YUFA
Stewards' Information
Job Candidates
Negotiating with Chairs, Not Deans
15 Jan 04 – Part of
YUFA's role is to speak with and advise candidates who have been offered
contractually limited or permanent academic positions at York and who are
negotiating the terms of their employment.
Increasingly we're getting calls from candidates who are
negotiating their offers with department Chairs instead of directly with
Deans.
This is problematic as it
can lead to a misunderstanding of the managerial role actually being
played by Chairs in these situations. It's
somewhat natural for candidates to misinterpret the situation – to not
fully appreciate that Chairs are really operating from an adversarial
position – and to trust would-be colleagues to give them good advice.
Many important matters
are negotiated at the time of one’s hiring at York: salary, course
release and other forms of support during the pre-tenure period, credited
years for service at another institution, etc.
Whether one is appointed in Pre-candidacy 1, 2 or 3, or in
Candidacy, for example, affects how much time one has before being
eligible to or required to apply for tenure and promotion, and this is a
matter negotiated at the time of appointment.
Negotiating with Chairs, who are both colleagues and fellow YUFA
members, is then very problematic for a number of reasons. First, when Chairs tell candidates that the Dean won't go any
higher than whatever salary figure they then quote, candidates often fail
to appreciate that this isn't friendly advice from a colleague, but is
instead a way of getting them to lower their expectations. Likely resulting from these lowered expectations, there's an
anecdotal sense that people who deal with Chairs are faring worse in their
negotiations than those who deal directly with Deans. Second, Chairs are in a conflict of interest position on a number
of matters that arise in the initial negotiations of terms of employment.
Given ever-shrinking departmental budgets, Chairs may feel
pressured to try to limit the kinds of support that new faculty members
can negotiate. It is fairly
standard practice, for example, for new faculty members to negotiate some
form of teaching reduction during at least their first year or more at
York. Chairs may feel some
reticence in bringing this to the attention of new faculty, or resist
offering it, because it puts pressure on their ability to mount a full
curriculum. Finally, it is untenable to have members of a single union (YUFA)
negotiating terms of employment with one another. It is the duty of management to engage in such negotiations, and it
is an abrogation of their responsibilities, which works to the detriment
of our members, to delegate those responsibilities to colleagues.
It is YUFA's position that all candidates who are offered academic appointments at York should be dealing directly with Deans rather than department Chairs regarding the terms of their employment.