as basic stories of monstrous creatures and magical Greek islands, when really these tales have a lot to teach us about the world we’re living in today. The Odyssey cannot be reduced solely to a king battling various mythical monsters on his journey home. What are the lengths someone will go to return to their family? When a great hero is on his knees begging to go home, one can’t help but be reminded of the importance of loved ones. Fiction does not solely provide entertainment; it teaches us lessons about our world and ourselves.
It is probably the most eye-opening and true-to-life literary genre to exist.
Reading literary fiction can even improve our empathy. It asks us to step into a character’s life and understand his or her choices. In Frankenstein, the creature is presented as a monstrous being, undeserving of love from the perspective of his creator. The novel challenges us to consider the perspective of multiple characters, including the creature. We are asked to be active readers and assume different roles as the narration shifts from character to character. Despite subjective interpretations of the piece, every reader undoubtedly learns how to relate. If we can step into a fictional world and empathize with characters we come to know in the span of two hundred pages, we can apply that skill to our own lives. The way you form strong bonds with people and connect with others depends on your ability to see the world through their eyes.
So is fiction a waste of time? It doesn’t detract from your schoolwork. It enhances your perspectives and critical thinking by allowing you to see the world in a new light. You cannot come away from a few hours of reading unchanged. When you read fiction, consciously or not, you relate differently to your own life. Whether you have to escape to Ithaca, or pay a visit to Victor Frankenstein’s laboratory, you gain insight into humanity. Even if you may not recognize it, you are learning.
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Growing up, I always found it difficult to fully empathize with the leading characters in young adult novels. Often starring an ambiguously White female lead with a token Black or Latina BFF, the books of my childhood didn’t mirror my coming of age experiences. While most of these stories were set in some North American city or town, and I could often relate to that element, the plot lines were portrayed through White eyes and never touched upon the challenges I faced growing up, or the simple quirks and differences between my childhood and that of someone White growing up in a White home and a White world.
Now that I’m a grown adult who has constant access to the Internet, I’ve recently started to spend a considerable amount of my free time looking into books that feature lead characters that I can relate to. Below are four of my choices if you’re looking for a similarly diverse reading experience:
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
Set in 1970s small town Ohio, Everything I Never Told You tells the story of a mixed race Chinese-American family with three children. The story is centered on the family’s dynamics after the death of one of their children, alternating narrators between the parents and children. While I don’t come from a directly mixed race home, I did grow up in a family that has a long history of mixed race ancestry and what I’ve grown to refer to as decades of cross-cultural pollination. For this reason, the book did hit home. It touches on the intricacies of family and cultural burdens, and how the notion of acceptance changed across the family’s male, female, racialized and white characters.
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Born Confused by Tanuja Desai Hidier
This was the first book I ever read that was by and about a woman of colour. It is technically young adult fiction, and I did read it when I was 13, but that doesn’t make it any less well written and relatable. The novel follows the teenage journey of Dimple Lala, an Indian-American girl growing up in New Jersey in the early 2000s. It spends a lot of time addressing issues among social circles, especially those related to having friends from different backgrounds, and therefore being treated differently by peers. The book also spends a considerable amount of time reflecting on the choice to pursue a career in the arts when coming from an immigrant American family, and even touches on gender fluidity and cross-dressing. I recommend the book for all ages with an interest in intersectionality.
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The Star Side of Bird Hill by Naomi Jackson
Only released this past spring, The Star Side of Bird Hill tells the story of two teenage sisters from Brooklyn. They are uprooted from their home and sent to live with their grandmother in Barbados when their mother can no longer care for them. The story is relatable for anyone who feels they have two homes — the one where they grew up and the one that answers the question, “where are you really from?” The two sisters learn about their family history when they move to Barbados and are able to learn about aspects of their grandmother and mother’s lives they could never have imagined. But at the end of the day, they are torn between choosing which country is truly their “home.”
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If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan
I will admit, I have not actually read this book but it has been on my reading list for the last few months and I have read the pages in the Amazon free preview. If You Could Be Mine tells the story of two queer women living and falling in love in 20th century Iran. This book is different from the other three on the list because it does not directly touch upon North American culture and race relations. It does however deal with the queer identity in third-world communities, and eventually touches upon the prospect of gender reassignment surgery as a method to bypass unjust laws against same-sex marriage. This is also considered a young adult novel, but it is still on my reading list.
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A Partial List of People to Bleach - Gary Lutz
Paperback: $15.77
Kindle: $4.10
Length: 109 pages
Enjoy a colourful collection of short stories – we know you’ll need it after the snow starts to settle in. One of Lutz’s more recent collections, A Partial List of People to Bleach, is an assortment of stories, ranging from time spent with ex-husbands to a nameless narrator’s analysis of their aunt’s relationship. This one will be best enjoyed with a cup of Earl Grey under a heavy blanket.
Between The World & Me - Ta-Nehisi Coates
Hardcover: $30.00
Kindle: $13.99
Length: 176 pages
If Toni Morrison says it’s required reading, then we’re inclined to say the same. Coates has made his name as a writer working for big publications like The Atlantic, but here he takes a more personal approach that will draw readers in. Writing to his son in a tone reminiscent of Jame Baldwin’s prophetic collection of essays, The Fire Next Time, Coates educates us all on the racial history of America.
Crush - Richard Siken
Paperback: $17.95
Not available on Kindle
Length: 80 pages
The themes of sex in these poems will help keep you toasty warm while you blush through Siken’s poems. This collection made it onto this list with ease, with his accessible style and relatable experiences. From love to ruin and back again, Siken’s poems are sure to fill the quiet moments at your parents’ place this holiday season. I’ve put my copy of this collection in my pockets often, since I find it nice to have a comfortable amount of poetry on me at all times.
Good Old Neon - David Foster Wallace
Paperback: $24.59
Kindle: $9.99
Length: 336 pages
Return to a hot, wet August with David Foster Wallace’s short story, “Good Old Neon”. It’s a rather short read, running about 41 pages online. It is available in DFW’s collection, Oblivion, but if you want to get around to reading the rest of the items on this list, I’d suggest with sticking with this one. It’s certainly better than struggling through Infinite Jest.
Solip - Ken Baumann
Paperback: $18.15
Kindle: $9.99
Length: 200 pages
Like the flickering of your fireplace (screensaver), Solip’s structure is a rapid fire ebbing and flowing from capital letters to punctuation marks. This highly textured anti-novel is sure to be rich enough to make you swap out your hot chocolate for water. Don’t be worried if the first time through leaves you nothing but cold and confused, some stories are best read twice.
The Castle - Franz Kafka
Paperback: $12.67
Kindle: $4.64
Length: 352 pages
You can empathize with the protagonist, K, as both must deal with an unfair amount of snow and cold. Nothing makes suffering easier than knowing that you’re not experiencing it alone. This sentiment is sort of ironic in relation to the protagonist’s hardships, given that he meditates on his loneliness throughout the 300-and-some-odd pages. Kafka died before he finished writing this novel — but hopefully you won’t die from the cold before you finish reading it.
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By: Christine Chow/Lifestyle Writer
As a month, November sucks. It’s after Halloween, weeks away from the Christmas break, and usually filled to the brim with an army of midterms lining up to punch you in the gut. But for many aspiring writers, November, not December (although it comes a close second), is the most wonderful time of the year: it’s National Novel Writing Month.
National Novel Writing Month, more commonly known as NaNoWriMo, is a worldwide event that aims to promote pure, unfiltered writing in a 30-day, 50,000 word marathon. To put that in perspective, one month of 50,000 words equates to writing roughly 1,700 words or 3.5 single-spaced pages of words per day, every day.
Subjecting yourself to that kind of torture on top of midterms, academic essays and formal lab reports probably exceeds the ordinary scope of belief (and sanity), but I implore you to pledge yourself to the challenge anyway. All you have to do is sign up on their website (nanowrimo.org), which will grant you access to a profile for information about your work-in-progress, as well as a meter that can be updated regularly with the total number of words you’ve written so far.
Writers are perfectionists, and thus make the worst procrastinators. Memories of the English course I took as an elective last year all bring me back to the same nightmarish scenario. I would hunch over my laptop for hours in the early morning, squinting through the darkness at an awkwardly phrased sentence while my roommate continued to snore away happily in the background. When I finally finished, despite knowing I had done a relatively good job, I never once walked away feeling like it was my best.
The solution, then, seems obvious: just start writing earlier. But as a well-read writer, expectations we have for our own work are often unrealistically high. You care so much about what you write and how you write that often you end up writing nothing at all, if only because nothing, as a default, seems safer than attaching your name to whatever seemingly mediocre piece you’ll churn out. For academic writing, that equates to putting it off until the last possible minute, or writing at an unimpressive rate of one sentence per hour.
The beauty of NaNoWriMo is in its ability to force you to put aside that perfectionist mentality. You write mindlessly and terribly and everything you write is basically a load of crap, but the important thing is that your word vomit doesn’t ever have to see the light of day. Adopting this strategy gives you something to work with that might eventually become your chef-d’oeuvre somewhere down the road. Even if it doesn’t, the sheer demand of quantity from NaNoWriMo allows you to exercise writing as a skill, which is useful no matter what field of work you go into.
If you’re struggling to keep up with your daily word count, try incorporating writing into your regular routine by dedicating a particular time of your day just to write. Stock up on snacks, tell your housemates to leave you in peace and find some writing buddies whose word meters you can use to motivate yourself through a bit of friendly competition. As a fellow well-seasoned NaNoWriMo veteran, I say to you: on your marks, get set, write!
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By: Mitali Chaudhary
Recently, the market for the Young Adult literary genre has ballooned. Geared mostly towards the mid-teen to early adult demographic, their popularity is attested by the large number of movie adaptations, which become widely successful due to the huge fan base that the books amass.
Unfortunately, publishers know that any book labelled “YA” will sell well, regardless of the quality of the story. This has yielded a slew of cookie-cutter novels with the same paranormal/romantic/dystopian plots and one-dimensional characters facing the most overdone conflicts, all within the span of 350 pages.
The most disappointing aspect of these novels is the incredibly flat, teenage female lead. It’s as if authors flip a coin to pick which mould the character will be shaped from — either a dopey damsel who’s constantly in distress, or a hardened unsentimental woman who lives only to bring down the patriarchy.
I remember reading dialogue from Graceling by Kristen Cashore (which made it to Publisher Weekly’s “Best Books of the Year”) in which the main character, Katsa, states proudly that she hates dresses, and can’t imagine why others wear them. To provide further context, this came from an individual that spent the entire novel looking down on other women. These other ladies were always portrayed as dress wearing and meeker than Katsa; they worked menial jobs to make ends meet because they were meek and wore dresses and therefore were less than men.
Making that first statement in itself isn’t a crime (I can understand if dresses are just not for some people) but it does not immediately make one a feminist, as this novel would suggest. Another issue is how ‘tough’ some of these women are created — after a while, it becomes borderline creepy when the character doesn’t react to a given situation as you would expect a human to react. Moreover, authors don’t seem to realize that it doesn’t make a woman automatically stronger if she is ultra independent, sullen, sulky and refuses to show emotion or rely on anyone else for help even in the most extreme of situations.
In fact, crafting these overly “tough” female characters does nothing to help the feminist cause, as it just sends the message that you need to act less feminine and show less emotion to deserve the same respect as men. That makes absolutely no sense, and sends a very negative message about what the spirit of feminism is. Why can’t you wear a floral skirt and still care about pay equality?
Even worse is the portrayal of the weak, helpless girl. Another very popular novel, The Elite by Kiera Cass, starred one such teen, America Singer, who cried at the end of every other chapter. This is not an exaggeration. Most of her tears, of course, involved the state of her cringe-worthy love triangle (another annoying trend in YA literature). Both of the boys she’s “in love with” break her heart (and she theirs), but she never grows enough of a spine to break it off with either of them, choose which one treats her best, or refuse both of them (how about working to develop your own personality, America?). Such characters also consistently mope, run away from mental or physical work and require the constant support of a man, without whom they are useless — I’m looking at you, Bella Swan.
It’s unfortunate that these books are only a tiny sample of what fills up shelves across the country. The worst part about this trend is that these novels get insanely publicized, and are read by thousands of young girls that are forming their identities in a society that already popularises unhealthy depictions of women. Why make it more confusing for them by creating these unrealistic characters, which reduce complex individuals to black and white cardboard cut-outs? They are difficult to identify with because they’re not real.
Women can be strong and shed tears and wear pretty dresses and be scared and need validation and be feminists and get angry and be shy. One woman can be all of these things. It’s time authors start creating characters in YA that are realistic and multifaceted.
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By: Steven Chen/News Reporter
On Thursday Nov. 5, the Hamilton Public Library closed the Waterdown and Milgrove branches in anticipation of the opening of the new facility located on Dundas St. E.
The decision to close doors permanently at the Waterdown and Milgrove locations was made by the Hamilton Public Library Board in accordance with the facilities’ master plan. “Setting the direction for how the facilities are occupied and renewed is a lengthy task,” said Karen Anderson, Director of Public Services at HPL. “The three main factors for the closing of the branches are building size and condition, changes in the demographics and evolving libraries.”
With the Milgrove branch having been deemed unsustainable for quite some time and the substantial population growth in the Waterdown area, the move to the new library facility seemed evident.
The opening of the $6.8 million building has been fraught with a number of unfortunate setbacks. With initial plans to open in Oct. 2014, many construction delays surfaced as a result of bitter weather, pushing the ribbon-cutting day to later this month. Despite the trouble, Anderson remains hopeful. “Although it was extremely frustrating, the important thing is that we are pretty confident that the end product will be a huge asset to the community,” said Anderson.
The 23,500-square-foot facility will be used for the new Waterdown branch, but also serves the joint purpose of housing the Flamborough Town Archives, the Flamborough Information and Community Services, a senior recreation centre, and the city of Hamilton’s Service Centre.
“One of the most exciting things for us is that we are bringing a number of partners under one roof. ‘Community Destination’ is a model that the HPL board strongly supports where possible. We try to locate in a multi-use facility because we know that there are advantages to that for the community,” she expresses.
In particular, the Flamborough Town Archives will form a partnership with the library, since the actual archive space is embedded within the library. These resources on local history are expected to appeal to a number of researchers, who may plan to access the collection. “The parallel is that we wish to offer a wide range of services to customers of all ages, so not only library services, but community services as well,” said Anderson.
The long-awaited opening due in a few weeks’ time will be followed by several innovative changes for the HPL. “We are opening a new makers’ space and digital media lab in the central library,” she mentions, “We have an ambitious program of building and renovation coming up in the next two to three years.”
The architectural design of the new Waterdown branch is distinctly contemporary — it offers generous amounts of fresh space and an innovative atmosphere fostering community engagement. “While at one time it may have been appropriate to have a very small location and collection,” noted Anderson, “we now know that we can better serve the community with large spaces by offering a wider range of services and programs.”
“We like to think of it as community building — the library is not only a destination by way of our services and programs — we aspire to be actually building community as well.”
Photo Credit: Rounthwaite Dick & Hadley Architects Inc.
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McMaster’s Academic Librarians have their contract up for re-negotiation this year. Collective bargaining, which began on July 22, started out smoothly but has since faced several roadblocks, according to a press release issued by the McMaster University Academic Librarians’ Association on Oct. 9.
MUALA filed for conciliation with the Ontario Ministry of Labour, which brings in a conciliation officer to help mediate the disagreements between the union and the university. The union represents 24 full-time Academic Librarians who work at McMaster’s libraries.
“One of our key roles is that librarians act to support teaching, learning and research needs of the campus community. Specifically, we are supporting [students’] learning and research needs and of faculty members and other research teams. How we do it varies by the individual role that the librarian has,” said Laura Banfield, MUALA’s President and chief negotiator.
Prior to the conciliation talks, which began on Oct. 14, at a MUALA meeting with 92 percent of their membership present, all attendees voted in favour of a strike mandate.
Andrea Farquhar, McMaster’s Assistant Vice President Public Relations, said that half of the contract had been agreed on prior to conciliation talks.
Although neither the university nor the union can speak to the details of the talks, the general points of contention were addressed in MUALA’s press release. These include compensation and academic rights of Academic Librarians.
MUALA states that the employer — the university — wants to “rollback compensation and limit salaries far below inflation.”
However, Farquhar said that there are no rollbacks to compensation being proposed.
“The university has tabled salary increases exceeding inflation. That includes a combination of across-the-board increases and a merit pool that members are eligible for based on their individual performance each year,” added Farquhar.
The disagreement in interpretation between the two parties is clear, much of it founded on the meaning of “inflation” and how they individually define fair and reasonable compensation.
As for MUALA’s claim that the university is trying to remove Academic Librarians’ right to participate in academic decision-making, Farquhar commented that the meaning of this was “unclear.”
Based on previous bargaining updates on MUALA’s website, the union has shown concern about the university’s proposal to “delete substantial portions of procedures and criteria” for promotions, evaluations and other decisions, which would leave these decision entirely up to the university’s discretion.
MUALA claimed that this would seriously degrade working conditions.
When asked if the vote would mean that in the case of unsatisfactory conciliation talks the Academic Librarians would go on strike, Banfield said that the vote simply gave MUALA’s executives the ability to call for job action if the situation requires it in the future.
“Our desire it to settle things through conciliation … even once a ‘no-board’ report has been filed then there is the situation in which both sides decide to go to mediation and still try to settle things before the lockout or strike mandate is acted upon,” said Banfield.
A “no-board” report by the third party would signify that an agreement was not reached through conciliation meetings.
“The issues that we’ve raised are the ones that resonate within our population,” said Banfield.
Both parties hope the conciliation meetings will address these disagreements and help them effectively move forward with negotiations.
