Part-time faculty at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax are feeling the weight of a labour dispute after negotiations with the university hit an impasse, according to the president of CUPE 3912, Lauren MacKenzie.

The two sides have been at the table for nearly a year, and last week voted 87 per cent in favour of job action.

MacKenzie tells our newsroom they have tabled many proposals related to the quality of work and have not been able to make any progress on issues that matter to members.

“Our members bring a lot to the university.  They add a lot and their mission of teaching and delivering programming and the university is not responding in kind to that,” says MacKenzie.

She says one of the key sticking points is livable wages.

“Our expectations around wages are really pinned to the work that we do and the economy that we live in. These are not sort of pie in the sky proposals. I want to be really clear about that,” says MacKenzie.

Job security

Another big issue, she says, is job security.

“The precarity of our work is such a dominating feature in our lives that members are expected to apply, reapply for every class, every term, every year…no matter how long they’ve been teaching, how many times they’ve taught the same course,” adds MacKenzie.

She says SMU will talk about their highly skilled faculty, yet 30 per cent of courses are taught by part-time staff who are unable to make ends meet with no future prospect of long-term employment.

“Many of these folks do work full-time by teaching multiple courses at multiple institutions and doing whatever they can but SMU is really pushing our members into essentially like a gig economy model,” adds MacKenzie.

However, considering the 10 to 15 years it takes to dedicate yourself to a discipline to teach students, she says, is a career.

“We have members who’ve been there for 30 years teaching in this model of short-term contracts. Not a lot of people get a PhD in a field because they plan to work as a gig worker,” says MacKenzie. “People are looking to dedicate themselves fully to their work, teaching.”

Conciliation

MacKenzie says they will do whatever they can to avoid a labour disruption.

“We will work to really encourage the employer to meet us on various topics. They right now refuse to engage with us on any topic other than wages. We want the university to negotiate on all the issues that are critical to our members,” says MacKenzie.

CUPE will meet with the university for conciliation talks, October 6.