COIN FLIPS, VISIONARIES, AND
COMMUNITIES
One’s retirement seems to inspire versions of the question: “what is the moment you will remember most?” Because there are bound to be more than one flash-bulb memory in a 29-year career, the answer I give depends on who the questioner is and which domain he or she might care about.
This is a union publication, and I will offer
you a union memory:
As negotiations for the first collective agreement came to a weary close after two-and-a-half years of negotiating, we were down to a single item: the no-discrimination clause. Various negotiators on both sides had come and gone, but throughout we had a core for the Board and the Association, and they were still at the table. For the Board, there was a lawyer who served as chief negotiator and two Vice-Presidents, Academic and Administration (that is, finance). Our side was represented by me as Chief Negotiator and the late Tom Reagan – both of us untenured assistant professors who had arrived the same year and had quickly become involved in the drive to unionize -- and Lois Vallely-Fischer, who had spearheaded that drive and was now our eminence grise and historical memory.
As we came once again to the final unresolved article, we reached the same obstacle we had debated often before. We had agreed on the usual prohibited grounds (sex, race, and such). But these were in the existing provincial Human Rights Code, so putting them in the contract was largely symbolic. In the mid-seventies, however, the provincial cabinet had consistently refused to protect people on the grounds of their sexual orientation; that was the sticking point between the negotiating teams.
The issue was important to both sides. For us,
it had practical significance since its exclusion from Human Rights legislation
meant that people could be highly vulnerable on the basis of their sexual
orientation. Our opponents told us that there was a cadre of ex-ministers on
the Board who would not agree to any such public condoning at “their” school of
what they considered to be a sin.
The arguments on the issue were long exhausted.
We were down to: “We must have it” versus “we can’t sell it”. The Board’s team
appealed to us not to risk losing all our work because of a minor matter that
(they claimed) would never really put anyone at risk. In our view, the risk
would be greatly increased if we agreed to drop any prohibited ground – we
might be seen as tacitly endorsing any discrimination that did occur.
So we remained stalemated, one phrase away from finished, as the hours passed. Then came my flashbulb (and favourite) memory from those negotiations: the Vice-President (Administration) said “Well, we have to solve this somehow.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out a quarter, and flipped it. We watched in silence as he cupped it on the back of his hand. “Call it!” He said. I answered, “If you care so little about this issue that you will decide it on a coin flip, we’ll take it.” Gone, in an instant, was the argument that the offending clause could not be sold to the Board. The quarter was put away, its decision-making powers untested, and with handshakes the first contract was done.
I am too imbued with the post-modern spirit to
claim that events have any inherent meaning other than the meanings we choose to
give them. So I have thought about my coin-flip memory, and tried to work out
what meanings it has for me.
Of course I like it because it worked as a
clever coup de theatre; it showed, as ever, the wisdom of seizing the moment,
and so on.
But beyond these bits of glitter, I would assign some further meanings. As I tried to say in my run for Vice-President a decade ago, there are (at least) two visions of how universities should run and be run. First, there is the notion of visionary leadership, in which someone’s ideas inspire near-blind loyalty and a confident march into a shining future. Second, there is the notion of a community of interests, with diverse constituencies (including, but not limited to, those defined by an anti-discrimination clause) who have a right to be heard and held safe. If the visionary’s maxim is that “he who is not with me is against me,” the coalition builder remembers that “reasonable people may differ.”
And here is another meaning I draw from that
vivid memory: People working together can do what would be impossible if they
were on their own. We can all look after one another -- and that sums up, for
me, all that is best about the notion and the fact of “union.”
Another Acadia professor, known for his failure ever to participate on union committees or attend union meetings, once came to my table while I was lunching in a local restaurant and asked me for some advice drawn from my supposed knowledge of a collective agreement he would not deign to open. I gave him my best guess about the problem he was facing. Then, turning toward the door, he said “I’ve never had time for all that union business.”
Make time.
Pat O’Neill