Tentative Agreement: On the Way to Performance Indicators?

An Analysis and Commentary on the Proposed Teaching Load Reduction Framework

I have been asked to comment on the tentative agreement recently reached between the York administration and the YUFA leadership. There are many problematic dimensions of this settlement. It fails utterly to address some of the issues in the bargaining proposals passed by the membership. We have failed to achieve a per member conference travel funding allowance, and as a result, most members are left with paltry support from their faculties which is now below $500 per year. Admittedly it was probably a difficult year to make major progress on monetary issues, but our inability to secure even inflationary increases to our Professional Expense Allowance and various stipends and other benefits (excepting vision care) is very unfortunate.
By far the most controversial provision is the introduction of a process to develop a framework whereby teaching releases will be selectively awarded within units based on factors related to research. Most of the details will be worked out after bargaining, but the indications and ‘principles’ that are in the package are sufficiently clear that we can identify a number of very serious problems.
One might say that the settlement is worthy of acceptance simply because new resources are being put into teaching reductions. But if one looks at the details, this is not happening at all. We are being given a salary increase in the third year of the agreement that is below par in order to pay for the selective teaching reductions. If we refuse the teaching reductions worked out by the joint committee we can have the cash equivalent of $1.5 million put into our base salary increase, raising it (an indeterminate amount) above 2.5%. In very explicit terms, the settlement asks faculty members to pay for the teaching releases by foregoing a certain amount of base salary increase. This is problematic in at least two ways. It means that the university is treating the released time for research as unpaid time. Secondly, it means that all of us, even those who do not receive the release, will be paying for those that do.
It is also very unfortunate that this framework of selective (and probably competitive) teaching releases departs significantly from what the membership authorized, which was an across the board limit of 2.0 courses per year for faculty members. This is what most of our counterparts in other universities have achieved in recent years. Instead, without even the slightest consultation with the membership, the union has come back with a tentative settlement which will require us to find a way to selectively allocate a limited number of ‘opportunities’ for course release to reduce teaching loads to 2.0 courses for eligible faculty members. The Executive was instructed by the membership to hold bargaining consultation meetings before bargaining ended, and these would have been great opportunities to see if the members were in agreement with this approach.
One of the major problems is that we have no idea how many faculty members will receive a reduction to a 2.0 course load. We know it is supposed to cost no more than $1.5 million, but this would be after giving up Appendix O which gives credits that can be cashed in for teaching releases. The framework also will replace some other existing teaching reduction mechanisms already in place for some units. It will require the submission of revised unit workload documents which will surely require re-examination of some unit’s current arrangements. In addition, some units who were trying to reduce their normal teaching load to 2.5 under the last collective agreement will have to give up their grievances. Finally, it is very unlikely that all units will be given the same number of teaching releases for internal allocation. Some units – or the members in those units – supervise more graduate students than others, perhaps do more research than others and may even do more service than others. We can only assume that units will be somehow ranked according to their eligibility for more or less teaching release to be internally distributed.
It is also very hard to determine how much teaching release $1.5 million buys or even how much base wage increase it buys. We do know that the employer is reserving the right to refuse any arrangement that can’t be supported by “available financial resources” and it is not clear at all how the financial constraints will be determined, and by whom. If we ratify this agreement we are really committing an act of blind faith. It is surprising – and suspicious - that we do not have more bottom line numbers available to us. It would have been much better to press for more details and guaranteed outcomes, but the employer’s strong desire to get a deal before students returned for the Fall academic term clearly prevailed.
Despite the lack of detail, we can try to speculate on some of the implications of the proposed framework. To determine how much teaching release will be generated it will have to be decided who will cover the lost teaching. If we simply raise class sizes we can generate course releases in a ‘cost free’ manner, but then our teaching load reduction will be at least partially offset by more marking and course administration, not to mention the pedagogical sacrifices we will be accepting. Likewise, if we hire more contract faculty ($15,000 per course) instead of tenure-stream ($50,000 per course), we can get many more course releases.
Let us assume – perhaps charitably – that we will receive 200 teaching reductions (to 2.0 courses), to be divided amongst approximately 800 faculty members now teaching above 2.0 courses per year. Due to the lack of information provided to us by our own union, this is a very rough estimate, and achieving this amount of teaching reduction may require a strong reliance on contract faculty. How will these teaching releases be allocated? The settlement leaves this decision to the joint subcommittee, but it is clear from the language and ‘principles’ that the committee will be considering the relative amount of graduate teaching done by units and their faculty members. In addition, the principles state that one can only qualify for a teaching reduction if he or she has satisfied “clearly identified eligibility criteria for research activity” and “service expectations.”
Most of our colleagues are already research active and do regular service. Each of these activities are part of their job description. Unfortunately, under the proposed arrangement we know that not everyone will get a course reduction simply by being research active and doing regular service since the resources available will not allow this. Consequently, each unit will have to stipulate how to evaluate research, and how to determine which researchers get the course release. Graduate supervision loads will have to be considered as well since we are replacing Appendix O. Although the ‘principles’ state that each unit can collegially and democratically develop the criteria, they also state that these criteria must be approved by the Dean/Principal.
It is quite clear to me that the likely result of this will be annual competitions among both units and colleagues for course releases. We know the university has been avidly studying the use of performance indicators, and they have been canvassing Faculties on this topic. The acceptance of this framework is almost certain to result in a significant intensification of post-tenure performance review within units. In fact, one cannot avoid the suspicion that the reason the parties negotiated a vague framework with only very general principles, was so that performance indicators could more easily be smuggled in.
The result this will have on our academic culture in our departments is sure to be significant. It is very unfortunate that our own union gave us no opportunity to consider any of these consequences before agreeing to this tentative settlement. It is true that we can reject the deal, but by that time we will have lost any leverage with the employer since the financial cost of the deal will be the same in either case.