Progress on Affirmative Action

YUFA

Equity

Progress on Affirmative Action?

Robert MacDermid, YUFA Communications Officer

12 Dec 03 – The next few months will see YUFA members involved either in hiring committees or approving their decisions. These newly hired faculty members will replace retirees and will add to the YUFA complement the extra positions that the Employer has said will teach the double cohort and the enrolment growth beyond it.

While affirmative action procedures are now embedded in most units’ hiring plans, it is important to remember that our Collective Agreement with York binds both parties to affirmative action. Section 12.21 of the CA sets out the affirmative action guidelines for hiring. YUFA strongly advises members to read this section of the Collective Agreement and their unit’s hiring procedures in advance of hiring decisions or hiring approval meetings. It is also important for members to know that we are bound to follow affirmative action principles not just by our Collective Agreement, but also by a combination of statutes, Human Rights codes, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, court decisions and policies such as the Federal Contractors Program.

YUFA members should also refer to the report to Senate on Appointments and Academic Planning by the Vice-President Academic, Sheila Embleton. The report breaks down appointments by affirmative action or equity groups for the past few years for tenure stream and contractually limited appointment categories. The report shows that of the 83 appointments made in 2003-04, 46 were males and 37 female. Since 1997-1998, York has made 228 male and 194 female tenure stream appointments. While this is sufficient to improve the over-all gender balance of the faculty, it is as much because retirees are overwhelmingly male rather than new appointments being overwhelmingly female. While some units have appointed more females than males over this period, in every year but one, males have made up more than half of the university-wide appointments.

The Report shows that since 2001-02, 33 of 219 new tenure stream appointments have been visible minorities, just 3 of 219 have been persons with disabilities and only 2 have been aboriginal persons. It may be that hirings in these last three categories are underestimated because not all members of these groups chose to identify themselves.

The Vice-President’s report to Senate, for the first time, provides figures for affirmative action hirings into contractually-limited positions. As some have suggested, appointments in the affirmative action categories are proportionally much higher in the contractually-limited category than in the tenure-stream category. The linked table rearranges the Report’s data to make this comparison for the only year available.

This table shows that appointments into contractually-limited positions, those less well-paid and with less security, have helped to improve the number of hirings in some of the affirmative action categories. But the figures on affirmative action group hirings suggest that new York faculty still do not reflect the diversity that is desirable and that overall faculty proportions will improve only slowly at the present rate.