YUFA
Contract
Not Spoken, Not Written, Not Respected
Labour Relations & the New Exam Schedule
Walter Whiteley
Contract & Grievance Committee and JCOAA
Not Spoken
12 Mar 02 - Many practices at York are so well engrained that they 'go without saying'. To many people, the fact that we had no classes or exams on Friday event, or on Saturday and Sunday (except as a voluntary arrangement), fell into this category. In a recent conversation I had with a member of Senate, we concluded that the old Senate Policy that no exams would be held on major religious holidays and statutory holidays did not mention weekends and Friday evening because it 'went without saying'.
However, in a move symbolic of many changes in the air at York, the current Registrar interprets this silence - not as a barrier but as implicit permission for management to encroach on these times with exams as their planning requires. This warns us all about the tenuous footing of unspoken practices in future decision-making at York. Are weekend classes next?
Not Written
Our working lives and expectations at York are primarily governed by 'established practices', 'past practices', and 'collegial processes'. Few details of these practices - that include no compulsory work on weekends, class size norms, and even 'salary structure' - are written down. When we refer to them, we rely on the shared assumption that these practices will continue to be respected. We do not press for them to be put in writing by units, by Deans, or in our Collective Agreement.
It is impolite - or impolitic - to say that we need to write it down. This would indicate a level of distrust and uncertainty about what will happen next that we hope is unfounded. Even when we are uncertain what the managers and the Employer will do next and convinced that they are not in a position to plan well, in good faith we leave things unwritten.
Compared to any standard collective agreement, ours is rife with gaps and oversights. So often, when the Employer implements a change (as they can do under Article 17), YUFA has difficulty finding clauses - other than Article 17's timely notice requirements - that would restrict the Employer's right to make the change unilaterally.
Not Respected
Our contract language on 'changes in practice' says that once the Employer consults with YUFA, they can then proceed. When they plan ahead, the consultation doesn't delay them much. Sadly, they often do not even do the minimum required by Article 17.
The recent changes in the exam schedule illustrate this point. The Employer sent the required memo notifying YUFA of a change in practice months after the decision was made, weeks after scheduling was in process, a couple of weeks after Senate was 'notified', and after the new schedule - with the new practice of weekend exams - was issued to students.
One cannot excuse this on the basis that the 'new' Registrar did not know better. This Registrar had been brought to the Joint YUFA-Employer Committee a year ago about a prior change in practice, namely, 'block scheduling'. (Block scheduling eliminated 6-9pm classes in programs that had relied on them for decades for reasons of good academics and service to specific students.)
One might better explain the Registrar's actions as a reflection of the culture among the senior administration. This culture is illustrated in a position taken by a senior administrator during a recent Senate committee meeting: 'The Administration acts, the union can choose to grieve'.
What is not written is not respected. We have reached a point where we must decide what practices and what objectives matter enough to us to write down. Only if we explicitly record them in our Collective Agreement can we bring the Employer to the bargaining table before changes are made. Only if we explicitly record them can we expect arbitrators to grant substantial remedies for cavalier violations.
Time for a Change in YUFA Practices
A few years ago, YUFA committees signalled the membership that York University was experiencing a shift in management style and in labour relations. Collegiality is frail; it can be torn up by the Employer at will. The current management has confirmed that they will do so when it suits their purposes.
I fear that, under the pressure of growing enrollment, restricted budgets, and difficult choices, we will experience continuing erosion of past practices. For example, a longer teaching schedule each day, each week, and each year. Why not, when they fear the government (the source of many of the problems) more than they fear collective action by the faculty, other employees, and students?
To make it an effective tool, our Collective Agreement needs to be much more comprehensive. It needs extensive language on workload, on the work week, on the work year, on all aspects of our working lives at York.
YUFA's proposals on this for the last round of bargaining (see below for a summary) were dismissed by the Employer, largely because YUFA members did not make the demands assertively. To achieve such a collective agreement, YUFA members will have to take up these issues in the next round of bargaining. It begins in twelve months.
It is our choice. The current practices are broken. Management is on the move. Will we be passive or will we respond?
Safeguard Your Time Free of Teaching
for Research (and Life)
Summary of YUFA's 2001 bargaining positions on scheduling:
- Outer limits of the 'teaching day' will be set
- The following will not be required:
- More than 5 contact hours per day
- Teaching on two days in a row without a 13-hour break
- Teaching more than 5 days in one week
- Weekend teaching
- Teaching for more than ten consecutive months
- Teaching more than two summers in a row if untenured
The New Weekend Math ...
- School of Administrative Studies, Atkinson: 27 weekend exams out of 99 exams = 27%
- Computer Science, Pure & Applied Science: 17 weekend exams out of 62 exams = 27%
- English, Arts: 6 weekend exams out of 32 exams = 19%
- Psychology, Arts: 19 weekend exams out of 65 exams = 29%
- Mathematics & Statistics, Arts: 26 weekend exams out of 96 exams = 27%
- A reasonable minority of students have already informed me that they cannot write the final exam on that day, either because of religious or employment issues. There have always been one or two students who for reasons of illness or family problems, etc., have not been able to write the final exam on the original date and time assigned. However, I have been able to easily accommodate them because of their very small numbers.
- My teaching assistant and I will have to find alternative time slots in which to accommodate these students. That is, it is entirely possible that we will have to schedule three or four new time slots for make-up exams for a significant number of students who cannot write the final on Saturday, April 20th.
- Even more important, my teaching assistant and I will have to generate three or four versions of the final exam to ensure test question security. And we will have to examine the degree of equivalence in difficulty across all exam versions to ensure that all students were given equally difficult exam questions.
In closing, rest assured that all my students will be tested fairly and under optimum testing conditions. However, implementing the "new and improved" final exam scheduling model will take both extra time and effort on my part. And I even would not mind doing this if I knew that the new model was implemented after careful consideration of the consequences in consultation with faculty, and not introduced unannounced for reasons that are both unclear to me and that appear counter-intuitive.
Finally, I have a longer term concern. I already am hearing from colleagues that the process by which this has been implemented is likely to result in decreased faculty member involvement in the daily governance of the university. They believe that if they are not going to be consulted they might as well not participate.
I suppose that there are some on campus who would consider this to be a positive step for the university. I am not among them.
Sincerely,
Harvey Mandel,
Associate Professor of Clinical-Developmental Psychology, and
Director, Institute on Achievement & Motivation