Colleges need to create more full-time positions
The Collective Agreement between the colleges and faculty stipulates that the colleges are to give preference to the creation of full-time positions rather than partial-load positions. Giving “preference” to full-time positions means hiring full-time faculty unless it can be established that the course necessitates otherwise.
Both the colleges and the faculty agree that colleges need to be staffed primarily with a full-time body of teachers if they are to fulfill their mandates as deliverers of post-secondary education, training, upgrading, and apprenticeships. They need a significant and meaningful proportion of the academic body to be regular, full-time employees, committed to a career in post-secondary education. Such a regular, full-time body of academics is essential to the success of post-secondary learning.
Partial-load positions are restricted to particular teaching circumstances
1. where there is a need for only 7 to 12 total teaching hours of a particular subject,
2. where a subject with 7 to 12 total teaching hours requires a teacher with particular credentials.
In the past, one college argued at an arbitration hearing that it could use budgetary constraints to justify the hiring of partial-load rather than full-time teachers. The Board of Arbitration ruled emphatically that fiscal or budgetary reasons could not be used to justify partial-load positions. [Board chaired R. Howe, OPSEU Local 562 v Humber College] |
The best candidates to fill full-time positions are those partial-load teachers who have proven that they have been doing the job and who have shown that they have the competence and experience as college teachers. Partial-load teachers already have the right to be interviewed as internal candidates for new full-time postings. That right needs to be expanded so that current partial-load teachers who are seeking full-time positions are given a clear pathway to full-time college appointments.
Furthermore, when a course which must be delivered by a partial-load teacher is re-offered, first opportunity to teach that course should be given to the partial-load teacher who has taught or is teaching that course.
Partial-load employees are members of the academic bargaining unit. Their employment rights and conditions must be improved in the next Collective Agreement.
Your bargaining team
Carolyn Gaunt, Cambrian College (Co-Chair)
Ted Montgomery, Seneca College (Co-Chair)
Rod Bain, Algonquin College
Gary Bonczak, Fleming College
Benoît Dupuis, La Cité collégiale
Lynn Dee Eason, Sault College
JP Hornick, George Brown College
Contact your team: [email protected]