Canadian P/Timers Protest Against Themselves
On March 7th, 2006, 9,100 full- and partial-load faculty members of the Ontario Public Services Employees Union (OPSEU) took to the picket lines to protest pay and the alleged declining quality of education at Ontario’s 24 community colleges. Among the reasons for the strike is the college system’s purported overuse of part-time faculty, who, according to the union, don’t provide the same high caliber of instruction as Ontario’s full-timers. A press release by OPSEU Local 613 sets forth the union’s proposed solution to the problem: convert part-time jobs to full-time. But will this help Ontario’s part-timers (who are not unionized)?
Much appears to depend on who the “part-time” faculty are. In Canada, the term “part-time” refers broadly to three categories of contingent faculty: “part-time,” who teach six credit hours or less each semester; “partial-load,” who teach seven to 12 credit hours per semester; and “sessional,” who teach 13 credit hours per semester and are considered full-time, but are appointed on a sessional, or temporary, basis. Ontario law bars part-time and sessional faculty from collective bargaining. As a result, only partial-load faculty are members of the OPSEU, and only they participated in the now-settled strike. According to David Cox, Communications Officer at the OPSEU national office, 21 percent of the 9,100 strikers hold partial-load appointments.
Those with the most to lose from a reduction in part-time positions are Ontario’s part-time and sessional faculty. Like their adjunct counterparts in the United States, they enjoy no genuine measure of job security and, as evidenced by the OPSEU’s own statements, are considered a threat to the overall quality of higher education. Because they are prohibited from collective bargaining, however, they have far fewer resources to effect positive changes in their working conditions.
As in the United States, criticism of part-time faculty tends to focus on their transient presence on campus, and the lack of involvement with students that this transience supposedly implies. The OPSEU Local 613 Strike Committee, for example, asserted in a press release published in the March 9, 2006 edition of SooToday.com (at http://www.sootoday.com/content/news/full_story.asp?StoryNumber=16213) that “[p]art-time and sessional instructors are not as available to students outside the classroom because they do not receive compensation for preparation and evaluation, nor do they receive access to email or offices in which they can meet with students….We want to increase the number of full-time faculty, and decrease the number of part-time faculty teaching our students.”
Julia Ringma is a part-time Law Clerk faculty member in the Office and Legal Studies department at Algonquin College. She told the Adjunct Advocate that, although she has always felt her work was undervalued, that perception derived more from the college’s administration than its faculty union.
“I suspect if the union had their druthers, I could be hired full-time and paid accordingly,” said Ringma.
Her present position as a part-timer, however, makes her ineligible for union membership. Ringma compared her role as a part-timer to staff at a retail business: “I think it is the equivalent to retail employers who hire staff at just under a certain number of hours per week so they don’t have to pay them benefits.”
Another Algonquin part-time Law Clerk faculty member, Jenny Bascur, does not feel that the union’s call for a reduction in part-time faculty reflects its undervaluation of her work. Bascur supports the strike and, despite a demanding full-time job outside the college, has made the effort to join her colleagues on the picket line. In addition, Bascur refused the administration’s offer of a teaching assignment designed to help students complete their degree requirements during the strike. The heavy workload demanded by the assignment would have, said Bascur, compromised the quality of her work — something she “could never be proud of,” and that she also considers at odds with the union’s overall goal in striking, which is to improve the quality of Ontario college students’ education. Bascur noted that the Algonquin administration has assured her that her refusal to accept the heavy assignment would not be held against her.
“I believe them,” said Bascur.
In contrast to part-time and sessional faculty, partial-loaders are at the top of the Canadian part-time heap. As Jack Wilson, Secretary of OPSEU Local 415 and a full-time professor at Algonquin’s Police and Public Safety Institute, explained, partial-load faculty are union members who enjoy higher pay and greater benefit eligibility than part-time and sessional faculty.
The advantages of union membership are clear. At Algonquin College, in Ottawa, where partial-load faculty make up approximately 10 percent of the total faculty, the union’s contract provides medical and short-term disability benefits, tuition subsidies, parental leave, and, pursuant to Article 27, priority over external applicants who might apply for open full-time positions. (Nonetheless, partial-load employees at Algonquin do not enjoy the same job security that their full-time counterparts do. Article 26.10 of their contract permits the college to dismiss them on just 30 days’ written notice.)
Because part-time and sessional faculty do not enjoy union membership, Ontario’s colleges have no written obligation to give them priority consideration for open full-time positions. Thus, if part-time jobs at Ontario’s community colleges are converted to full-time, the union’s own local representatives concede that existing part-timers who apply for the open positions could find their applications passed over.
In the past, said Jack Wilson, part-timers at Algonquin have applied for open full-time positions and been promptly rejected by the hiring committee as unqualified, only to be offered, later, the opportunity to teach exactly the same courses, but on a part-time basis. Such practices have, observed Wilson, “caused some bitterness.”
Jeff Arbus, president of OPSEU Local 613, at Sault College, in St. Saint Marie, Ontario, confirmed that hiring committees sometimes consider part-timers’ applications tainted. He emphasized, however, the union’s belief that this perception of inferiority “has no basis in fact.” At Sault College, the union has proposed to incorporate into its collective bargaining agreement with the college a provision giving sessional and part-time faculty priority consideration for full-time positions. The college, said Arbus, has not been willing to accept the proposal.
In an effort to create bargaining power for Ontario’s part-time and sessional faculty, Arbus and Wilson told the Adjunct Advocate that OPSEU locals have, during the last year, launched a vigorous campaign to change the legislation that bars union membership for those groups. The campaign has involved lobbying of lawmakers, public notification campaigns, and rallying of part-time and sessional faculty who, as in the United States, are often difficult to locate and bring together.
In spite of the stigma attached to part-time work, union leaders and partial-load faculty still hold out hope that, if OPSEU achieves its goal of reducing part-time positions, existing part-timers will not find themselves unemployed. According to Wilson, existing part-timers have an advantage over external applicants, who are unfamiliar with the college’s procedures and standards. Although Algonquin College has no written obligation to giving existing part-timers a boost, Wilson’s experience has been that hiring committees tend to view their applications more favorably than those of external applicants.
“We would anticipate that those people who are currently part-time would be front runners” for any newly converted full-time jobs, he said.
Partial-load faculty member Deb Lawrence, who teaches computer science at Lambton College, in Sarnia, agreed with Wilson’s assessment that hiring committees tend to smile on applications from internal applicants, including those of partial-load faculty. Lawrence explained that, at Lambton, the focus in hiring for full-time positions is more on whether an applicant has the requisite credentials than whether she or he has historically taught part-time. Even so, Lawrence acknowledged that the applications of both partial-load and part-time faculty for full-time positions are regularly rejected in favor of those from external applicants. When asked if she would expect to be hired into a full-time position, Lawrence said, “There’s a good chance I wouldn’t.”
Lawrence recognizes the irony of striking in support of the elimination of one’s own job.
“Will the strike do anything for me? No,” she says.
But the union, she explained, has “tried to implement things that are in our best interest….We understand what they’re trying to do.” As evidence of the union’s support of partial-loaders, Lawrence pointed to the union’s filing of administrative grievances when the college rejected the applications of partial-load faculty for full-time positions.
The pressure on part-timers to support the strike was considerable. Part-timers who accepted teaching assignments, for example, could expect to be maligned, or even punished. Said part-timer Jenny Bascur: “I have been advised by senior members of the union that strikebreakers, or ‘scabs,’ would have their names published, that there would be retaliation by the union, and that we could expect to not be rehired in upcoming semesters — not to mention the feelings of betrayal and resentment that would no doubt be the fruit of such an action on my part.”
Without union protection or a formal commitment from colleges to give them priority consideration for newly created full-time positions, the future of Ontario’s part-timers (whether partial-load, part-time, or sessional) appears uncertain if OPSEU succeeds in its goal to reduce their numbers. In the meantime, observes Julia Ringma, “If things stay the same, I will probably get hired from semester-to-semester as I am now….I have not been given any kind of indication that I would be hired full-time.”
