York U Contract Faculty

By Cindy Oliver, Catherine Christie, Petra Ganzenmueller, Geoff Martin, George Davison, Sandra Hoenle, Kelly MacFarlane & Anne Skoczylas (excerpted from the CAUT Bulletin November 2008).

When is an academic not an academic? This is not a rhe­torical question, since in most Ca­nadian universities, contract academic staff do not have the same status as a tenured or tenure-track staff, regardless of qualifications and experience.

Remuneration and access to sup­port for scholarly activity are usually the source of employment disadvantage for academics working on per course or limited-term contracts when compared with perma­nent colleagues. This disadvantage is particularly noticeable when the availability of both in-house and external research money is involved. CAUT’s contract academic staff committee believes academic staff associations should direct their attention to redressing a situation which deters, and often prevents, contract staff from engaging in the vital research required in order to participate in a full academic career.

In conjunction with pro rata hiring policies, access to internal and external funding programs would allow contract staff to achieve a real degree of parity with their tenured colleagues. Only then could the designation “part-time” be a true measure of employment choice rather than a euphemism designed to disguise the exploitation of members of the academic proletariat.

Access to research funds is an important feature of the continuing and uphill struggle with increasingly market-driven university administrations to create a more equitable professional environment for contract academic staff.

To read the rest of this article, click http://www.cautbulletin.ca/en_article.asp?articleid=2714

By Eric Newstadt (excerpted from the Socialist Project E-Bulletin No.  165)

Placed neatly in the middle of a global economic maelstrom, it is near impossible to understand or predict what, if any, consequences the strike by 3500 odd teaching and research assistants and contract faculty at York University in Toronto (represented by Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 3903) will have for higher education in Ontario and throughout Canada. While there are some early indications that the strike – which began in early November and continues to shut down the university – at York is aiding (at least mildly) in negotiations at the University of Toronto (whose teaching assistants, research assistants and contract faculty are all presently in negotiations), the strike seems also to have engendered the anger and vitriol of the public such that the viability of similar strikes in the sector are in question. And while the tenor of the action was and remains pitched firmly at rolling back the “neoliberal university,” it is questionable whether even outright victory at York would or could have such far-reaching consequences across the university sector.

Of course, there is only so much that can be accomplished in a single round of bargaining. Even if it may not yet be possible to outline how history will record the current work action, there are nonetheless some very definitive things that we can say about the particular conditions which have produced the strike of 2008. And we can also weigh and measure the degree to which the strike holds the promise of ameliorating those conditions (at York if not throughout the province), either temporarily or on a more lasting basis.

To read more about the political economy of the neoliberal university,  click on http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/bullet165.html