tierification
Tentative Agreement: On the Way to Performance Indicators?
Richard Wellen
An Analysis and Commentary on the Proposed Teaching Load Reduction Framework
The likely result 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.
Memorandum of Understanding: A Response
Marcia Macaulay and Yvette Szmidt
On September 17 there will be a meeting to ratify or not a tentative settlement between the employer and YUFA. This tentative settlement fails to reflect the bargaining positions which YUFA members approved and gave the Bargaining Team a mandate to negotiate at a General Membership Meeting on June 2, 2009. There are a number of significant concerns which we wish to bring to your attention.
OCUFA Report on Declining Quality of University Education
A major report released on March 23 sounds the alarm about declining quality of university education in Ontario. University faculty and librarians expressed concern over larger classes, fewer full-time faculty hires and deteriorating quality.
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.
Cash-Strapped York?
Linda Briskin
Today [Feb. 25]in the Globe and Mail I was shocked to find a 62 page glossy magazine promoting York's 50th anniversary. I would imagine that the cost of this magazine would far exceed the cost of the demands that the contract faculty and graduate students had on the table during the strike. Combine this with the cost of the external anti-union lawyer to front the negotiations for three months, the branded wine, the cost of President Shoukri's mortgage...
The Casualization of Academic Labour at York University
Lykke de la Cour, CUPE 3903, Unit 2
In the recent CUPE strike, York University’s over-reliance on contractualized academic labour erupted as a central and critical question in discussions around the union’s job security proposals. Interestingly, last fall, at the outset of the strike, most Unit 2 members of CUPE 3903 were largely unaware of the extent to which contract faculty were utilized to fulfill the university’s teaching mission, particularly with respect to undergraduate instruction. Our concerns lay more with working conditions, specific terms of employment, and the precariousness of contractual work. However, one of the benefits that the strike afforded was time to research more fully the circumstances of contractualized academic staff at the university.
From SRCs to TSAs: Classification and the Creation of ‘McJobs’ at the University
Marcia Macaulay
The current strike at York has broken all records for labour disputes at English-language universities in Canada. Last week, CUPE 3903 faced a forced ratification vote to decide whether the employer’s latest offer would be supported by its membership. The offer was rejected by 62% of the members in a healthy turnout of 69% of eligible members. A significant aspect of this dispute concerns acceptance or non-acceptance of a new class of position: Teaching/Service Appointments. Such appointments replace the existing Special Renewable Contract Appointments already accepted by the York University Faculty Association. The new TSAs have not been accepted by YUFA; they have not even been introduced to its membership, and they present serious problems for YUFA should they be accepted by CUPE 3903.
Business as Usual? in the Aftermath of the Strike...
Andrea O'Reilly, School of Women's Studies, York
Letter to the National Post, 27 Jan 2009
If anyone thinks that it will be "business as usual" at York University once
classes resume, they are kidding themselves. Professors and students are
returning to a university that has bullied its most vulnerable employees for
close to three months and left its prized graduate students out in the cold. It
is clear that York does not value the excellent teaching done by more than 50%
of its faculty. This is a university where dozens and dozens of professors must
reapply for their teaching position each year. This is a university where
mid-management types -- who spend their day pushing paper -- make up to 10
