YUFA
External
CAUT Contract Academic Staff Conference 2009
30 May 2009, Ottawa, ON
by Jay Rahn, York University
10 Sept 09 – Back in early April, I volunteered to serve as YUFA Executive observer at the CAUT Conference on Contract Academic Faculty in Ottawa 30 May. At that time, CUPE 3903 had not ratified its current Collective Agreement and there was concern that issues concerning longstanding contract faculty would be relevant not only to their contract but also to YUFA’s upcoming negotiations.
In the meantime, Ruthann Dyer attended the Conference as a YUFA member-at-large and has published her report.
My report to Executive focuses on sessions that were simultaneous with those on which Ruthann has reported, especially as York’s contract faculty profile differs substantially from other Canadian universities’ and this divergence could affect implementation of the academic employment model that was the Conference’s main topic. As Ruthann points out, according to the pro-rata model, contract faculty who work part-time would be treated like full-time faculty: not only with regard to salary, benefits, sabbatical leaves, etc. as Ruthann emphasizes, but also with regard to teaching, service, and research. For instance, if one had a 50% pro-rata appointment, one would provide 50% teaching, 50% service, and 50% research in comparison with those appointed full-time, and one would be supported proportionally for such work.
Although I did not hear the term used at the Conference, such a model of employment could be understood as a kind of work sharing. Advantages emphasized at the Conference were that such pro-rata employees would not be regarded as second-class citizens and that the university as a whole would benefit from having a more unified, and officially mandated, culture of teaching, service, and research.
Ruthann has pointed out some of the challenges to adopting pro-rata employment that were articulated at the Conference. With regard to York, these challenges seem to be especially intricate and serious. York is much larger than most universities represented at the Conference. Whereas most part-time contract faculty are members of CUPE 3903, an indeterminate, but seemingly quite large, number are CUPE 3903 excludees. Within CUPE 3903 itself, Unit 2 members, who would be prime candidates for pro-rata employment, are a minority. Further, as at several other Canadian universities, there are many longstanding Unit-2 employees or employees in Unit 2-like appointments, whose main career is off-campus. As participants in the Conference pointed out, this is especially so with regard to employees in professional disciplines, e.g., business, medicine, nursing, education, fine arts, and law. All the same, some of these employees at other universities have moved from part-time to full-time university employment, either temporarily or on a continuing basis.
In comparison with other universities, York also has a much larger array of part- and full-time categories that could correspond to pro-rata employment. In addition to the part-time categories just outlined, these include the recently ratified category of Long Service Teaching Appointments within CUPE 3903 as well as CUPE 3903 Conversion appointments to YUFA and Special Renewable Contracts. Further, within YUFA, at least two of the Contractually Limited Appointment sub-categories could correspond to pro-rata employment. Moreover, unlike many Canadian universities, York University has, in some Faculties, both a Professorial Stream and an Alternate Stream.
Whereas this broad array of categories would seem to mitigate against pro-rata employment, the Conference emphasized ways in which such an ideal might be met. The chief strategy advocated was to proceed incrementally, commensurate with compensation and non-academic benefits. These would include provisions for committee and other service work within the university (as among all members of YUFA), support for research directly related to teaching (as in YUFA’s Alternate Stream), and support for externally published research / creative activity (as in YUFA’s Professorial and Librarian Streams).
Potential hurdles would involve research / creative work. Increasingly, research directly related to teaching is published, or self-published, externally via the Internet. Further, in the event that employees held pro-rata appointments at more than one university (e.g., 50% appointments at each of two universities in such cities as Vancouver, Waterloo, Ottawa, Toronto, or Montreal), how would the 50% research at each be evaluated for tenure and promotion? As well, if the proportions of teaching, research, and service (i.e., 40-40-20 at some Canadian universities) are to be realized by contract faculty teaching less than full-time, would such proportions be evaluated by means of performance indicators, and if so, would this facilitate the introduction of performance indicators among full-time faculty?
Notwithstanding such hurdles and challenges, participants in the Conference seemed optimistic. Although this impression might be a result of those who self-selected to attend, several department Chairs and senior faculty who participated ensured that the ideas mooted were critically and pragmatically analyzed. In this regard, it should be noted that the Conference was well attended and a wide spectrum of academic workers participated, including part-time instructors at community colleges.
Other Delegates from this Conference:
Ruthanna Dyer