President Lenton, we can see an end to this academic disruption. The incoming Ontario government has already announced it will engage the back to work legislation you have so eagerly sought. What may become a highly troubling right wing government is delivering you your objective. More…
Tag Archives: academic labour
York students do deserve better – That’s why instructors are on strike Reply
April 30, 2018
By Dana Phillips
It’s the refrain we hear over and over again: “those poor students, caught in the middle of persistent labour disruptions at York university.” What follows is often, as in Martin Regg Cohn’s recent Toronto Star column, a rebuke of striking union workers for being so darn unreasonable, under the thin guise of balanced journalism. Sure, goes the argument, teaching staff have legitimate concerns, and precarious work is a problem. But why does CUPE local 3903 insist on being such a troublemaker?
I would be the first to argue that students do deserve better, and I’m confident that my fellow CUPE members, by and large, feel the same way. Many of us are students ourselves; we are also experiencing disruptions to our programs of study, in addition to significant losses in income, and ongoing economic uncertainty. Nearly all of us work closely with students whom we care about and want to see succeed. This is no small part of the reason that we continue to stand up against an administration that is in the business of lining its own coffers at the expense of quality higher education.
Like all unions, CUPE 3903 has its own internal politics, and these have in times past been admittedly problematic (as has York’s own governance). But to suggest that the union’s grievances therefore have no merit is simply fallacious. CUPE 3903 is not an outlier, as Regg Cohn suggests—it is a sector leader. The hard won rights of CUPE 3903 union members have set a precedent for precarious academic workers across the country at a time when the rapid corporatization of universities should be what has us all alarmed and outraged. This is why arbitration is not a good option for CUPE 3903; you can’t lead the way through a decision-making process that bends towards the status quo.
One of the biggest points of dispute in this strike relates to the job security of Unit 2 contract faculty. York argues that providing opportunities for experienced contract instructors to transition into tenure-track positions (in lieu of the usual open search process, but with the same high bar for granting tenure) threatens standards of teaching excellence for students. And yet, York relies on contract instructors in short-term, low-paid positions to teach more than a third of its classes (more than half if you count teaching assistants). If York is truly concerned about teaching excellence, one wonders why the administration is currently fighting to have more courses taught by full-time graduate students from Unit 1, who are generally less qualified than the Unit 2 contract instructors they would be replacing. There is nothing good for students about having “professors” who are overworked, underpaid, and unsure of where their next paycheck is coming from.
CUPE 3903’s proposals for Units 1 and 3, meanwhile, focus on ensuring accessible and equitable access to graduate education for future students—i.e. current undergraduates. While CUPE looks towards the future, however, York and much of the media remain fixated on the strike’s most immediate impacts, thereby losing sight of the deeper issues threatening public education for years to come.
One of the problems with opinions like those of Regg Cohn is that they assume that striking workers are primarily to blame for what is happening to students at York. This is nothing new; it comes up all the time on the picket lines. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that it is easiest to blame those who are out in the cold day after day, physically obstructing the way to classes, degrees—business as usual. It seems as though these are the people that chose to mess everything up for everybody.
What, though, about the choice of York administrators to refuse to come to the bargaining table for weeks on end, while CUPE remains ready and willing to negotiate? What about the economic and educational systems that place highly educated and skilled people—the people we hope our students will become—in the position of struggling to make ends meet? The ability of these causes to remain invisible is what gives them their power and privilege.
The university and the public are rightfully concerned about the well-being of York’s undergraduate students at this difficult time. Unfortunately, they seem much less concerned about the well-being of those who provide the bulk of those students’ education, and who, in many ways, reflect those students’ own precarious future.
Statement by Justin Podur, YUFA Chief Negotiator 2
April 18, 2018
York administration’s latest communication, “Two days of mediation produce no settlement”, sets up the provincial Industrial Inquiry Commission to fail.
The second paragraph of the communique says: “While agreement was reached on two issues – lactation and breast-feeding space and professional expense reimbursement – CUPE 3903’s other proposals continue to be well outside the range of anything the university can ever agree to.” (emphasis mine).
That is an extraordinary statement for an employer to make publicly during bargaining. That it is being made in the middle of a mediation attempt brokered by the provincial government makes it astounding. That it is being made in week seven of a strike makes it mind-boggling.
This particular strike has been defined by a very consistent and specific communicative approach by the employer. Before the strike even began, the administration communicated that it wanted CUPE 3903 to go to binding arbitration. In every single communication, several each week for the past seven weeks, the administration has repeated that message – arbitration, arbitration, arbitration, arbitration. The specific issues that separate CUPE 3903 and the administration are less frequently, and less consistently repeated than that message – that this should not be resolved at the bargaining table but at arbitration.
Since the administration returned very briefly to the bargaining table on March 22 only to walk away again and return to the “arbitration” line, it has made several other attempts to avoid bargaining. The supervised vote, announced on March 27th and resolved on April 9th, entailed nearly two weeks without bargaining. When CUPE 3903’s members rejected the employer’s final offer in the supervised vote, the administration admonished the membership, said it was “disappointed” in the vote, and suggested a new approach – arbitration. There is very little explanation behind this mantra. York’s president said in a radio interview that fundamental principles separate CUPE 3903 and the employer – these principles were the principle of open hiring and of students being able to receive funding without a work requirement. These principles have been bridged in past agreements with CUPE 3903. They have been bridged in other collective agreements. There are ways to fulfill CUPE’s concerns about job security and the benefits of union membership for MA students without sacrificing the employer’s stated principles – but only through negotiation.
If the administration had an interest in bargaining, they would have countered CUPE 3903’s proposals. On March 22nd, CUPE reduced their demands. The administration, instead of countering, publicly said that CUPE 3903’s demands were unrealistic. After the supervised vote, the administration reiterated that CUPE 3903’s demands were unrealistic. Over the weekend, meeting with the provincial investigator, CUPE 3903 again reduced their demands. The administration publicly repeated that CUPE 3903’s demands were well outside the range of anything the university can ever agree to. On three occasions, York could have countered and did not. That is contrary to the conventions of bargaining, as CUPE 3903 said in one of their communications. Submitting successive, reduced proposals is not good bargaining practice – it is called “bargaining against yourself”, and it is to be avoided. York has asked CUPE 3903 on three occasions to bargain against itself – or accept arbitration.
The administration’s approach is not explicable in terms of differences of principles. What can explain it is if avoiding bargaining is the principle. Union bargaining teams receive their mandates from their members. Employer bargaining teams receive mandates as well. Trying to reverse-engineer the employer’s mandate based on their behaviour, it seems to me that they care less about any particular proposal and more about avoiding the table altogether and settling any disputes through arbitration. Long-term, if this strike ends with CUPE 3903 surrendering – if enough violence occurs against picketers, if the demonization of union members succeeds, if they become weary enough to give up with no end in sight (and the administration’s communique explicitly states that it has every intention of letting the strike drag on throughout the summer) – then it will be counted as a major victory for the employer, regardless of the costs to York’s reputation and enrolments. The summer terms will drop one by one, fall enrolments will fall, and the administration hopes, CUPE 3903 will break.
The notion is (perhaps) that reputation and enrolment can be rebuilt, but breaking CUPE 3903 on campus will be a lasting achievement. But the truth is that a union can be rebuilt too, even after it is broken, though lasting damage can be done to morale and community through a forever strike.
Justin Podur, Chief Negotiator, YUFA
Letter to our Students from Colleagues at the Faculty of Education Reply
April 9, 2018
On April 5th, 2018, colleagues from the Faculty of Education, York University, met to discuss our ongoing concern with the Administration’s troubling tactics during the labour dispute. These tactics reverberate through all levels of collegial governance and democratic process, and affect every aspect of our work. Having entered into its fourth week, the Administration embarked on the dangerous wager of forcing ratification and, in the meantime, has done little to improve the climate of negotiation between itself, the university community, and CUPE 3903.
Within this context, we want to express our support and solidarity with our students and colleagues of CUPE 3903. We do so as a commitment to our responsibility as faculty for the well-being of the University, and against the unfair and precarious situations of employment at the University. As professors, we feel it is our duty to protect the University’s educational principles and to support our students and colleagues by adhering to 1) collegial governance, 2) principles of academic integrity, and 3) our responsibility as educators to our students. We reaffirm our role and responsibility as faculty because these three aspects have been under threat during this dispute.
As scholars, professors, and instructors of education, we are uniquely positioned to gage the damage that recent events pose for academic integrity and scholarly innovation that are the hallmarks of York University’s highly regarded reputation. Our worry is that this dispute is not merely about providing fair conditions for workers, but increasingly about the Administration’s re-alignment of faculty governance. It seems to us that the University is being run less and less by professors and students, who are invested in educational and academic concerns, and more by people in management and commerce, guided by the Board of Governors, with little or no experience in or sense of responsibility for academic and educational matters. Such a re-alignment betrays the longstanding right to have educational and academic autonomy from the Board of Governors for which faculty and others have previously fought. This managerial and economic trend will not serve faculty and students well.
As professors of a Faculty of Education who have long-standing experience and engagement, sharing with multiple stakeholders, in public schools, communities, and educational sectors, we roundly reject the Administration’s rush to undermine faculty governance and educational authority. Our position aligns with those expressed in numerous universities and by school teachers worldwide, some of whom are protesting in the streets today, the devastatingly failed project to make education profitable. Rendering education a commercial project, and putting financial concerns before pedagogical ones, privileges the few while denigrating the promise education holds for so many. Our students, young people, and children stand to lose the most from the reckless actions of the Administrators and the Board of Governors. These managerial actions, lacking foresight, have caused so many teachers, educators, and scholars everywhere to take a decisive stand for the idea and ideals of education, academic integrity, and free enquiry underlying the right to public education in just and democratic societies.
We urge the Administration to respect collegial processes and return to the bargaining table, in good faith and fair play, to lessen the turmoil, confusion, and conflict we are all experiencing. Labour disputes are important events that help us to think about ourselves and the society in which we want to live; they also take the temperature of our foundational institutions and the core values driving them. A strike gives us pause to reflect on the state of our academic organization and how we belong and commit to it. For many of us at York University, this dispute exposes the deliberate collapsing of collegial structures into managerialism, and how our talents, which defy economy, are exploited for their serviceability to the bottom-line. A strike also reminds us (because we all tend to forget) that nothing in life is given. Our lives are all precarious (in different ways) and, in a democratic society, we have a right to speak of our needs and a responsibility to take care of each other. Our Administration needs to remember — indeed, we all need to remember — that when you give people a living, dignifying wage, and treat them like people with minds and dreams and the promise of a shared and sustainable present and future, rather than seeing them as economic “units” and income generators, we provide the fundamental conditions for education to be possible.
In solidarity with teachers and students everywhere,
Steve Alsop,
Sarah Barrett
Warren Crichlow
Roopa Desai Trilokekar
Mario DiPaolantonio
Nombuso Dlamini
Lisa Farley
Jen Jenson
Joy Mannette
Aparna Mishra Tarc
Naomi Norquay
Gillian Parekh
Tina Rapke
Theresa Shanahan
Kurt Thumlert
Laura Wiseman
VOTE NO! YUGSA Recommends Its CUPE Members Reject York’s Latest Offer Reply
March 30, 2018
CUPE 3903 members have entered a new phase of the strike: this week, York University requested that the Ministry of Labour supervise a forced vote by the CUPE 3903 membership on York’s latest offer. Through their request, the York administration continues to reject the process of bargaining constructively with CUPE 3903.
We agree with the CUPE 3903 Bargaining Team’s recommendation that the membership vote to REJECT this offer. The BT has explained in more detail why all units should reject this offer. Overall, York’s offer is the worst deal the membership will see. If members reject it, York may be forced to table a better deal out of fear of risking the income from the summer semester. The BT stresses to members that it is better to negotiate a deal through collective bargaining. In addition, York’s offer contains no back-to-work protocol, meaning that there is absolutely no guarantee that members will get paid for the work they do to wrap up the term after the strike is over. The only way to guarantee this back pay is to settle this dispute at the bargaining table, where in the wake of previous strikes CUPE has been successful in ensuring its members receive between 85 – 100% of their pay upon returning to work.
YUGSA is particularly disturbed that the York administration stated in their supervised vote request: “Our graduate students strongly support our Fellowship model.” As a body representing graduate students, we have heard overwhelmingly from our members that they want GAs to be restored. York’s cut to GAs means that hundreds of students do not have access to CUPE 3903’s benefits package, nor the health care plan and support funds that they offer, including their Extended Health Benefits Fund, Trans Fund, Ways and Means Fund, Child Care Fund, Sexual Assault Survivor Support Fund, etc.. It also means that the work previously done by GAs has been downloaded onto unpaid internships for undergraduate students, or, to YUFA members now robbed of their valuable GAs.
These are some of the reasons why CUPE 3903 members ought to reject York’s current offer. What York has done to GAs they are trying now to do to TAs by using the fellowship model of funding to detach funding language from the collective agreement, thereby loosening the union’s ability to bargain over TA funding. This loss will have serious consequences for the York graduate community.
YUGSA Condemns Violence at the Senate Chamber
YUGSA condemns York University’s response to students and workers outside and inside of Senate Chamber on Thursday, March 22, 2018. Seeing the widespread desire for students to enter the Chamber, the York administration had two viable options, which were both ignored:
1) They could have followed the Rules of Senate, which state (in Article I. Principles, 2.) that, “Senate is open to the University community unless it duly resolves to move into closed session.”
2) If the Senate Chamber was filled beyond fire code capacity, they could have resolved to move the meeting to a larger space to accommodate students, which they ought to do going forward.
Instead of pursuing these options, York put members of CUPE 3903, various undergraduate student groups, and members of CUPE 1356 into direct conflict, instructing security guards to keep students out of the chamber. The result was horrific. Senator Devin Clancy was put into a headlock by a security guard upon attempting to enter the chamber; the YUGSA senator was on the receiving end of aggressive remarks and even at one point, physical force by the secretary of senate for protesting the senate executive’s actions and for insistence on remaining at the senate chamber entrance to bear witness to how students and members were being treated. We also heard reports that members of 1356 were injured in the process. There was no security challenge to justify such actions. The students and supporters who were in the hallway, some of them members of the Senate, presented no physical danger to anyone. This highly securitized approach is not welcoming and accommodating — fundamentally, it is not what a university should be about.
Such actions revealed York’s administration goal: for the sake of political expediency, and to forge the strike in their interest, they are willing to put any and all students and workers at risk. They want to pit the members of community against each other: unions against unions, brothers and sisters against brothers and sisters, students against workers, etc. It is only by uniting that we can win our differing but interrelated demands for fair wages and working conditions, collegial governance, the abolition of tuition fees, and more.
How to Engage in Solidarity Actions with CUPE 3903
YUGSA sees three ways that the York community can engage in solidarity actions with CUPE 3903:
1) Sign the petition now to President Lenton and York administration to bargain a fair deal! (CLICK HERE)
2) Join the Cross-Campus Alliance (CCA), comprised of labour and student unions on campus, for their weekly solidarity visit to the picket lines. The next visit will be on Wednesday, April 4 from 12:00 – 2:00 pm on Main Gate (Keele St. and York Blvd.) in conjunction with the Fight for $15 and Fairness’ Day of Action for Equal Pay for Equal Work (RSVP HERE).
3) If you’re interested in organizing further solidarity actions, feel free to connect with us (e-mail campaigns@yugsa.ca), or get in touch with undergraduate students who have been occupying the Senate Chamber since March 22, which has quickly become a 24/7 organizing space around the demands that York negotiate a fair deal with CUPE 3903. The occupation shows how some students are increasingly frustrated by the York administration’s actions, particularly in disrupting the democratic and collegial governance processes at the Senate. These students are demanding that York be held accountable for their incompetence by immediately refunding the semester’s tuition for all students. York’s move to hire private security to constantly surveil picketers has also been applied to the occupiers, who are being intimidated by over-securitization on campus. You can get in touch with them via studentsforcupe3903@gmail.com, or by going to their Facebook page (click here).
Statement by YUGSA: York must bargain a fair deal with all units of CUPE 3903 Reply
Statement from the School of Human Resource Management Reply
March 20, 2018
Statement from the School of Human Resource Management on York University and CUPE 3903 Bargaining and Strike
The School of Human Resource Management (SHRM) affirms our commitment to our CUPE colleagues and supports their right to engage in collective bargaining and to strike. We encourage the University to return to bargaining and for both parties to bargain in good faith and reach a collective agreement that is fair and equitable as quickly as possible.
SHRM recognizes that the strike and the decision to continue some but not most courses has created confusion and caused stress for students and faculty. SHRM supports students’ rights guaranteed under the York University Senate Policy not to participate in academic activities during a work stoppage. This includes their right to refuse to cross an actual or virtual picket line without being penalized in any manner for their choice.
Consistent with statements by many other units, SHRM also supports the historical role played by Senate and Senate Executive over matters related to the academic integrity of courses, including decisions about whether classes should be suspended during a work stoppage for reasons of academic integrity.
To Convert or Not To Convert, That is the Question: The CUPE 3903 Strike and Precarious Academic Labour 1
March 20, 2018
To Convert or Not To Convert, That is the Question: The CUPE 3903 Strike and Precarious Academic Labour
A Discussion Paper
Lykke de la Cour
Department of Social Science
York University
In the on-going labour dispute at York University, the administration insists that its offer to CUPE 3903 contract faculty adequately addresses the problem of precarious academic employment at York. The employer has offered two tenure-track conversions plus six Special Renewable Contracts (SRCs) per year, for a total of 24 appointments to positions within the York University Faculty Association (YUFA) over the next three years.
York’s administration maintains that this proposal is not concessionary, that it effectively addresses the concerns of contract faculty with respect to employment stabilization, and that their offer strikes “the right balance” in terms of meeting both the needs of contractualized faculty and the academic needs of faculties and departments. According York’s President, Rhonda Lenton, CUPE 3903’s Conversion Program is “unprecedented” in the university sector and, thus, the union should be more “reasonable” in its demands by adhering to “norms” in the post-secondary institutions in the province and within CUPE 3903 Unit 2’s “own history.” [1]
In what follows, I lay out the history of the CUPE 3903 Unit 2Conversion Program, including an overview of the number of contract faculty converted to tenure-stream positions over the thirty-year existence of this program. These figures demonstrate that the university’s current offer is indeed concessionary. This history provokes, however, questions about whether or not the the concerns and the needs of contract faculty, the university and York undergraduate and graduate students are really met even when CUPE 3903 Unit 2 has been able to successfully negotiate higher numbers of conversion appointments. I conclude by arguing that thirty years after the creation of CUPE 3903’s exemplary conversion program and after four major strikes by CUPE 3903 from 2000 to 2018, where employment precarity figured centrally in each labour dispute, this is the moment for York’s administration to start ‘doin’ the right thing’ and meaningfully deal with the problem of precarious academic labour at our university.
A History of the Conversion Program at York University
This spring marks the 30th anniversary of the first appointments made under CUPE 3903 Unit 2’s Affirmative Action Program, more commonly known as the CUPE 3903 Conversion Program.
On July 1, 1988, eight long-service Unit 2 members – 6 women and 2 men – became the first contract faculty at York University to be appointed to probationary tenure-track positions under the provisions of the Affirmative Action Program.[2] Negotiated in 1987, this program was established in response to demands for greater job security raised by contract faculty and graduate students in two major strikes at York, in 1981 and 1984. In these strikes, contract faculty advanced proposals for transferring contractualized academic instructors with ten years or more seniority into probationary tenure-stream positions.[3] Framed as shifting “part-time” faculty into “full-time” status, the reality then (as it is now) was that much of the work in Unit 2t was neither part-time nor temporary. Many contract faculty had taught for decades at a level minimally equivalent to (but more often significantly higher than) the teaching workloads of “full-time” tenured faculty, and did so over twelve months of the year through combinations of back-to-back four- and eight-month contracts, contracts which they had to apply for each and every year.
CUEW picketers at Glendon. Source: Pro tem 30 Oct. 1981.
The end result of the two 1980s strikes was the creation of the Conversion Program, enshrined in Article 23 “Affirmative Action Program” in the CUPE 3903 Unit 2 collective agreement. The fundamental principle of this program is embedded in the preamble to Article 23:
In recognition of the substantial contribution to the University community made by long-term employees, and of the obstacles that have faced these employees in their attempts to find academic employment, the parties have agreed to establish an Affirmative Action Program … The parties agree that this Program is an ongoing commitment .
To be in the AA Pool, a Unit 2 member has to have taught at least 5 years within the bargaining unit, have at least one course directorship in each of the preceding four years prior to their entry into the pool, and have had a total of 12 course directorships (or equivalencies) over those four years – essentially an average corresponding to a teaching workload of 3.0 courses per year. Employment equity provisions were subsequently added to the conversion program language, permitting a slight reconfiguration in the distribution of course directorships and equivalencies over the four years for employment equity groups. In the mid-2000s, a requirement was added that one of the recommendations for a conversion appointment also had to be from one or more of the designated employment equity groups, which are aboriginal peoples, persons with disabilities, visible minorities, and women. LGBTQ was also added to this list as a result of CUPE 3903’s 2015 month-long strike and settlement. During the 2015round of bargaining, the Unit 2 bargaining team also managed to successfully negotiate the targeted number of employment equity appointments up to six.[4]
Under the Conversion program, the administration provides “incentive” funding to hiring units that support an AA pool member for a tenure-stream position within their unit. This funding essentially covers the differential between the starting salary of a tenure stream appointment and the cost of three full course directorships. Unit 2 members in the AA pool can apply either through departments (normally those they regularly teach in) or directly to the Dean/Principal who then consults with relevant hiring units to determine if there is support for the application. Hiring units can also ask for a “special search” of eligible contract faculty in the AA pool to support for conversion to their unit.
Regardless of the process used, conversion candidates are required to assemble an application file that is reviewed and ranked by the relevant hiring units and Faculty Deans, and then submitted to the Vice-President Academic and Provost for appraisal and selection. As York’s administration considers conversions to be “strategic” appointments, the university’s hiring priorities, the quality of the candidate, and the “fit between the two” are supposed to guide the VP Academic’s decision-making in selecting who should be converted.[5] What also, of course, figures centrally in decision-making around conversions is the number of conversions that CUPE 3903 Unit 2 manages to negotiate in each round of bargaining.
Conversions and the “Numbers” Game
In the period immediately following the negotiation of the Conversion Program, York’s administration appears to have lived up to its commitment over the first four years of the program’s inception, the period from 1987 to 1991, and converted twenty-six contract faculty to probationary tenure-stream positions.[6] These appointments spanned a range of departments, such as Humanities, Political Science, History, English, Sociology, Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics, Social Science, the Center for Academic Writing, and Psychology.
Starting in 1992, however, the number of conversion appointments to probationary tenure stream positions began to plummet, largely displaced from 1993 to 2001 by a much weaker CLA Conversion Program that simply shifted a limited number of Unit 2 contract faculty from one form of precarious contractualized teaching to another, under the guise of potentially converting Unit 2 faculty from these CLA appointments. As Table 1 illustrates, the number of direct conversion appointments to tenure stream positions for Unit 2 fell to one or two per year over the next ten years, with three or four appointments occasionally in a given year. From 1993 to 2001, the university “converted” twelve Unit 2 contract faculty to CLA positions and, of these twelve, six were eventually converted from their CLAs to probationary tenure stream positions. So, in sum, while CUPE 3903 conversion appointments averaged 6.5 per year from 1988 to 1991, from 1992 to 2001 this average plunged to 2.9 per year. However, even at its lowest point, from 1992-2001, the number of CUPE 3903 conversions averaged more than what the administration is currently offering.
Table 1: Conversion Appointments 1988-2017
(These figures include only conversions to probationary tenure-stream positions and not the CLA conversions from 1992-2001)
| Year | # Conversions | Year | # Conversions | Year | # Conversions |
| 1988 | 8 | 1998 | 1 | 2008 | 6 |
| 1989 | 6 | 1999 | 3 | 2009 | 2 |
| 1990 | 6 | 2000 | 4 | 2010 | 2 |
| 1991 | 6 | 2001 | 2 | 2011 | 2 |
| 1992 | 1 | 2002 | 5 | 2012 | 2 |
| 1993 | 1 | 2003 | 6 | 2013 | 3 |
| 1994 | 2 | 2004 | 3 | 2014 | 2 |
| 1995 | 3 | 2005 | 4 | 2015 | 8 |
| 1996 | 4 | 2006 | 8 | 2016 | 8 |
| 1997 | 2 | 2007 | 6 | 2017 | 8 |
Table 1 shows the ebb and flow of the number of conversion appointments at the university over the history of the program, with higher numbers periodically negotiated for 2002, 2003, and 2006 to 2008. 2015 to 2017 represents the highest number achieved for Unit 2 over a three year collective agreement. The 2015 CUPE 3903 Unit 2 settlement, however, included for the first time specifications around conversion numbers by stream, i.e. to either Professorial or Alternate Stream positions. A minimum of six recommendations out of the total twenty-four conversions negotiated for 2015-17 were to be to the professorial stream. In the end, eight Unit 2 members were converted by the university to professorial positions and sixteen to the Alternate Stream over the three year period.
Prior to Unit 2’s 2015 settlement, Alternate Stream conversions were individually negotiated by Unit 2 members during their application for conversion, provided they taught in one of the cognate units where Alternate Stream ranks were permitted under the terms of the YUFA collective agreement. Up until 2012, these units/departments included: Nursing, Kinesiology and Health Science in the Faculty of Health, the Faculty of Science and Engineering, the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics, the Center for Academic Writing, the Department of French Studies in LAPS, and the French Language Training Programme at Glendon. In 2012, YUFA’s negotiated settlement expanded the Alternate Stream to all departments at the university. A number of these departments, however, have subsequently refused to accept Alternate Stream appointments within their units, while some departments agreed to accept Alternate Stream faculty only with respect to CUPE 3903 conversions.
Over the thirty years that the conversion program has operated at York, a total of 124 CUPE 3903 Unit 2 members have been converted to probationary tenure stream positions, 98 to the professorial stream, and 10 to the pre-2012 and 16 to the post-2012 Alternate Stream. This translates into an average of 4.1 conversions per year. Of these conversions, 55% were women and 45% men. Fifteen percent of the initial 1988-1991 conversion cohort were racialized contractual faculty, a majority of who were women. After 1990 and up to 2003, no racialized faculty appear to have been converted. But from 2003 onwards, racialized faculty constituted eight percent overall of all conversion appointments, most of these conversion candidates were black males and Asian women. From the available data on conversions from 1988 to 2017, it is impossible to assess how many (or if any) conversions involved Indigenous, disabled or LGBTQ contract faculty.
York contract faculty who are converted to either a Professorial or an Alternate Stream position must meet the bar for Tenure and Promotion (as set out by Senate, Hiring Unit, and YUFA documents) like all other regular hires. Only two faculty appointed through the conversion program, one in the late 1980s and the other in the early 2000s, failed to obtain tenure.[7] Outside of the recent conversions who are currently going through the T&P process, the remainder of contract faculty appointed through the conversion process (roughly just under 100) have successfully met the criteria for tenure and promotion and many have gone on to have quite illustrious careers at York, academically as well as in terms of contributing in major ways to service at the university. Faculty appointed through the conversion program have served as departmental Chairs, UPDs, and GPDs, as chairs and co-chairs of Faculty and Senate committees, as Associate Deans, and as College Masters. They have headed major research networks. Many have won both York and provincial teaching awards. The “pool” of tenured faculty at York who obtained their positions through the conversion program also boasts a Grammy Award winner.
University Sector ‘Norms’ and Precarious Academic Labour
CUPE 3903’s Conversion Program certainly does stand out in the university sector as a unique program for shifting long-term contractualized faculty into probationary tenure stream positions. Although Queen’s University Faculty Association does vaunt one of the few other conversion programs in the province, conversion appointments under the QUAF collective agreement are to non-tenured “continuing” positions (Continuing Adjunct Appointments). Contract faculty at Queen’s can apply for conversion to such a position after six years of consecutive service as a “Term Adjunct” and once they have completed a specific cumulative total of full-course equivalents.[8] Carlton University also has a provision that permits the transfer of long-term Instructor Employees to the ranks of tenured faculty in “exceptional circumstances.”[9]
President Lenton’s claim that CUPE 3903’s Conversion Program is “unprecedented” in the sector is true in the sense that this program provides opportunities for long-service contract faculty to transfer into, not contractual or “continuing” appointments, but probationary tenure-stream positions. However, in her March 13th “Memorandum on a Path Forward,” the President essentially troubles rather than praises the uniqueness of this program, insisting that CUPE 3903 should be “reasonable” and adhere to “norms” of the sector.
What we all should all be asking here is what are these “norms” and why is she arguing this?
Over the past three decades, ‘normativity’ in the delivery of post-secondary education in Ontario, as elsewhere, has come to mean fewer tenure-stream faculty appointments and an ever-growing reliance on precariously employed contract faculty in order to accommodate enrollment growth within a context of declining investments in academic and faculty resources. Significant pedagogic transformations, such as increased class sizes, a greater use of unpaid “peer” mentoring, on-line instruction, and the erosion of graduate education, etc., have also come to be defining hallmarks in the sector, for the same reasons.
One gain that CUPE 3903 Unit 2 has managed to achieve in this context – albeit through several major strikes – are a modicum of measures that buttress against the downward drift at York towards sector norms around precarious academic employment, i.e. the “McJobs” that have increasingly come to characterize work in the college and university sector where the majority of faculty are hired on last-minute contracts of four or eight month duration and for which they must apply for every year. With respect to contract faculty at York, the issue is not – nor has it been for several decades now – about wages and benefits, but rather about greater employment stabilization that would ultimately benefit not only contract faculty but also undergraduate student education by having a stabilized cadre of instructors. As contract faculty across the province have long maintained, their working conditions are students’ learning conditions.
York’s administration seems to have lost sight of the fact that the ‘normativity’ which has come to characterize colleges and universities in Ontario – i.e. plummeting numbers of tenured faculty and a concomitant increased reliance on precariously employed contract faculty, occurring alongside exorbitant tuition fee rises that have exceeded national standards – is currently under attack from a broad range of constituents (or “stakeholders” the term more commonly used in this corporatized era): contract and tenured faculty, undergraduate and graduate students, unionized faculty associations, umbrella organizations (such as the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA), CUPE National’s Ontario University Workers Coordinating Committee (OUWCC), and its sibling in the U.S. (the Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor.(COCAL)), student organizations (such as the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) and our own York Federation of Students (YFS)), as well as a multitude of international scholars and student and faculty associations in Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, who are deranging the neoliberal “norms” associated with teaching, learning, and working in post-secondary institutions today. Blogs and posts to websites associated with the Chronical of Higher Education and The Guardian show that the “norm” which President Lenton is referring to, is, in fact, under siege.
In 2010, the American Association of University Professors’ Committee on Contingency and the Profession published a seminal report about university sector “norms” in the U.S. and suggestions for creative bargaining proposals to address the situation. This report can be accessed at: https://www.aaup.org/report/tenure-and-teaching-intensive-appointments. For the sake of expediency, go to “Section I: The Collapsing Faculty Infrastructure” and “Section III: Conversion to Tenure Is the Best Way to Stabilize the Faculty.” While the AAUP did not reference York University in their report, given that CUPE 3903’s conversion program started in the late 1980s, one can only surmise that they probably do know about York’s program and are now trying to emulate it, otherwise why the reference to “conversions”?
Collapsing or Already Collapsed?: The Faculty Infrastructure at York
The failure to deal with CUPE 3903 Unit 2 employment precarity has propelled four major strikes at York over the past eighteen years – in 2000/1, 2008/9, 2015 and now again in 2018.
The public and the media are quite rightly asking: why?
While York is certainly not the lone post-secondary institution in the province to experience labour strife – several strikes have occurred in recent years, at the University of Toronto, Laurentian University, Carleton University and ,of course, the five-week strike at Ontario’s Colleges last fall – the situation here is nevertheless distinctive in that, compared to other universities in the province, York has historically over-relied on contract faculty in the delivery of its undergraduate education.
This point has been repeatedly highlighted in numerous reports, including The “Other” University Teachers: Non-Full-Time Instructors at Ontario Universities, released by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario in 2014. In this report, the authors note that the “growth in the number of sessional instructor assignments at York University has far outpaced the growth in the number of full-time faculty appointments.”[10] Figures contained in HEQCO’s study also show York as an outlier in the Ontario university sector in that the number of contract faculty employed at the university exceed that of full-time faculty, and have for most of the institution’s 50+ year history.
In 1990, there were 1,237 faculty in YUFA, but 1,449 contract faculty at York. By 2009, the figures were: 1,465 in YUFA/1,582 contract faculty. The number of faculty in YUFA did go up, in 2015, to 1,548 compared to 1,306 contract faculty. But what YUFA’s numbers mask is the dramatic increase that transpired, from 2013 to the present, in Contractually Limited Appointments (CLAs) within YUFA. There were 98 CLA appointments in YUFA in 2012/13. This jumped to 134 (2013-14), 155 (2014-15), 186 (2015-16) and 172 (2016-17). When these positions are taken into account, probationary tenure-stream and tenured faculty in YUFA actually numbered only 1,362 in 2015, while faculty working on contracts (either within YUFA, CUPE 3903, or CUPE-Exempt positions in Administrative Studies, Osgoode, Schulich, and Continuing Education) totaled 1,492. Since 2015, York’s tenure-stream complement has, overall, increased by only 29 faculty.[11]
York’s historic over-reliance on contract faculty, coupled with significant declines in new tenure-stream positions across the university sector generally, has resulted in a large build-up of Unit 2 members in CUPE 3903’s Affirmative Action Pool. In December 1987, the conversion pool totaled 64 Unit 2 members. By 2007, the pool had increased to 83 members. It now currently stands at roughly 220 members.[12] This dramatic increase over the past ten years coincides with what the AAUP describes as the “collapsing” tenured faculty infrastructure, but it also appears to be highly connected to York University’s historic and ongoing failure to invest in faculty resources thereby perpetuating an enduring reliance on precariously situated contractualized academic faculty.
Who are the Unit 2 members in the Conversion Pool? As Table 2 indicates, most (96%) have been employed at York for ten or more years, generally teaching at an intensity equal to or more than double what tenure-stream faculty teach. Fifty-five percent of the AA pool is female (compared to 44.3% of tenured faculty). Overall, eleven percent are racialized or Indigenous contract faculty, the majority of whom (92%) have ten or more years of service at the university. Among the higher seniority AA pool members, with 15+ years of service, the percentage of racialized and Indigenous Unit 2 members is higher (12%). The Conversion Pool also includes six faculty who were “returned” to Unit 2 as a result of the cancellation of the SRC program (Special Renewable Contracts) in YUFA in 2012. Two more SRCs are expected to return to the bargaining unit this summer once their YUFA contracts end.[13]
Table 2: 2017 Conversion Pool Years of Service Profile
| Years of Service | No. | % |
| 40yrs+ | 5 | 2.2% |
| 30yrs-39 | 25 | 11.4% |
| 20yrs-29 | 49 | 22.3% |
| 10yrs-19 | 132 | 60.0% |
| 5yrs -10 | 9 | 4.1% |
| Total | 220 | 100% |
One of the central conundrums at the heart of the current labour dispute, with respect to Unit 2, is that the bulk of the AA pool are contract faculty teaching in programs and faculties at York where the full-time faculty complement is “collapsing.” Seventy-three percent of Unit 2 members in the conversion pool teach in liberal arts programs at Glendon and Keele campuses, while contract faculty in the Faculty of Health, School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design, and the Faculty of Science constitute respectively 12%, 11% and 4% of the pool membership. But as Table 3 shows, these are precisely the faculties that are shrinking or stagnating in terms of York’s full-time faculty complement.
Table 3: York University TT Faculty Complement 2008-17 (Changes)
| Faculty | 2008/9 | 2015/6 | (2008-2016) | 2016/17 | (2016-17) |
| AMPD | 133 | 117 | -16 | 109 | -18 |
| ENVS | 44 | 40 | -4 | 44 | +4 |
| GLENDON | 99 | 95 | -4 | 96 | +1 |
| HEALTH | 178 | 197 | +19 | 196 | -1 |
| Arts/Atkinson/LAPS | 667 | 611 | -56 | 601 | -10 |
| LASS | 77 | 111 | +34 | 121 | +10 |
| OSGOODE | 60 | 67 | +7 | 67 | n/c |
| SCHULICH | 87 | 92 | +5 | 87 | -5 |
| SCIENCE | 212 | 168 | -44 | 187 | +19 |
The “shrinkage” of YUFA faculty will no doubt continue, given YUFA retirements and given that, according to its Multi-Year Budget Plan, York University’s administration forecasts a net increase to the tenure-stream faculty ranks of only 27 in 2018-19 and 28 in 2019-20.[14] This is despite the fact that the report predicts undergraduate enrolments at York will reach 45,000 students (domestic and international) by 2018-19, “surpassing,” as they note, “the 2012-13 levels of 44,300.”[15]
Interestingly, undergraduate enrollments at the university, in 2015, were largely the same as they were in 2008/9: 46,496 versus 46,079.[16] So given the decline in the tenure-stream faculty complement noted above, whom then is going to do the teaching? York will either have to move towards downloading more teaching (and service) onto fewer tenure-stream faculty, by increasing class sizes and insisting that only classes that meet enrollment targets will run (i.e. more rigid class cancellation policies around courses that don’t meet targeted enrollment numbers), or will have to continue relying on a large cadre of Unit 2 employees. The latter solution is problematic as it is precisely this over-reliance on contractualized faculty that have led to critiques of York from organizations such as the the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario.
In their 2014 report, HEQCO noted of the significant upsurge of contractualized academic labour at York which had transpired over the first decade of the 2000s when the number of contract faculty increased from 791 in 2002-3 to 1,774 by 2013-14. But embedded in their comments about this expansion was an implicit critique of tenured faculty at York and their “underperformance” with respect to undergraduate teaching. The report’s authors wrote:
The percentage increase in sessional instructor assignments at York University far exceeded the increase in students during the same time period. Student enrolment increased by 30% between 2002-2003 and 2004-2005 and remained relatively steady in subsequent years, increasing only 1-3% yearly until 2012-2013. In contrast, the number of sessional instructor assignments grew at an annual rate of between 10 and 15% during the 2005-2013 period [17]
‘Doin’ the Right Thing’: Conversions and Special Renewable Contracts (SRCs)
President Lenton’s argument – i.e. that stabilizing Unit 2 contract faculty beyond what the university has already offered (two conversion and six SRCs appointments per year ) would run contrary to “open” collegial search processes that are the “hallmark” of universities across the country – rings somewhat hallow given the collapsed/collapsing faculty infrastructure at York University. The majority of new hires over the past ten years have been directed to the Lassonde School of Engineering, and even these numbers appear to be now tapering off.
We are in the midst of a fundamental crisis at York where something major needs to be done about the buildup of Unit 2 contract faculty in the AA pool.
To not do anything with respect to this group of faculty will simply perpetuate a continued reliance upon and an exploitation of their labour in working conditions that are deleterious to the mission of undergraduate education at York and, I would argue, injurious to the interests of York’s diminishing TT faculty complement who are facing mounting pressures around increased class-size, higher levels of service, and the erosion of the workload protections enshrined in YUFA’s collective agreement. This is already happening, and it will continue to ensue unless the moment is seized here to “do the right thing” and stabilize the work of those contract faculty who are essentially the permanent “full time” employees within Unit 2 and have been for decades – the AA pool.
Not dealing with the AA pool furthermore runs contrary to York’s reputation as a university committed to social justice. Indeed, it fundamentally contradicts this image of York. As already noted, there are significant equity dimensions associated with the AA pool, given the over-representation of female, racialized and Indigenous contractualized employees in this group. It is highly likely that there is an over-representation of other employment equity categories as well in the conversion pool
The language of Article 23 in CUPE 3903’s Unit 2 collective agreement quite purposefully references “Affirmative Action,” reflecting the political spirit of the late 1980s so as to shine a spotlight on the troubling “class” hierarchy that operated then and continues to operate within universities, and especially at York – i.e. the deep social and economic divisions that operate between an intentionally subordinated and disadvantaged group of contractualized faculty and their more privileged tenured faculty colleagues, and the injustice of this.
Thirty years later, after four major CUPE 3903strikes, from 2000 to 2018, this injustice remains. It is time to start ‘doin’ the right thing’ here which means dealing with the Affirmative Action pool in a meaningful and concrete way.
[1] York U’s memo to CUPE 3903, provided through the Ministry of Labour Mediator Tue, 13 Mar 2018 19:01:42 -0400 (EDT) http://labour.yorku.ca/2018/03/13/memorandum-on-a-path-forward/; March 9, 2018 letter to Professor Phillips, from Rhonda L. Lenton, President & Vice-Chancellor, http://labour.yorku.ca/yorks-response-to-open-letters-from-ocufa-york-community/.
[2] CUEW Local 3 Executive, “Memorandum on Affirmative Action for Long-Service, High-intensity Part Timers,” January 14, 1988.
[3] Sterling Taylor, “New strike hits York University as 1,500 go out,” Toronto Star 18 October 1984, p. A17.
[4] Article 23.01 CUPE 3903 Unit 2 Collective Agreement, 2014-17, p. 77
[5] Alice Pitt, Vice-Provost Academic Memorandum to Deans, Faculties of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies, Education, Environmental Studies, AMPD, Health, Lassonde, Science, and Principal, Glendon College on 2016-17 CUPE 3903 Affirmative Action (“Conversion”) Program, November 30, 2016.
[6] Faculty Relations, York University, “CUPE Conversion Appointments.”
[7] Email communication from Sheila Embleton, Chief Steward, YUFA, March 18, 2018.
[8] Article 25.1.3.2, 2015-2019 Queen’s University – QUFA Collective Agreement.
[9] Article 9.8 Instructor Employees, 2014-17 Carlton University Academic Staff Association Collective Agreement.
[10] Field, C. C., Jones, G. A., Karram Stephenson, G., & Khoyetsyan, A. (2014). The “Other” University Teachers: Non-Full-Time Instructors at Ontario Universities. Toronto: Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario, p.28.
[11] These figures are taken from York University Factbook and Quick Facts http://oipa.info.yorku.ca/data-hub/quick-facts/
[12]CUPE 3903 Conversion List 2015-16
[13] Ibid.; CUPE 3903 Seniority List 2018.
[14] York University, Multi Year Budget Plan 2017-18 to 2019-20, p. 98.
[15] Ibid., p. 101.
[16] York University Factbook.
[17] Field, et al., p. 27.
Open letter to President Lenton in support of Conversion Program 1
March 19, 2018
Dear President Lenton, York University
Open Letter to York University,
We the undersigned, YUFA convertee faculty members, urge the York administration to improve conditions for contract faculty members and reaffirm its support of York’s “conversion” program. In particular, we urge the employer to maintain the number of conversion appointments it made in the past contract. This program, prized by many in the university sector, has produced numerous dedicated tenure and tenure-track faculty that have taken on important administrative positions, are active in research and publishing, and comprise a myriad of York’s award-winning teachers. This program is unique in its support of contract faculty, has enhanced York’s reputation, and contributes meaningfully to the experience of York’s students. In the most robust years of the program, it has also served as a genuine demonstration of York’s commitment to social justice, equity and diversity.
Sincerely,
Dr. Andrea O’Reilly, Professor, School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, FGS and LA&PS.
Dr. Jacinthe Michaud, Associate Professor and Chair, School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies LA&PS.
Dr. Allyson Mitchell, Associate Professor, School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, LA&PS.
Dr. John Simoulidis, Assistant Lecturer, Department of Social Science, LA&PS.
Professor Hernán E. Humaña, School of Kinesiology and Health Science, Faculty of Health.
Dr. Marlene Bernholtz, Assistant Lecturer, Writing Department, LA&PS.
Dr. Richard Wellen, Associate Professor, Department of Social Science, LA&PS.
Dr. Lykke de la Cour, Assistant Lecturer, Department of Social Science, LA&PS.
Dr. Robert Aaron Kenedy, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, LA&PS.
Dr. Alison Halsall, Assistant Professor, Department of Humanities, LA&PS.
Dr. Esteve Morera, Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy and Department of Politics, LA&PS.
Dr. Julie McDonough Dolmaya, PhD, C.Tr. (ATIO), Assistant Professor | Professeure adjointe, School of Translation | École de traduction, York University, Glendon Campus | Université York, Campus Glendon
Dr. Terry Maley, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, LA&PS.
Dr. Elicia Clements, Associate Professor, Cross-Appointed to the Departments of Humanities and English, LA&PS.
Dr. Andrea Medovarski, Assistant Professor, Department of Humanities and Transition Year Program, LA&PS.
Byron E. Wall, Senior Scholar, Senior Lecturer Emeritus, Departments of Mathematics & Statistics and Science & Technology Studies, LA&PS.
Teresa Holmes, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, LA&PS.
Dr. Ruby Newman, Associate Professor, School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, LA&PS.
Jon Caulfield, Associate Professor (retired, converted 1991), Department of Social Science – Urban Studies Program, Department of Geography – Graduate Program in Geography, LA&PS.
Audrey Pyee, Associate Lecturer, Department of History, Glendon College.
Elizabeth S. Cohen, Professor, Dept of History
Scott Forsyth, Retired, Cinema & Media Arts/Politics, AMPD, former Chair, Department of Film, former Graduate Director, Cinema and Media Studies.
Bruce Smardon, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, LA&PS.
Jon Sufrin, PhD, Assistant Lecturer, Writing Department, LA&PS.
Jon Caulfield, Associate Professor (retired, 2014), Department of Social Science (Urban Studies Program), LA&PS.
Kerry Doyle, Undergraduate Program Director, Writing Department, LA&PS.
Diana Cooper-Clark, Associate Professor, English and Humanities (former Master of Atkinson), LA&PS.
Daphne Winland, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, LA&PS.
Naomi Couto, PhD, Associate Professor, School of Public Policy and Administration, LA&PS.
Marcia Blumberg, Associate Professor, English, LA&PS.
Deborah Davidson, PhD, Associate Professor, Undergraduate Program Director, Department of Sociology, LA&PS.
Rob Heynen, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Communication Studies, LA&PS.
Brett Zimmerman, Associate Professor, English Department, LA&PS.
Jean Saindon, SRC, Special Assistant Professor, retired, Cross-appointed: Philosophy, Faculty of Liberal and Applied Sciences, Natural Science & Science, Technology and Society.
Maggie Quirt, Assistant Lecturer, Chair, Committee on Curriculum, Curricular Policy, and Standards (CCPS), Department of Equity Studies, LA&PS.
Dr. Kym Bird, Associate Professor, Department of the Humanities, Graduate Programme Director, Interdisciplinary Studies, FGS AND LA&PS.
Dr. Frances Latchford, Associate Professor, School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, LA&PS.
Dr. Gail Vanstone, Associate Professor, Coordinator, Culture & Expression Program, Department of Humanities.
Dr. Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston, Associate Professor, Graduate Program Director, Theatre & Performance Studies.
Statement by the faculty of Cinema and Media Arts 1
March 18, 2018
The YUFA members of the Department of Cinema and Media Arts have considerable concerns around the academic integrity of courses during a labour disruption. We will respect the picket line and are suspending all classes during the CUPE 3903 strike.
We have taken this decision collectively on March 3, 2018 for the following reasons:
The academic integrity of our undergraduate and graduate programs would be compromised if courses were not to be suspended, because some students will attend while others will not, because teaching assistants are integral to many of our courses, and because CUPE course directors offer essential teaching services in the Department.
• Many of our CUPE colleagues are also our students who face constantly increasing costs, eroding living conditions and uncertain futures. Forcing them to cross their own picket lines is senseless.
• Past and very recent experiences on the picket lines suggest that inconsistencies about which courses are resuming contribute to dangerous incidents.
• The brunt of the work resulting from having some classes operate while others do not falls disproportionately to our YUSA colleagues, who must deal with questions, concerns, frustrations, and anger in ways that undermine the quality of their workplace.
We recognize that the strike has put students in a difficult situation, creating uncertainty for many. We believe that by suspending courses, we can create clarity for students in our department. We also believe that this will create a space for CUPE and the employer to focus on arriving at a fair and equitable settlement to this strike as rapidly as possible. We are committed to a fair and equitable process of remediation after the strike.
Barbara Evans
Associate Professor and Chair
Department of Cinema and Media Arts
YU Talk 