In Defense of the CUPE Conversion Program

Richard Wellen

In his Excalibur editorial of Feb. 18, Prof. Gerrard Naddaf questions the very legitimacy of conversions or SRC-type appointments demanded by CUPE 3903 during the strike. The basic thrust of his letter is that there is only one good way to make a 'real' academic appointment.

Over-ambitious unions shouldn't get in the way of this process even though (as Naddaf acknowledged elsewhere) the way 'free competition' works in normal academic appointments is prejudicial to those with long service in contract positions. Folks who teach for many years as contract faculty do so with almost no support for doing the kind of research that will later allow them to secure them a tenure-stream job. In fact, many of them wind up teaching on a contract in the first place because they do not have the kind of family financial resources that would allow them to do research without a paid job. These and other obstacles to career progress for contract faculty have been well documented (see for example Indhu Rajagopal’s book, Hidden Academics: Contract Faculty in Canadian Universities, 2002). For Naddaf, there should be no recognition of long service or other obstacles to fairness in academic appointments, and, even if long service leads to one being unfairly left out, that's just the way the academic game is played. No argument is actually given why we should accept this situation, or why those in the conversion pool who have research publications and have taught a number of years, should not be given a chance to apply for tenure.

In addition, Naddaf wrongly states that the CUPE conversion and SRC programs are unique. There are well-known programs in both Quebec and the very large University of California systems that operate much like an SRC program, guaranteeing longer serving sessionals reviewable, continuing appointments.

On a more general level, I fear that Professor Naddaf is tone deaf to issues related to the casualization of university teaching. These issues have become very pressing, as has the prospect of the increased use of more secure teaching only appointments. These are issues that have made their appearance across North America in major media outlets and other policy forums about academic restructuring. It is therefore very misleading to treat this issue as a York aberration propagated by an opportunistic union, as Prof. Naddaf does. The CUPE conversion program in particular has had an excellent track record. The program was adopted quite voluntarily by the York administration in the 1980’s. Since then, all but one of the 87 people who received one of these appointments (including yours truly) have successfully achieved tenure, and most have had very successful academic careers. I am not suggesting that a large percentage of York’s tenure-stream faculty recruitments should be restricted to the current York contract faculty pool, and I would hope that the vast majority of appointments would be open competitions. Unfortunately, nowhere does Prof. Naddaf acknowledge that CUPE conversion appointments he is criticizing have comprised only about 5% of total appointments since the inception of the program.

I don't want to pretend that I think CUPE 3903's position should be defended on all counts. For example, their initial demand for automatic, seniority based continuing appointments was wrong in my view. But conversions and SRC’s have been awarded competitively within the CUPE pool for years, and I think most people in CUPE expect this to continue to be the case. What’s most notable to me is that the employer had ample opportunity to find a compromise on this issue during the strike, but instead could not resist the chance to try to break the union. It is a shame that Professor Naddaf is so eager to help the administration do this by using caricatures to portray the union’s demands as extreme.

Richard Wellen
Chair and Associate Professor
Division of Social Science

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