David Porreca, FAUW President, 21 June 2023
The Faculty Association of the University of Waterloo is at an important moment in its history. During a long and difficult policy negotiation process with the university administration regarding lecturers’ terms and conditions of work, our association Board passed a motion on June 9 “that FAUW supports the unionization of Lecturers within FAUW and will commence a certification drive to that end.”
By way of providing a clear picture of how we came to this decision, and how we can move forward together, I have written a series of blog posts. I want to begin this series of blog posts with a reminder of what FAUW has managed to accomplish for its membership over time, lecturers and regular faculty members alike in most cases – note that some items are more recent than others:
- For lecturers: A reduction in course load from seven to six per year, at substantial cost to the institution
- For lecturers: “Two-years-less-a-day” contracts have been abolished, such that those on two-year contracts are now eligible for benefits
- For lecturers: Salary floors and thresholds raised substantially (à two negotiations ago)
- For lecturers: A two-week vacation carryover that does not expire until the individual has a non-teaching term
- For all: A 5% raise over two years, during an economic downturn, at substantial cost to the institution (this is on top of the regular salary negotiations that will resume this Fall and into next year on their regular schedule)
- For all: Eye care benefit of $85/yr, which is infinitely better than nothing (which is what we had until the last round of bargaining). Moreover, because it’s tax-free, amounts to +/- 2x that amount; other higher ed institutions have other deals that may look better on this particular item, but our benefits package is likely better than theirs in other respects (FAUW’s benefits negotiations have focused on ensuring that members are protected against the costs of catastrophic illness – it has chosen to prioritize members who have the greatest medical needs)
- For all: Better compassionate care and bereavement leaves, with no waiting period for new hires
- Better parental leave benefits
- Better access to retirement benefits
- A pension plan that is among the most robust in the province
- A better process for disability accommodations
- Better dental benefits than previously
- A regular salary anomaly review process
But is it enough? No, because you are telling us it’s not, and we are listening. Stay tuned for Part II: What Does “certification within FAUW” Involve?
The FAUW Blog 
Vision care information is incorrect. You have mistakenly doubled the coverage.
https://uwaterloo.ca/human-resources/support-employees/benefits/annual-benefit-maximums
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Please explain how you calculated the 5% increase. The memo we received did not say this.
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Lecturers have a salary floor of $66,187. This drags down all negotiations that individual lecturers have with their Deans when they are first hired. The fact that our president is citing this as an accomplishment rather that signaling it out as a serious problem and inequity should raise alarm bells.
Compare this $66K to the $85K starting salary of clinical lecturers and assistant professor here at UW. And compare also with the starting salary floor of lecturers at Trent University which is $84,462. If Trent can afford to pay its lecturers more than why can’t the University of Waterloo? How has FAUW allowed such a wide pay inequity to emerge between teaching stream and other faculty members?
“Substantial” is a relative term that requires careful comparison across the sector and across faculty members here at UW–not simply to what was there before. And changing thresholds does nothing for most lecturers.
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Saying “5% over two years” is simply not true for a few reasons:
1. Base pay adjustments were 2% + 2%. Not everyone gets the same merit pay: https://uwaterloo.ca/provost/salary-settlement-addendum/faq
2. The agreement denies 1% to anyone who was hired after May 1st, 2021 (these faculty members will only get 1% + 2% instead of 2%+2%). No rationale for this inequity is provided.
3. This adjustment is not “over two years” at all. It’s over two months and applied only at the very end of the negotiation period. What the FAUW President here and the Provost in their memo are not accounting for is the lack of retroactivity in these payments. The adjustments we received are NOT retroactive to 2021–the start of our salary negotiations under Bill 124. To accurately calculate the value of wage adjustments that we were given (beginning in April 30, 2023 and May 1, 2023 respectively), we must distribute these percentages across our base salary increase starting from 2021. So the realized increases to our base salary would be less than the 2% + 2% we were given starting on April 30th and May 1st, 2023 respectively.
Meanwhile, the university saved money on not paying our full salaries during the Bill 124 “freeze period” earning interest on this money.
4. We also need to subtract any nominal salary increases against the inflation rate (3.5% for 2021; 6.8% for 2022) in order to calculate our true realized salary change.
Rather than looking for congratulatory points, I think it’s the role of our President (and presumably our chief negotiator for these negotiations) to explain the reality of the situation to members–even if there are good reasons why we ended up with the deal we did (though we’ve been left in the dark as to how these negotiations unfolded…). Besides didn’t the pandemic/”economic downturn” period bring in substantial revenue for the university as enrollment increased or operating costs decreased?
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According to the results of a survey published on FAUW’s website, about 40% of lecturers have never had a non-teaching term. What good is the 2-week vacation carryover to them? Having a heavy teaching load, I have not been able to take a vacation for quite some time so this item in the blog post above is like a slap in the face.
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The two week vacation carry over for lecturers teaching all three terms is automatic when member declares it and it never expires until after next non-teaching term. This mean they accumulate year after year. If those 40% of lecturers continued teaching every term for the next 10 yrs and then retired, they could be on vacation for 20 extra weeks prior to officially retiring. While I hope they don’t do that, and while this does not address excessive teaching loads, it is certainly good because it is a mechanism that can be used to ensure the most teaching intensive lecturers don’t lose any unused vacation.
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I wish the focus was on helping lecturers to get a proper vacation as opposed to letting them accumulate vacation time for “later.” Except for a couple of units across campus, the vast majority would have to redistribute their teaching (for example teach 3 or 4 courses two semesters in a row) to have a semester off to take that vacation. So many lecturers have not done it because it is ridiculously hard and taxing to redistribute the teaching load and teach 3-4 courses 2 semesters in a row to “earn” a semester in which taking a vacation is possible. Does such an inhumane issue even exist for colleagues in the tenure stream?
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Replying to June 23 AM reply.
I’m very troubled that you think the previous negotiations mandate from the Board was NOT lecturer workload. It absolutely was the focus of FAUW and the FAUW negotiating team as it was part of FAUWs mandate. Please stop implying it was not the focus of FAUW. Negotiating team tried and pushed as hard as they could in negotiations but they failed. The other side pointed to the P76 revision as the workload negotiation arena, full stop. Under those negotiating conditions, there was a pivot to the next best thing: it was fundamentally unfair for lecturers to lose vacation time when they literally can’t take it due to continuous teaching. That is fixed.
You seem to believe that is not fixed so let me explain why I think is.
– Lecturer teaching 6 courses a year with 10+ years service has 5 weeks vacation per year
– They teach for six consecutive terms and accumulate 4 weeks of carry-over vacation
– After 6 terms of this teaching they have accumulated 9 weeks total of vacation and to take this they clearly require a non-teaching term
– If their Department Chair indicates the need to redistribute lecturer workload due to the non-teaching term, lecturer should go to FAUW
– FAUW can help explain to their Chair that it is unfair to redistribute workload instead of eliminate it due to vacation usage and if someone is to take 9 weeks of vacation, their workload must also decrease proportionally (e.g. teaching workload decrease of 9 weeks/52 weeks * 6 courses = 1 course)
– If Chair is unconvinced, I would hope FAUW would grieve on behalf of this lecturer and go all the way to arbitration if necessary
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Improvements to parental leave benefits are great. But why should a tenure-stream faculty member be eligible for more parental leave on the first day of their job than a teaching-stream faculty member already two years into their position? Both should have suitable parental leave from the get-go. Family planning is hard enough without having to worry about bureaucratic regulations like this.
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Why? Because it is called compromise and four parties were negotiating (Admin, FAUW, staff, CUPE). Here is the compromise: We could only substantially increase benefits for all UW employees if FAUW accepted the special case differential you pointed out. While you are right about there being a difference, you left out key details:
– Available on Day 1 of the job, a tenure-track faculty or a continuing lecturer or a 5-yr contract DTL each has 20 weeks of parental top-up, plus 15 weeks maternity top-up if they are birth parent. Previous Policy gave nothing on Day 0 but 17 weeks total (23 if birth parent) after waiting period. 52% increase for birth parent.
– The example DTL you noted above (2 yrs on the job before baby, and I’ll assume under a second 2 yr contract) would get 17 weeks parental top-up, plus 15 weeks maternity top-up if they are birth parent. Previous Policy gave 17 weeks total (23 if birth parent). So yes, 3 weeks less than above types of FAUW members in this special case. But a 39% increase for birth parent.
– What the most tenuous birth parent DTLs (those on successive 1 yr contracts) gained though in the new Policy was access to at least 17 weeks parental top-up, but up to 32 weeks top-up depending on timing of birth, if they have a baby anytime in their first 2 years on the job versus having ZERO benefits in this scenario under the old policy
– If FAUW had decided that above was unacceptable and demanded the 3-week differential be eliminated before approving the policy draft we A) most likely would not have new Policy 14 today and B) if we did, our % increases to all FAUW members noted above would be smaller (due to more of University new benefit budget increase going to staff on short term contracts).
In a future where lecturers are hired on a track to a permanent position like their professorial-rank colleagues, the 3 week differential must disappear to remain consistent with the spirit/logic of the new Policy 14.
Bryan Tolson, former FAUW PDC 14 rep
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There have been edits made to this blog post since it was originally published. In the interest of transparency, these edits should be noted out of respect for the readers.
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Even after the edits, your information is still incorrect about vision coverage, and there is a reference in there to show that you are incorrect. I am now thinking that the mistakes which are not corrected are not mistakes, but intentional. Wow!
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I think the points outlined in the last response to the 2-week carry-over (the one on Jun 23, 2023 at 9:05 am) as well as those raised above by Bryan Tolson about P14 is an indication that the gap between where lecturers are and where they should be as that they are equal to their tenure-stream colleagues is so deep that it will take years and years to fix (if at all possible). Even then, because FAUW has no real negotiating power at the table (we are not a union) the admin does not have to accommodate your requests. The 8-year-old Policy 76 negotiations are an example of that. Policy 14 was different because the university was under pressure, and again, lecturers’ benefits had to be compromised. All these years lecturers have been getting the short end of the stick (salary, p14 imbalance, T1/T2 thresholds, lack of proper contracts for “progression to continuing status”, release time for professional growth, etc.). Of course, the second that a grassroots movement starts to unionize (Lecturers Connect), suddenly FUW panics and, without consultation with the membership, starts a union drive. This does not seem right, and as a lecturer, I have deep concerns about how FAUWis handling this.
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What happened to the promised sequel? “Part II: What Does “certification within FAUW” Involve?” It’s been almost four months. Surely the president has an update on certification within FAUW by now? Or should we just wait until salary negotiations and P76/77 arbitration wrap up sometime next year?
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