Employment Security
Full-time faculty work has been eroding due to several college practices. Academic work is unbundled and assigned to support staff and administrators; academic work is being assigned through OntarioLearn to non-unionized “facilitators” and through Private Career Colleges to non-unionized professors; non-full-time faculty are receiving multiple stacked contracts instead of access to full-time positions; coordination duties are being assigned outside the bargaining unit; counselling and other faculty work (e.g., curriculum development, preparation of courses for online delivery) are being given or contracted out to private interests; and international initiatives infringe on faculty rights and protections. Faculty employment security is being threatened.
Faculty work includes all services provided by professors, instructors, counsellors, and librarians.
Precarious Work and Staffing
The overreliance on contract vs. full-time positions has continued over the past few years, and precarious faculty were hardest hit in terms of job loss and worsening working conditions due to the pandemic. Several gains were achieved through the Kaplan Award 2022 for partial-load (PL) faculty members, including statutory holidays now counting for partial-load service, expanded bridging of benefits for PL members, faster accumulation of seniority and movement up the salary grid, protection of seniority for PL members who take parental leave, restrictions on the Colleges in attempting to circumvent a PL member’s priority to a course by changing the course name or code, and Union access to the PL Registry (i.e., transparency).
Coordinators
Existing contract language now stipulates duties shall be reduced to writing. Yet, coordinators face varying workloads and expectations, shaped in part by the number of students within programs, the number of full-time and non-full-time professors and instructors, and external accreditation responsibilities. This results in inconsistency in the recognition and payment of the coordinator role.
Wages and Benefits
Our personal and financial health have been highlighted by the challenges presented by COVID-19 and the current affordability crisis. Mortgage renewal and increasing rental costs will impact members in the life of the next contract, as will the enduring inflationary pressure particularly on groceries and fuel. This wage disparity and affordability gap is happening as individual Colleges post average profits of more than 20 million dollars annually.
One of the areas under attack in public sector bargaining is benefits. We have witnessed the cost of accessing benefit services skyrocket with inflation. Preserving the benefits we currently have is vital, and there are opportunities for future benefit improvements.
Wages impact many life decisions, including financial planning, retirement, etc. The comparator groups for CAAT-A have been established as high-school teachers and university professors. To reach the established benchmark of our historical comparators, we would currently need to see an increase of almost 4%. This calculation includes the recent retroactive wage increases but excludes the latest inflationary pressures facing members.
Workload
The workload of full-time professors and instructors has expanded to include increasing responsibilities regarding online and multi-mode teaching, student accommodations, diversity in student needs (including issues related to language proficiency), research, and administrative tasks that are not typically reflected on our Standard Workload Form (SWF). The result is that not all work done by professors and instructors is captured on the SWF and is “hidden” volunteer work. Teaching faculty are also experiencing much higher demands on their time for student engagement, new learning platforms, the development of degree programs, community outreach, and research.
Colleges have been applying pressure to deliver an increasing number of courses online or in multiple modes. Our current workload formula does not sufficiently address the amount of time needed to properly develop, prepare, teach, and evaluate such courses. In previous rounds of bargaining our members indicated that our current workload formula does not sufficiently address the amount of time needed to properly develop, prepare, teach, and evaluate such courses.
The last round of bargaining led to a workload task force whose results should help inform negotiations, but those results are not yet available.
Workload Complaints Process
All workload issues are to be directed informally to each college’s Workload Monitoring Group (WMG) and, failing resolution, to be referred to a Workload Resolution Arbitrator (WRA). The process is meant to be an informal process, with no outside legal representation present. Yet, the Colleges continue to bring legal representation to informal dispute resolution tables. This imbalance of power, and shift to formality, is not allowing for meaningful resolutions in a timely manner.
Partial-Load Workload Issues
It is widely understood that the pay and working conditions of partial-load faculty are not equitable to those of full-time faculty. Following the 2017 round of negotiations, there were two provincewide committees created to address pay equity, staffing ratios, and workload. These were struck down by the incoming Ford government, leaving these central issues unchanged.
Counsellor Workload Issues
An updated counsellor class definition was included in the Kaplan Award 2022. Counsellors have varying workloads and expectations in their duties, including student caseload, nature of work (personal counselling, career counselling, academic advising, special needs accommodations, etc.) and professional accreditation responsibilities. This can result in workload inconsistencies. In addition, there has been a marked increase in students who require support for their mental health needs, a trend that is increasingly apparent across the post-secondary system. At the same time, several Colleges have outsourced counselling services leading to compounding capacity issues for students and staff.
Librarian Workload Issues
Librarians across Colleges may have varying workloads and expectations in their duties and time allocated to their work. There is no clear definition of what counts as a librarian’s work, and no requirement for a manager to meet regularly with librarians. There is also a trend in many colleges to reduce or eliminate librarians as faculty positions, and/or to outsource services. There are only 11 colleges left with librarians.
Equity
Equity in the workplace refers to the establishment of working conditions free from barriers unrelated to ability. We made significant gains in this area in the last round of bargaining. Within the Kaplan Award 2022, Article 4.03 recognizes the shared commitment to achieving employment equity, including non-discriminatory practices that address anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism, and joint actions at the local and provincial level. This work has already begun; most recently, in a request from many Locals to obtain data from the Colleges to determine the extent of barriers related to gender pay and salary transparency. That said, no colleges that we are aware of have begun a full implementation of Article 4.03.
After a long-fought battle, including a year-long delay after the Kaplan Award 2022, the Colleges finally agreed to a facilitated process to recognize Indigenous Knowledge in salary calculations (a significant gain made in the last round of bargaining). Gains were also made in acknowledging land based/traditional teaching practices as a factor to be considered in workload assignments, and as the right of Indigenous faculty to request the inclusion of an Indigenous Elder or Knowledge Keeper in workload complaint processes and grievances. Also awarded was the inclusion of two Indigenous arbitrators and the extension of the definition of “family” to “chosen family” in bereavement leaves.
The Colleges now use equity language to discuss their plans to address ongoing disparities caused by racism and other forms of inequality but there remains a disconnect between aspirational statements and material practices that would deliver meaningful change.
Finally, there is a general lack of transparency in our Collective Agreement, with regards to equitable hiring and retention, and the prevention of bullying and harassment.
Improved Representation for Members
One of the elements necessary for a strong Collective Agreement is enforcement. Representing you, the member, is the central enforcement function of the Union Local Executive. However, the ability for Locals to fully represent their members and enforce the existing provisions in the Collective Agreement is being read in an increasingly limited manner by administrators.
Representation occurs at two levels:
Individual
- Regular or group grievances, including arbitration
Collective
- Union grievances (e.g., patent violations of the Collective Agreement that adversely affect the rights of faculty) and
- College or provincial committee work (e.g., Joint Union-College Committees, Workload Monitoring Group, Divisional Executive Committee).
Arbitrators have increasingly interpreted our current Collective Agreement to restrict collective representation. Strict limits are being imposed on the scope of the violations Union Locals can grieve on behalf of their members.
Intellectual Property Rights, Academic Freedom, and Shared Governance form a constellation of issues that relate to faculty control over our work and the academic direction/decisions of our institutions. The Colleges’ recent change to emergency remote teaching reminds us that faculty influence over academic decisions is essential to ensure that they are not made purely for financial reasons. Additionally, this decision-making authority ensures that our work is not used in ways that may make our jobs redundant and ensures that faculty – including contract faculty, where members of racialized or other marginalized groups are concentrated – are able to protect our safety, dignity, and professional integrity.
We made considerable gains in these areas in 2017, including new academic freedom language in the Collective Agreement, as well as explicit recognition that Academic Governance and Intellectual Property were fundamental to excellence in the Colleges. Nonetheless, Ontario college faculty remain without explicit protections in the areas of intellectual property rights and remain excluded from meaningful participation in academic decision-making structures. The new academic freedom language is often read narrowly or ignored by administrators.
Intellectual Property Rights
Intellectual Property Rights refer to the degree of ownership that creators of intellectual materials have over what they produce. These rights include ownership (and control over the use) of course materials, research, the products of professional development leaves, patentable materials, and any independent academic work.
The Colleges’ switch to Emergency Remote Teaching at the beginning of the pandemic – with an increased reliance on recorded lectures – highlights the importance of Intellectual Property Rights for job security. These rights would ensure that faculty-produced materials are not sold to third-parties against the will of faculty, and ensure that jobs – particularly contract faculty positions – are not eliminated by the employer’s abuse of faculty-produced content.
Academic Freedom
Academic Freedom is the right of faculty members to exercise control of course design, delivery, and evaluation. It is also the right of faculty to pursue academic work and research on topics of their choice and to speak publicly on academic issues and issues of public concern without fear of reprisal from their employer.
While we made unprecedented gains in Academic Freedom in 2017, the Employer’s response to program delivery changes during the pandemic (which has carried through to today) has highlighted that both full-time and contract faculty must be empowered to make fundamental decisions about their classes, to ensure quality education for our students.
Shared governance ensures that faculty share in academic decision-making and setting the academic direction of their colleges. Along with academic freedom, this ensures that faculty have meaningful control over the quality of education they deliver and the research they conduct. This democratic decision-making process protects transparency, academic quality and worker safety, and is a standard at universities and many colleges outside of Ontario.