Member Voices: Organizing Contract Academic Staff
Below, long-time Tech Rep and Faculty member in Chemistry Jennifer Wolf discusses CAUT’s efforts to organize contract faculty and the association’s plans in the immediate future.
From March 3-4, 2023, I attended the bi-annual meeting of the Canadian Association of University Teachers’ (CAUT) Contract Academic Staff (CAS) Standing Committee. CAS’ mandate is to promote awareness of limited-term contract faculty issues–like those our members working in Part-time Studies (PTS) face–within and outside CAUT and provide support for these workers. Their issues include job security, equity in compensation and benefits, and the trend toward short-term contracts at the expense of regular and tenure-track positions. The FSA has a seat on this committee because our union has a large percentage of members who are contract workers: our auxiliary, mostly PTS, members.* Hardly unique to BCIT, this is a trend among post-secondary institutions across Canada and the United States, where employers move toward hiring more instructors on contract to save money over regular and tenure-track faculty.
At the meeting, we explored common issues across Canadian post-secondaries, many of which are addressed by our FSA Caucus on Part-Time Studies (COPTS). While these meetings are good opportunities to share notes with others, they also highlight the need for action across many different campuses. I am hoping that with the support of CAUT, we can move these issues forward more effectively at BCIT. At the meeting, we reviewed and drafted CAUT policies involving intellectual property, academic freedom, and equity for contract employees. We also talked about Fair Employment Week which happens every October, in which post-secondaries plan events on campus to bring awareness to the issues contract staff face. In the recent past the FSA has teamed up with other similar committees from BC post-secondaries to put on events, including postcard campaigns, to highlight CAS issues.
The next CAS meeting will coincide with our group’s conference, held October 19-21, 2023. CAUT conferences are organized by each association Standing Committee group on a four-year rotation. The last CAUT CAS conference was in October 2017 (two years were skipped because of the COVID pandemic). This year’s CAS conference will include speakers, panels, and break-out sessions to discuss these various issues, including sessions on lobbying government reps for change. The program for this year’s meeting is not yet available, but the 2017 program is on CAUT’s website.
For more information, please feel free to reach out to Jennifer Wolf (jwolf@bcit.ca).
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*Our members working in PTS at BCIT were originally expected to be individuals with industry careers, coming in to teach a part-time course. Over the years, however, more and more of these positions have become held by instructors as their main employment.