All Posts Tagged With: "faculty"

Should students be scared when faculty threaten to walk out?

Labour unrest at Western and Carleton have, no doubt, students there worried. And as the academic year rolls on, more faculty associations across the country may reach tense periods in their bargaining processes. Could my school be next? But since students are not always familiar with the mechanics of such negotiations, the uncertainty can be unnerving. What follows is a brief outline of what goes on to help students feel a bit less uncertain.

At nearly every university in Canada, professors and other academics are members of a local faculty association, and in most cases those associations are legally unions according to provincial labour laws. For professors, most of those locals are part of a national union, The Canadian Association of University Teachers.

Faculty associations negotiate collective agreements with their university administrations and those agreements govern much of the academic workings of the university. Students may not be aware of it, but everyday things like the numbers of students in their classes may, in fact, be determined by the university’s contract with its faculty.

These contracts are made only for a few years at a time since neither side wants to be bound to one set of rules for too long — new problems may arise, after all. So, around the time the old agreement is set to run out, the two sides meet to try to negotiate a new deal. Often the changes are minor, but there are usually important things that both sides want to alter. Salaries, for example, are almost always on the table, but, as the recent disputes at Western and Carleton show, things like tenure and promotion can take centre stage.

Sometimes both sides agree within a few months to new terms and a contract is signed without much conflict. Just as often, though, negotiations drag on, impasses are reached, and things get tense. At some point, the faculty association’s executive may call a vote asking members to authorize a strike should they deem one necessary. Students should be aware that calling a vote for a strike mandate like this is very common in such negotiations and is nothing to be alarmed about. A strike vote is not a decision to strike; it’s only an authorization to call a strike if necessary. In fact, the strike vote may actually help resolve the problems because it shows the administration that faculty are serious.

When the vote is called, faculty association members typically vote in favour of a strike because if they vote against it, their bargainers lose almost all their power: they have to show the administration that, at the end of the day, they are willing to walk. That is the only real power faculty associations have.

If no agreement can be reached — and pending a variety of mediations that may be mandated by provinical laws — faculty may strike. They leave the university, cease their teaching and typically set up picket lines on campus. Depending on the particulars, the university itself may remain open so that students can go to the library, work in computer labs and so on, but those details will vary from one university to the next. Check the web sites of the university and of the faculty association itself to get information about your case.

If they do feel the need to walk out, associations typically try to arrange strikes for a time that will cause maximum disruption to the university’s operations so that the administration has plenty of motivation to make a deal. Faculty generally do not strike in the summer because the university can simply let them stay away without losing much revenue or causing a public uproar. Consequently, many associations try to time their job actions for the middle of the term to create fear that exams and courses might be in jeopardy if the situation is not resolved.

Does this sound like students are being used? They are. Associations want students and parents and members of the community to rally together and say “get those profs back to work for our kids’ sake!” which pressures the university to cave in to faculty demands.

At the same time, what is good for faculty is often good for students in the long run. If faculty win higher salaries at the bargaining table, it may mean recruiting better profs in the future. If they get better rules for academic freedom, it may mean better teaching because instructors are not worried about what they can and cannot say. If they get smaller class sizes, you may get more personal attention in your next course.

The good news is that for all the anxiety, faculty strikes are not usually very long (typically weeks, not months). So far as I know, no Canadian university has ever lost a term or semester due to a strike. So if there is a talk of a strike where you go to school, don’t panic. The strike is not likely to happen. If it does, it likely won’t be long, and by the time there is another one, you will have graduated and moved on.

Part-time teachers deserve respect, job security and benefits – but how do they compare to the “real thing?”

There’s a new study out concerning the increasing reliance on adjunct instructors in post-secondary education. For those uninitiated to this topic here’s the summary. There are university “professors” in the true sense – those with full-time jobs and a fair measure of job security – and then there are adjuncts. These are supplementary faculty with little or no job security and often without full-time employment. They are, effectively, academic temps.

Now as this study observes, there are any number of ways that adjunct instructors may be employed. The jobs titles in use and the specific terms of employment are subject to endless variation. So I hope you’ll excuse me if I don’t define things exactly. But anyone with a passing familiarity with the job market should be able to fill in the blanks. Adjunct instructors are employed as they are for all the same reasons that part-time and casual labour is used anywhere. It’s cheaper. It’s flexible – meaning they can be got rid of easily. And it avoids a lot of those hang ups that full-time employees seem to expect such as benefits, vacation, and the like.

I find this particular study interesting for one and one reason only. It reveals that this move towards an increasingly casual workforce in academia isn’t necessarily a deliberate one. And this is very believable. Individual departments and academic units tend to operate with a fair degree of independence and this is where employment decisions get made. Sometimes these units respond to general institutional plans but most often they just do their own thing. So this may simply be a case where a trend of behaviour, across units, contributes to an overall change that was never quite intended by anyone. And that’s very interesting.

What I find profoundly boring about this report is that it repeats the same old claim that adjunct instructors are every bit as good as tenured professors (if not better) and it backs this claim with evidence that students seem to like them more. The logic there is so shaky it barely needs a solid whack to see it fall apart. First, as a recent student, I would never claim that students are qualified to be the sole judges of quality education. I love student feedback and contribution. I think the student voice is very important. But I don’t for a moment think it is decisive. I know as well as anyone that students respond well to easy classes, to lax grading, to charisma and personality. Hell, if nothing else students definitely respond well to younger instructors, and naturally these are in the majority among adjuncts. The mere fact that students like someone is not evidence of their effectiveness.

More importantly, this study willfully ignores something that every academic knows full well and yet might shock most students and their parents. The controls on who gets hired as an adjunct are often almost non-existent. Before the university hires a full-time professor they conduct an international job search that may last a year or more and involves an entire screening committee. When it comes time to hire an adjunct it may come down to simply picking a resume out of a pile on a desk. And I am not exaggerating in the slightest. Considering the relative controls on one hiring process vs. the other, it seems incredible to claim that adjuncts are as well or better qualified than full-time faculty. In order to make any sense of that claim one would have to believe that the hiring policies in place, even at their best, barely achieve a better result than pulling names out of a hat. And I refuse to believe that. I am sure that universities sometimes make the wrong choices and sometimes have their priorities in the wrong order. But I still believe that when a full committee of professors put a year of their time into hiring someone the outcome is going to be better, on average, than a resume out of a pile.

Contract faculty are paid less, get no benefits and have no job security. But they’re fighting back

As the York University strike stretched on earlier this winter, educators and education watchers began to express newfound and not-so-new concerns about the reliance on contingent faculty in Canadian universities. This article in The Times Higher Education Supplement discusses the casualized academic workforce in American universities and reviews the growing backlash against the working conditions faced by adjunct and part-time faculty:

Adjuncts in higher education, estimated to number some 600,000 across the US, are paid the equivalent of 64 per cent less per hour than their full-time colleagues, receive no health insurance or other benefits, may lose their appointments with little notice if enrolments shift or budgets fall, and are typically not entitled to jobless compensation because they are considered temporary. To earn a living, many teach large numbers of courses at different schools simultaneously.

Until now, adjunct faculty have been slow to organise to fight for better working conditions. Much of the problem is logistical; some teach at night or, because they have no offices, are not on campus other than during their class times. Dependent on being reappointed every semester, they fear being blackballed by administrators. They have also received almost no support from the principal traditional faculty unions in the US.

But this is beginning to change. Independent organising efforts by adjuncts have taken root in Boston and Chicago, with early successes at winning higher pay and other concessions. Non-academic unions including those representing automobile workers and government employees, seeing an opportunity to increase their memberships, have started organising adjuncts.