11 things we talked about at the November 8 Board meeting

We think it’s important that our members know what we’re doing on your behalf. So we report on the non-confidential business from every Board meeting here on our blog.

The November 8 meeting covered the status of policy 76, the free speech policy, weekend teaching, new faculty representatives on University committees, and more. Here are 11 things you might want to know about:

1. The University will be creating a G-class policy to meet the Ontario government’s free speech requirements. FAUW does not have a role in the development of G policies, but we will keep you posted as much as we can.
2. The Board and administration are talking about exceptional circumstances that might warrant hiring people specifically for weekend or overseas teaching, and how we might keep tabs on such hires.
3. Members of the Renison Association of Academic Staff are voting this week on a service agreement between RAAS and FAUW, which outlines the membership dues that RAAS will pay to FAUW and the services and supports that RAAS and its members will receive in return. If they approve it, our members will vote on it at our general meeting on December 4.
4. The Employee Family Assistance Program (EFAP) has been running for two years. High usage and largely positive feedback have confirmed the need for the program. We’re also hearing that people want more long-term services within the program, which is currently designed to offer short-term solutions. The utilization rate is almost 17%, which is considerably higher than the expected 10%. We have requested information about how this might affect the cost if the contract is extended next year (which it likely will be). If you would like to share feedback about the program, please comment below or send it to Katie Damphouse.
5. We announced in our last post that we’re looking into arranging for new faculty members to access medical services on campus. We’ll be surveying members hired in the last few years soon to help us make the case for this.

Some big things you’ve been waiting for … are almost here

6. Bryan Tolson (FAUW president, in case you haven’t been paying attention) has a draft of the proposed revamped policy 76–faculty appointments and you will be able to see it and provide feedback in the new year.
7. In our last salary settlement, we negotiated for a working group to “investigate the existing salary structure (floors and thresholds) and recommend adjustments to the structure to promote equitable influence of the selective increase system on relative career salary progression of lecturers.” We are expecting this report any day now and will make a special announcement as soon as we can.
8. We’ve got some new data that we hope will finally shed some light on sessional appointments at Waterloo.

New representatives

9. Clarence Woudsma has replaced Brian Forrest on CEPT2.
10. We appointed Jay Dolmage and Lori Curtis to the drafting committee for the new employee accommodations policy. Jay will also be on a working group on accommodations guidelines, along with FAUW staff member Katie Damphouse.
11. A task force on graduate student supervision will soon investigate best practices and make recommendations for ensuring high-quality supervision and supervisory development at Waterloo. We discussed the need for the task force membership to cover the full range of supervisory experiences. When we know who the reps are, we’ll post them on the representative and committees page of our website.

Upcoming events you might want to put in your calendar:

• What you should know about the Ontario University Pension Plan: November 16, 12:00 – 1:00 p.m., MC 4020. Mary Hardy gave us a preview at this meeting. The talk is about a multi-employer jointly sponsored pension plan that Guelph, Queen’s, and Toronto are developing. Mary outlined some of the benefits and risks of this type of plan in general, and her concerns about this plan in particular. We are recording Friday’s talk so you’ll be able to watch it later if you didn’t get a ticket.
• Our fall general meeting is December 4 from 12:00 to 2:00 p.m. in QNC 2502. We will send the agenda to voting members in late November.
• FAUW is serving soup lunch at the Waterloo Indigenous Student Centre (WISC) on January 24, 12:00 p.m. WISC is located at St. Paul’s and you can join them for lunch every Thursday at noon.
• We will be visiting faculty on the Stratford campus on January 22 from 12:00 to 2:00 p.m. to hear how things are going there. We are always happy to hear suggestions about how we can better serve our members on satellite campuses!