The Teaching Stream Faculty Category: A View From a Hidden Academic
Bob Hanke
Departments of Communication Studies, Humanities, Political Science (LAPS)
Introduction (written in April 2011)
My article “The Teaching Stream Appointment Offer: ‘Win/Win’ or Subterfuge?” was first published in the CUPE 3903 Unit 2 Chronicle in January 2009 in anticipation of the Employer’s forced ratification vote of its last offer and before the McGuinty government passed legislation to order an immediate end to the legal strike of CUPE Local 3903 on January 29th, 2009. The Employer’s offer provided for Teaching Stream Appointments in YUFA (this would have required negotiations with YUFA and ratification by YUFA). The Employer’s Offer was rejected by CUPE. As part of the concessionary agreement, Long Service Teaching Stream Appointments (LSTAs) became part of the CUPE 3903 Unit 2 collective agreement.
On May 12, 2009, an important discussion paper on the casualization of labour by the YUFA subcommittee on casualization was released. As the authors sum up: “Most fundamental is the concern that the effects of restructuring -- particularly large class sizes, casualized instruction and increased workloads for faculty -- have negatively impacted the quality of education" (p. 3). Unfortunately, the recommended principles that should have informed bargaining, such as avoiding unacceptable “trade offs,” were not followed through with a strike vote. In August 2009, YUFA ratified a new collective agreement without any reduction of workload and without any article to make CLAs with three or more years of full time employment eligible for conversion to tenure-track positions.
In 2009, York celebrated its 50th anniversary. For the fall term, student enrollment was increased by lowering admission standards. When the York Power of 50 campaign ended in June 2010, the university had raised 207 million dollars, 7 million over the 200 million goal.
OCUFA’s research shows that the number of administrators has doubled from 2000 to 2009 while faculty only grew 36%. In the same period, university boards gave administrators six-per-cent salary increases, at the same time as they were limiting faculty associations to three-per-cent increases per year.
It is in this context that President Shoukri and the Administration are proposing to add another tier to the 5-tier faculty employment system of YUFA Canada Research Chairs, professorial stream faculty, Contractually Limited Appointments, CUPE 3903 contract faculty and LSTAs that already exists. As with LTSAs, this proposal for a “new Teaching Stream Faculty Category” will not lead to sustainable academic livelyhoods. The new twist is the articulation of the love of teaching in a rhetoric of excellence. Faculty are being asked to believe that further stratification of the faculty and more performance reviews of teaching is a way to address the casualization of academic labour.
Full-time tenure track appointments are not a merely a “preference” within a libertarian academic culture; they are the foundation for academic freedom. An “interest in and passion for teaching” is meaningless without the protection of academic freedom. If the late David Noble had been hired into one of these proposed TSAs, he would have been unhired after three years.
The Teaching Stream Proposal, which the Administration has again brought forward, should be rejected because it presumes we live in an academic world where we can do nothing more. It utterly fails to get to the root of the problem, which is the decline of tenure-track or tenured positions and the growth of precarity in academic work.
In order to solve the academic faculty crisis, another way to sustainable academic livelyhoods must be tried. YUFA and CUPE should communicate and cooperate to upgrade the current CUPE conversion ‘lottery.’ YUFA CLAs should be converted after three years of full-time employment. The number of conversions from Unit 2 to YUFA should be a percentage of regular, open-search, tenure-track faculty appointments. We also need to protect the academic freedom of long-term, “hidden academics.” “Probationary” should be expanded so that seven years of service with a normal YUFA teaching load should be considered probationary towards tenure. Finally, to limit the Employer’s overreliance on contract faculty to deliver the curriculum, there should be “bipartite” negotiations involving YUFA and CUPE on a quota for the number of employees who can hold short-term, per course contracts.
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"The Teaching Stream Appointment Offer: ‘Win/Win’ or Subterfuge?" (January 2009)
In its December 8, 2008 “A Fair, Responsible and Sustainable Offer” and December 16, 2008 “Message to CUPE 3903 Members”, the employer highlights its offer to address job security for contract faculty. They propose a “new ongoing category of full-time faculty appointments for Unit 2 contract faculty.” At first glance, these “Teaching Stream Appointments” (TSAs) may sound appealing to some CUPE 3903 Unit 2 members, but a much closer analysis reveals why this category is unacceptable and should be withdrawn from the bargaining table. If a TSA proposal is still on the table when a forced ratification vote comes up, there are good reasons to vote “NO”. While there is a constituency of Unit 2 members that require flexibility and job security (aka ‘flexicurity’), there are some glaring contradictions and historical precedents to consider in addition to the economic value of whatever contractual deal might be negotiated if this bargaining framework is followed and accepted, rather than CUPE 3903’s original Short-Term Renewable Contracts (SRC) proposal for job security based on seniority.
First and foremost, TSAs would create a second-tier of YUFA within YUFA. While a second-tier of YUFA Contractually-Limited Appointments (CLAs) already exists, this does not mean we should accept further tierification. A teaching-only stream within YUFA would segment academic faculty into two tiers. TSAs would be in YUFA but many of the provisions of the YUFA collective agreement would not apply to them. TSAs are attractive to the employer as a cheaper way to deliver courses than maintaining the full-time faculty complement. Since these TSAs would not be tenure track positions, it is also hard to imagine how YUFA could ratify this proposal for TSAs within a union representing tenure-track faculty at York. We may also expect that a reduced normal teaching load - from 2.5 to 2.0 course - will be one of YUFA’s bargaining demands in 2009 so their members have more time to do research. If YUFA is successful, then TSAs will have to perform even more teaching and service than their YUFA colleagues. In short, the TSA is unfair because some YUFA faculty will remain more equal than others.
Second, TSA’s would uncouple teaching from research. This would contravene the Senate Policy on Principles Guiding Research at York & Strategic Research Plan approved at Senate in June 2001. According to Principles Guiding Research at York & Strategic Research Plan (http://www.yorku.ca/secretariat/documents/Principles%20Guiding.pdf):
At York, research and teaching are intrinsically linked and complementary. At York, research and scholarship contribute to excellence in post-secondary teaching, and give students at all levels exposure to some of the most innovative, groundbreaking work in their disciplines (p. 1, para 2.).
In addition:
A variety of government and nongovernmental research initiatives present both tremendous opportunities and challenges for York. These initiatives also demand strategic planning and the commitment of internal resources to resist the threat of a tiered university system that distinguishes teaching and research institutions (emphasis added). York’s challenge in this current climate is to develop research support services and infrastructure sufficiently nimble to respond rapidly to changes in the external environment, while building on past research successes and maintaining the institutional priorities established through collegial governance (p. 2, para 2).
Thirdly, there is a comparative perspective on this issue that was highlighted in a recent article, "For Teaching-Only Faculty, a Controversial Role," in University Affairs (http://www.universityaffairs.ca/those-who-can-teach.aspx). As author Moira Farr points out, non-tenured, limited term, “faculty associates”, as they are called at the University of Ottawa, may be regarded by the employer and even by tenured-faculty as an acceptable way to address the problem of heavy teaching load and more administrative work due to the expansion and diversification of both undergraduate and graduate programs. At York, full-time faculty in the Faculty of Arts for example, have reported that they have insufficient time for their research. In this context, a TSA might appeal to some professors because it frees up their teaching time to be able to pursue their own research agendas and programs. When it comes to research, teaching and service, however we might value and allocate our time across these activities, the institution values research when it comes to the distribution of rewards and recognition. On a short-term, interpersonal level, TSA faculty “colleagues” might be appreciated, but in the long term, the TSA stream would support tierification, with the teaching-only tier accruing significantly less prestige, respect and rewards than the existing tenured teaching and research stream. Moreover, as Indhu Rajagopal in Hidden Academics: Contract Faculty in Canadian Universities sums up:
...as part-timers become 'permanent temps' and offer a long-term solution to the continuing financial malaise in the university, the political dynamic will reinforce the status and functional split in the academic labour force. The split takes the form not only of differences in status, compensation, career opportunities, and professional development, but also of feminization and occupational segregation (2002: 246).
To quote from Moira Farr:
…the introduction of teaching-only positions has worried some academics, who fear that Canadian universities may be heading down a road already traveled by colleges and universities in Britain and the United States. At some institutions in those countries, the majority of academic staff are designated as teaching-only. Other observers don’t believe that will ever happen in Canada because of strong opposition from unionized faculty (emphasis added).
The Canadian Association of University Teachers is compiling research on the number and nature of these teaching positions at Canadian universities. CAUT spokesperson Vicki Smallman says the issue is coming up more often in collective bargaining, as universities struggle with budgetary constraints and growing numbers of undergraduate students.
It’s a dilemma for universities: how do they promote and enhance the research that brings prestige (and funding) to the institution, and at the same time provide a high-quality learning experience to undergraduates whose fees increase every few years? How do schools attract excellent long-term teachers if all they can offer are sessional contracts? (Farr, November 3, 2008)
The answer to this dilemma is not TSAs: CUPE Unit 2 members should resist the “teaching only” trend found in Britain and the U.S. As the core tenure-track faculty shrinks, CUPE Unit 2 members should reject any offers that expand the periphery of an “ever-green” academic underclass of cheap teachers. We are academic professionals not bottom-tier pay-roll workers, and are on strike to ‘Win/Win,’ not to ‘Win/Lose.’
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