The Open Letter written on June 17th by a group of Lecturers raises the importance of democratic deliberation, recognizing our interests, and deepening solidarity amongst faculty.
Solidarity should never be confused with maintaining the status quo if it is not working for certain groups within an organization. Solidarity, in other words, is not about preserving organizational form as an end in itself, but rather thinking strategically about which organizational form or forms could best support those who need it the most. Solidarity is an expression of support between people; it’s not about allegiance to a prevailing organizational form or negotiation process–especially when these are not serving everyone’s interests. We as faculty members–whether teaching stream or tenure-stream–have many shared interests both professionally and in terms of our relationship to the employer. Many Lecturers have great relationships with professorial faculty. Collective bargaining as a separate unit would have no impact whatsoever on these human relationships. Of course, administratively there is a difference, and so there should be. While there are many commonalities to the work that professors and Lecturers perform, there are also significant differences. And as Lecturers we have unique interests owing to our more precarious category of employment, varying workload, lower salary, exclusion from certain committees, and the nature of our duties. Creating a new organizational form that strengthens the negotiation position of Lecturers to address these issues vis-à-vis the employer does not undermine solidarity amongst faculty, it calls for it. Lecturers securing the freedom to collectively bargain should be celebrated and supported by all faculty as an innovative strategy for helping Lecturer colleagues gain parity.
In considering the four propositions raised in the Open Letter we should consider concretely how to operationalize democracy and solidarity in real terms. The relationship between Lecturers and our employer is something that has been internally debated for years rather than months. Rather than knee-jerk, the unionization option led by Lecturers has indeed been the result of deliberations over a long period of time.
Open Letter Proposition 1: That a careful, inclusive and deliberative process is the only legitimate pathway to a union certification initiative;
>> Yes, agreed.
Lecturers have been meeting and discussing our issues for over 8 years as part of consultations for policy 76/77. Series of town halls and meetings have led to a sophisticated understanding of the inequities facing Lecturers across campus and the bottlenecks within current processes for changing policies. Additional consultations and deliberations should always be welcome, but negotiations should not give the administration an excuse for inaction. Modern collective bargaining negotiations not only provide timelines for negotiations, but provide legal protections ensuring good faith bargaining and access to mediators/arbitrators through the Ontario Labour Relations Board if needed. Volunteer organizers with Lecturers Connect have been initiating meetings within departments and with individual Lecturers to ensure that every member can give their input into this process. This grassroots approach allows for more intimate deliberation compared with large membership meetings (which have and continue to take place). Everyone is welcome to volunteer to help lead or participate in these discussions.
When Lecturers sign a union card they are becoming a founding member of a new union called the Waterloo Teaching Stream Faculty Association (WatTSFA). All members will be invited to participate fully and democratically in deciding on a constitution and bylaws for this new union. In turn, all Lecturers–whether or not they signed a card–will be permitted to vote on whether this proposed union represents their interests in negotiations with the employer. An important discussion will be how to best coordinate our efforts with FAUW to advance our shared interests. For example, the Renison Association of Academic Staff (RAAS) has a service agreement with FAUW and a RAAS member sits on the FAUW Board (as a non-voting member) and vice versa. Associations at other universities that started as separate bargaining units later merged together when the timing was mutually beneficial (e.g., UOITFA at Ontario Tech).
What excites and inspires many of us about WatTSFA is the possibility of letting Lecturers collaboratively and democratically determine our own governance structures, how we want to negotiate with the employer, and how to continue our relationship with our tenure-track colleagues. We want Lecturers to have the autonomy to decide on our own path forward, rather than having many of these important decisions already made for us. Such a process can only strengthen our ties amongst ourselves and between us and our colleagues.
Open Letter Proposition 2: That continuing and definite term Lecturers should maintain their organizational ties with their research colleagues within FAUW, according to the existing representational principles;
>> FAUW is a body created for collective negotiations with the employer. In contrast, the way individual faculty members develop and maintain organizational and collegial relationships is primarily through collaboration at the departmental level, research projects, academic conferences, campus initiatives around teaching and learning, etc. This will not change. In fact, forming a new legal bargaining entity that has the backing of the Ontario Labour Relations Board will elevate rather than diminish the status of Lecturers on campus.
"Representational principles" should, at a minimum, mean that Lecturers lead their own negotiations and make decisions regarding how these negotiations take place. Our existing representational principles unfortunately do not reach this bar, even after many years of repeated requests for appropriate representation of Lecturers at the negotiation table. To name a few points of inequity: salaries, thresholds, lack of tenure, lack of sabbaticals, access to research funding, access to leadership positions. Note that all of these inequities have arisen out of the current system, where tenure-track faculty do the bulk of the negotiation with the employer on our behalf.
It is our belief that a Lecturers-only and therefore Lecturer-focused association is much better positioned to tackle and remedy these kinds of inequities. By focusing 100% on Lecturer issues, we ensure that our needs are always brought to the table rather than being an afterthought. Lecturers deserve to advocate for our own working conditions and to have the same level of autonomy as is currently afforded to our tenure-track colleagues.
Open Letter Proposition 3: That union certification, if it is to be considered, should be examined for all of FAUW, rather than a smaller subset of members.
>> Unionization would certainly benefit FAUW. It would bring about timely, legally protected negotiations on a broader range of issues than the current MoA. In fact, FAUW did consider unionization back in 1996 and voted against it. There remains little appetite for unionization amongst tenure-stream faculty who make up 82% of the FAUW membership, and there is no real plan to do the hard organizing work required to make this a reality. We believe that it is fundamentally unfair to ask Lecturers, who have the most precarious working conditions amongst faculty members, to wait on tenure-track colleagues in order to achieve urgent and very necessary changes to our working conditions.
Moreover, FAUW is currently not legally a trade union and would need to undergo significant organizational change to make this happen. For example, to be a union, the employer cannot pay for staff salaries or give bonuses to executive members. And, unlike FAUW, unions provide legal counsel support to members when they are going through the grievance process.
Even if FAUW was successful in unionizing, there are several challenges that Lecturers could face as a small subset within FAUW. As a small group, it would still be as difficult as it is today to have our issues prioritized during successive rounds of negotiations. All FAUW members vote on bargaining priorities; and when unions negotiate, the employer only requires a vote of 50%+1 to get a tentative agreement to pass (i.e., ratification). If Lecturers are together with tenure-stream professors in the same union bargaining unit, the administration could ensure that tentative agreements were passed by the FAUW membership that benefited the tenure-stream at the cost of Lecturers, playing one group off the other. In fact, this has been happening already (see e.g., negotiations for parental leave and very wide salary differentials).
One way to avoid this is to have separate bargaining units for teaching stream and tenure-stream. This is not much different than what is being proposed by Lecturers Connect/WatTSFA. The main difference is that if Lecturers were a bargaining unit within FAUW then the FAUW executive—most likely tenure-stream faculty—would still have signing authority over any tentative agreement negotiated by Lecturers—assuming we were allowed to form our own negotiation team. The FAUW Executive would also decide whether or not to send agreements to mediation/arbitration, and what form negotiations would take (e.g., secret “confidential” negotiations like we currently have or open bargaining that keeps members informed). While we are a smaller group than tenure-stream professors, we are critically important to the teaching and service that happens at the University of Waterloo. The size of a union is not necessarily a measure of its strength. We believe that, given the current state of affairs, a Lecturers union is our strongest way forward.
Open Letter Proposition 4: That FAUW, in conjunction with the existing Lecturers Committee, strike a task force to formalize outstanding issues through constructive and open consultation of the entire Lecturer community. The outcome of this task force should be a ranked list of priorities and a timeline for addressing these priorities in the next round of negotiations with the administration
>> This process was what FAUW and the Lecturers Committee already did over the past 8.5+ years as part of consultations for policy 76/77. The consultation process included a Lecturers survey (with an 80% response rate) that was used to determine Lecturer priorities in general and to suggest priorities and a bottom line for P76/77 negotiations–though what use FAUW leadership has made of the survey remains unclear.
With respect to consultation on certification specifically, there have been several polls of Lecturers conducted by the Lecturers Committee on this very issue.
On March 24, 2022 the Lecturers Town Hall meeting polled Lecturers on the question "Do you support the Lecturers Committee exploring various unionization models as possible means for strengthening our ability to negotiate our terms and conditions of employment?". The vote was 76% in favour, 13% against, and 10% not sure.
On April 4, 2023, the Lecturers Town Hall polled Lecturers on the question "Considering that the Lecturers Committee plays only an advisory role at FAUW, what would you like us to work on?", the most dominant theme of open responses was related to unionization/certification.
The data show a strong and sustained interest in certification amongst Lecturers attending the Lecturers Town Hall meetings. When it comes to negotiation itself, FAUW is only permitted to negotiate a very narrow set of issues with the administration. Looking at the Memorandum of Agreement (MoA), FAUW primarily negotiates salary and health benefits. Outstanding issues such as promotion to continuing, workload, vacation leaves, non-teaching terms, etc. must currently be negotiated through an archaic and dysfunctional policy process over which the administration ultimately has veto power. Following 8.5+ years of negotiations over P76/77–each round of which we have had to make significant compromises–there will be little-to-no appetite by the administration or within the broader FAUW membership to continue making Lecturer issues a priority during future policy negotiations.
The “next round of negotiations”, therefore, may never come for issues that are not already negotiated within the MoA and Policy framework. The “next round of negotiations” for P76 will likely occur once we have all retired (remember that admin must consent to the re-opening of any policy!). If we want a “next round” that occurs in our career lifetimes, we need to have a collective agreement in place which lays out regular negotiation timelines.
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