YUFA External

YUFA

External

Doing Academia Differently: CAUT Biennial Women’s Conference
Ottawa, February 22-24, 2007

By Joan Allen, Vice-President, Internal

04 Apr 07 - This conference assessed the current status of gender equity in the academy at this point (five years since the last CAUT women’s conference). At this point in time, Canadian women faculty earn just 81-90 % of male salaries, and are lower in all disciplines. Only 22% of Canada Research Chairs are women. Only 18.8% of full professors in Canada are women, and women take double the time that men do to go from associate to full professor rank. An accent of the conference was work-life balance for women academics, including assessments of the conditions and factors that intervene in attempts to achieve this. The question of how the corporatization of the university affects gender issues was a focus. Factors contributing to hours of faculty work, responsibility for care work, and ways to aid work-life balance in collective agreements were discussed at length. My report will focus on some aspects not emphasized by other attendees.

Rosemary Morgan, legal counsel for CAUT, offered examples of efforts being made in several arenas in which women must continue to fight. She discussed the function of Legal Education Access Fund (LEAF) which intervenes in equality cases. In a case involving the Newfoundland government in 1996, the Supreme Court ruled there was wage discrimination based on gender, but justified the discrimination on the grounds of a fiscal deficit.

Other gender related social issues:

Every day another 11 Canadians are infected with HIV-AIDS
We must attend to sectors of criminalized women; more aboriginal women will go to jail than to university. The Elizabeth Fry society strives to help women re-achieve reintegration back into community
Both the National Association of Women in the law and LEAF were involved in examining Sharia law
The existence of Charter is not enough to protect women’s freedoms
*We should encourage volunteers to the Women’s Future Fund, possibly by doing payroll deduction contributions
Most pay equity settlements start from the date of the decision; it is difficult to get them retroactively. Therefore they are not adequate as solutions to women’s pension issues. The remedy is typically limited by date; employer and employee groups can agree that there has been discrimination, but there is no onus to fully remedy it. There is currently on Pay Equity or Employment Equity at the Federal level.

Myths to fight:

Wages will correct themselves through market correction
Women voluntarily take lower salaries in exchange for less stressful jobs

We need alternatives to legislation. Unions must be pro-active vis-à-vis equity to other designated groups. The goal would be to expand such initiatives to the private sector. Pay equity must be harmonized with employment equity to correct policies.

We need to restrict opting out and achieve better maintenance provisions.

Alberta has forced accessing civil suits to launch a pay complaint. In BC, the Human Rights Code must be used. In many provinces, the Employment Standards Code sets minimum standards. It is limited to sex. There is a non-discrimination clause in every Collective Agreement. In 1999, the Supreme Court ruled that Human Rights legislation and employment standards are the minimum standard.

The problem is in proving the case. Expert witnesses are required for successful pay equity grievances, costing up to $2000 per day. Employers do not easily part with the data we need.

Our focus should be getting equity provisions into contracts; unions should get outside expertise with choosing parameters, regression analysis. They can file with the Employment Standards Act, or Human Rights legislation, (the more complex route).

They can be limited to sex or can be more comprehensive; including other groups who are suffering wage inequities. We need to train members about how culture influences wage practices.

Morgan asked; can a grievance eliminate differential wage practices? Unions need to redo exercises every year or few years. Arbitrators are hired by both parties, and are timid about the remedies they offer. They are afraid of being charged with amending the Collective Agreement when they do not have this power. In the University of Ottawa decision regarding powers of arbitration, it was determined that Human Rights legislation supersedes the Collective Agreement’s. Morgan recommends consulting with sisters at other universities such as York, McGill, and CAUT for novel ways to approach pay inequities.

Morgan concluded with a phrase from Margaret Mead, “A small group of people can change the world; it’s the only thing that ever has.”

Michael Piva, Assistant Executive Director of CAUT, and a specialist in Canadian labour, presented a talk that would be good for entering graduate student women to be informed about at the start of their careers.

Piva asked; “What we can do at the table about salary inequity?” How do we attack it from the bargaining perspective? University salary systems are wacky, and anomalous, with no real relation to the labour market. Salaries don’t evidence gender discrimination in the system, partly because there is no system. The salary system becomes amplified. To fix gender discrimination one looks elsewhere than the salary system.

Key Bargaining Issues

When we look at the use of anomaly funds, 10 years later the problem is not fixed. The biggest settlements have been at Western, Queens, and York post-strike. All used an anomalies approach. All this does is correct past injustices, but does not correct problems that created the anomalies. “The engine is still running.”

Piva sees the current salary system as the root of the problem. The job has a value. Assuming a job rate, a new worker will not be as productive as an experienced one. The assumption is that the worker will eventually be paid above the job rate. This practice:

Compensates for experience
For the employer, it prevents turnover

Compensation specialists are in consensus; there should be differentials of + or – 15%. There should be 5 to 6 steps floor to ceiling, 10 at the maximum. In universities, the ceilings are often twice the floors, and the bandwidth in salary differentials is -+ or – 40%. No salary ceilings exist. These practices result in wide ranging discretionary powers on the part of the employer.

It is totally arbitrary what the starting salary is. Merit criteria are usually fuzzy and not monitored. Market differentials are discretionarily distributed by deans and not monitored. The salary system itself generates anomalies of all kinds.

Three gender factors are:

On their way to a PhD, women can be ghettoized. There is discrimination in terms of longevity; as the market assumes one enters around 30 and that the money is highest in the last five years. The age of entry is getting older and older for women. Therefore in effect they are being paid more year by year, but the pension damage is permanent.

This is the biggest source of inequality in the academy. There is no labour market reason to pay an engineer more than an historian.

Real gender impacts include that previous experience is not counted. Women don’t get a bonus at the start for their years of previous experience. This creates a compounding effect. A $1000 gap in starting salary is worth $280,000 difference in career earnings.

Merit committees are another source of inequity. They use shifting criteria and dubious processes for awarding raises. Not getting merit has a compound effect on career earnings.

If unions narrow the steps in salary increments, they will minimize the damage done by discrimination. Fixing the salary system will net more towards pay inequity than eliminating the gender discrimination.

Assumptions about the uniqueness of university work have hurt salary reformation at the bargaining table. Accounting professors get paid more than full professors, and more than other business faculty. We must ask what do PhD’s who are outside the university do, and compare our salaries to theirs. The starting salary in a university is lower than in private world. Those who do not get academic jobs find their salaries are higher than their peers who do.

Towards grid reform, we should narrow the bandwidth. Increments are a form of deferred compensation. Many of us do not reach the top. The job of assistant professor is worth about $100,000 or $ 102,000 starting in the private sector. Dollars early in the career are worth more than dollars later in the career. The prevailing ideology is that the last academic standing will get a good wage, in the current system.

Women are slow to promote through the system. Promotion that coincides with a bump in salary disadvantages women in this regard. Salary scales should not be tied to rank in the future. Resolving pay equity is not a matter of just resolving pay discrimination. Anomalies funds create a solution on a one- time basis, and take away from Human Rights. At the bargaining table, the University of Saskatchewan won $2500 for every faculty woman. Some were insulted by the one time only offer as it ignores the impact on women’s pensions.

Tongue in cheek suggestions on getting merit pay include:

Getting oneself on the committee that determines it

Being married to someone on the merit committee

Being in a relation with someone on the merit committee

Glenis Joyce of the University of Saskatchewan spoke about The Corporate U and You. She notes that Management’s right to manage is a clause that haunts us. Neo-conservative ideologies have re-inscribed legitimating structures of inequality.

In a Saskatchewan employment systems review, the arbitrator found that the university had studies showing the existence of systemic discrimination but had not acted upon it; this was ruled a breach of the agreement. The university proposed instead a diversity strategy, and wanted to drop the memorandum of agreement. Visible minorities are well represented but not Female visible minority members. The only designated group at the University of Saskatchewan is women.

Strategies that have worked:

University Business officers are moving from a traditional employment equity approach towards diversity principles. But we must be wary; there is an increasing use of diversity consultants who come from outside the university, who advertise themselves as doing things such as “maximizing neurons per salary dollar.”

Johns noted Steven Lukes’ discussion of 3 different dimensions of power, including getting someone to do something they would not otherwise do, the power to control the agenda, and the ability to unobtrusively exercise power.

In 2000, the Human Rights Commission, considered a gender discrimination case regarding sports. The complaint was about an intra university hockey team, which the University lost vs. the Human Rights Commission, then lost twice in court. The cases are now in tribunal, after seven years.

Johns’ remedies include:

We should all make better use of the equity resources of CAUT. Their equity lists are good, and they provide support on national efforts

Know when to stop activism in an unproductive direction and put energies into a different form of activism

Don’t shore up the ivory basement

Be wary of committee work; quit sitting on committees which allow the university to appear to be acting on equity while in effect achieving nothing.

She notes that CAUT needs to link all associations in the country and see where equity really is in this country. Women are labeled as just an “interest group. Johns’ recommended theme song for activism is”We’re not ready to make nice” from the Dixie Chicks.

Cindy Oliver is a member at large CAUT Executive; President Federation for Post Secondary Educators in British Columbia. Her main issue was the regularization of work for women as a way of overcoming gender bias for women. Oliver noted that women need more than anomalies exercises; they need to be able to fill in the gaps for pensionable service. This remedy is necessary for those who spent many years as sessional or contract and who have spent a period being unable for whatever reason not being able to contribute. Negotiated pension buy-backs are a great help in this. In Oliver’s university employees are regularized after two years work at 50% of workload.

We need to offer courses in facing management, and build on the experience of previous union negotiators and leaders. Oliver suggests a course in “How to Make Meetings Work for You.” In terms of union organizing, she notes: we need to get younger members involved by conducting meetings that introduce them to our unions, and strive to get them onto executives. She stressed the importance of union contact with new hires.

One part of her talk on ways of helping women who have worked extensively as contract workers in their past was extremely illuminating. Oliver’s organization was successful in getting buy-back provisions for low pension members. They bargained joint trusteeship of the pension and were pension partners at the bargaining table. In the buy back, it was arranged that members were able to buy back pension input at a reduced rate.

Oliver notes that private institutions are helping women who are tired of teaching in sessional positions and are able moved into this arena.

“An instructor is an instructor.” We should not accept the notion of some fields being paid at a higher rate than others.

Leslie Burke, Staff Representative, Post-Secondary Educators, provided comparative data from Europe. Some highlights are, initiatives involving government limiting of work hours. This was again noted as not being so relevant to academics, due to our intense self-policing of work. The Netherlands was noted for its innovative Life Course policy (which allows older workers to continue for as long as possible), adjustment of work hours rights, and extensive leaves for various types of caretaking. In Belgium, time credits include stop outs without penalty, and opportunities to move to part time, especially when one is over fifty. The French have reduced the work week from 39 to 35 hours, and Sweden has increased care privileges.

Some possibilities for reducing time as a stress factor were discussed, such as reduced work and plans for family care. At the University of Toronto Familial Care office, collaboration in care work is encouraged amongst staff, students, and faculty. For academic women, leaves are often taken up by elder care, raising the issue of triple binds. Jerry Jacobs was cited as an author on time, gender, and family stress.

The concept of WIF, or work interference with family, was discussed.

This was seen to have two main components

1) Time based, and

2) Strain based-(thinking about one thing while doing another).

Research was cited claiming that children want mothers focused when they are with them, not necessarily more time.

The importance of perceived control over resources was stressed. Co-worker support is a huge predictor of success in work family balance, making both “organic support” and managerial support equally important. It was noted that faculty work culture glorifies overwork. Burke stressed that we are like self employed entrepreneurs, subjecting ourselves to constant evaluation, and self-reviewing continuously. We compare ourselves internally vis-à-vis disciplinary standards. Another way that we are like private entrepreneurs is that we buy many of our work related resources privately.

Areas of change in the economy in which we work include the shift to a global, knowledge based labour force. The current economic environment also puts an increased demand on families, with little support in caring for dependents, and the fostering of home care back into the private realm as an individual problem. The increase in contract and contingent work was also noted, as well as the contemporary work expectations of multi-tasking and accomplishing continuous work through telework.

Linda Hawkins of the Guelph Centre for Families, Work and Well-Being asked the question; what if the university put a limit of 50 expected work hours per week on faculty? How would that change the nature of the academy? Retention and recruitment are factors in work-life balance and planning.

The problem of evaluation was discussed in terms of the raising of the bar in expectations of publishing productivity. Recommendations included moving the expectations from quantity to quality. Burke noted that BC has acknowledgement of service in colleges in their collective agreement. Community service work should also be included. Young faculty who have come through the Harris/Chrétien years often have significant student debt which inhibits them in planning families.

The conference ended with tips for work life balance and management. Examples were given of problems in dealing with faculty stresses, and particular ways that women adapt or mal -adapt to them. Examples were given of women faculty who postponed medical tests that affected their lives because they were too busy dealing with students and departmental responsibilities. The complexities of research time support, and the responsibility many feel about the difficulties departments face in managing in their absence were discussed as issues that affect taking needed time off. Strategies that women faculty use in order to avoid bias, such as “hide the children”, serve to increase time pressures.

Other Reports from this Conference:
Kym Bird
Eve Haque
Didi Khayatt