Is UW’s collegial governance model still working?

The UW Staff Association has called out recent University communications for “a lack of clarity and compassion for employees.” This comment is a symptom of deeper issues about valuing employee wellbeing and maintaining a long tradition of collegial consultation. The results of the University’s recent survey about how employees felt about returning to on-campus work make clear that this sentiment is widespread. President Vivek Goel acknowledged in the February 2 President’s Forum the administration has work to do on ensuring that employees feel heard.

One way the administration could improve on this front is to consult with employee groups the way that it is supposed to. We wonder, for instance, if UW might have ordered sufficient Rapid Antigen Tests and N95 masks, as some other universities did, if real employee consultation had been in place for the last twelve months.

Communication is not consultation

In response to our request for meaningful consultation with faculty on return-to-campus decision making, the administration said: “Timelines and procedures for normal long-term planning – where we can consult very broadly in open forum discussion and where planning decisions can be widely known before coming effective – are not well suited to decision-making in this environment.”

If “normal long-term-planning” procedures cannot be respected because of “this environment,” it makes one wonder why other norms—teaching loads, class sizes, performance reviews, student course surveys—proceed as usual. Does “this environment” refer to the pandemic that has been ongoing for almost two years? Faculty members have been compelled to find ways to make their instruction as “well suited” as possible to these changed and changing circumstances. At what point will decisions related to teaching again be the result of authentic consultation with faculty members?

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Faculty must be part of safe-return decision making

The University announced on January 21 that most classes will resume in person on February 7. Many of our members have expressed concerns over the last weeks and months about what is required for a safe return to campus, and about the disruption to pedagogy and significant additional workload involved in switching course delivery mode (again), and we have shared these concerns with the administration.

From the very beginning of the pandemic, FAUW has argued that collegial governance norms require that faculty members be consulted about and involved in decisions regarding pandemic issues such as the timing of a return to in-person instruction.

Despite this, neither the Association leadership nor faculty members collectively have been consulted about returning to campus, this time or any previous time. We have been told that consultation with faculty is happening at the “local” level, but as far as we can tell, this is quite rare. The FAUW Board is extremely frustrated with this lack of consultation, and a lack of recognition that we are raising credible issues that affect a large proportion of our membership.

Unfortunately, this is a concern at other universities as well. OCUFA drew attention to this again in a statement issued on January 24:

“Since the beginning of the pandemic, university administrations have developed the bad habit of making decisions about campus health and safety behind closed doors and circumventing existing shared governance bodies that include the voices of campus unions,” said Sue Wurtele, President of the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations. “Given the increased danger of campus outbreaks with the Omicron variant, it should be obvious that this cycle can’t continue. It’s time to take the safer path, which requires full transparency about campus health and safety issues and accountable governing bodies that include experts from campus unions.”

What we’re asking for now

In light of the announcement about resuming in-person teaching, we have forwarded the following demands, based on concerns we’ve heard from members, to the administration:

That an adequate supply of N95 or KN95 respirators be provided for our members and for all members of the UWaterloo community who must be on campus.
That Rapid Antigen Tests be provided to faculty who are required to be on campus regularly, as soon as they are available.
That the University conduct an assessment to determine when COVID-19 booster shots should be mandatory.
That the University provide an update about safety upgrades to campus infrastructure that have taken place since July 2021, including information about air exchange rates and carbon dioxide levels in offices, classrooms, and other spaces, and information about how air quality will continue to be monitored and regularly reported to the campus community.
That faculty have the autonomy to consult with their students and to decide whether their courses should continue online or in-person.
That Faculty Councils and Senate have robust discussions of the conditions required for a safe return to campus.
That faculty be meaningfully consulted on decisions related to a safe return to campus and our pedagogical duties.
That until such meaningful consultation with faculty takes place, the administration stop claiming it is occurring.
That the results of the recent survey asking employees how they feel about returning to campus be released to the campus community, along with any parallel survey results for students.

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FAUW statement on decision making about fall 2021 teaching

We recognize that decisions about fall teaching are being made in an environment of uncertainty. We also recognize the need to balance instructor preferences with student experience. It is our understanding that decisions about fall instruction have largely been made at the faculty level, using a variety of decision-making models. While FAUW supports a de-centralized approach given the varying needs across campus, we ask for earlier and more effective communication and consultation with fall term instructors—and with FAUW—as decisions affecting faculty working conditions are made, to respect the collegial governance model of the university.

We appreciate that most* FAUW members have been given a fair degree of choice as to how they deliver their courses this fall, but faculty were asked to make these decisions without access to essential information, including:

Anticipated safety protocols (e.g., information on ventilation, social distancing, how classroom changes are handled in buildings with constrained hallways, the availability of asymptomatic rapid testing responsibility for disinfection, and responsibility for compliance enforcement).
Expected decision rules which will trigger a shift from in-person to online (e.g., infection and vaccination rates, whether classes might shift from in person to online and back to in person).
Anticipated support for various models (e.g., the availability of classroom technology to enable streaming, registrar and AccessAbility support for testing and exams, the availability of technical support for hybrid models).
Consideration of faculty workload for hybrid models which will accommodate both remote and in-person students simultaneously, in the same section (e.g., extra teaching credit, overload pay, or temporary reweighting to accommodate extra work).

We heard updates on some of these items at the virtual town hall on May 11, but course delivery decisions were due on May 7, and many aspects of our fall working conditions are still unclear.

FAUW asks for transparent communication and updates on Waterloo’s position regarding access to vaccinations for faculty, staff, teaching assistants, and students, as well as availability and protocols surrounding regular asymptomatic rapid testing. While we recognize that best practices continue to evolve and may change over time, we are aware of multiple initiatives at other institutions regarding testing and vaccine protocols, and infrastructure and teaching support, and ask to be kept informed of Waterloo’s evolving stance on these items.

We suggest that one way of achieving meaningful communication is by giving a member of the FAUW Executive Committee membership in key decision-making groups such as the newly announced Workforce Planning Task Force. We look forward to being more involved and better able to support and inform our members as we prepare to have more activity on campus.

*We have heard reports of some members, particularly lecturers, being pressured or forced to commit to in-person instruction for fall against their wishes, which is very concerning.

FAUW appalled by job terminations, program closures at Laurentian

Yesterday, Laurentian University announced that as a result of on-going insolvency processes, 58 undergraduate programs and 11 graduate programs will be closed. As part of these closures, approximately 100 Laurentian professors were dismissed from their jobs, effective May 15. Additionally, on April 1, Laurentian unilaterally cancelled its federation agreements with Thorneloe University, Huntington University, and the University of Sudbury, placing those institutions in financial doubt, as they cannot issue degrees.

This terrible outcome for our colleagues at Laurentian, who are represented by the Laurentian University Faculty Association (LUFA/APPUL), was caused by a panoply of catastrophic errors, but chief among them are an unwillingness by the government of Ontario to properly fund universities and to backstop Laurentian during this crisis; the refusal of the Laurentian administration to take advantage of the financial exigency clause in the LUFA/APPUL collective agreement (which the faculty association urged them to use as early as 2017); and the financial sloppiness of a university that consistently proposed balanced budgets while in fact reporting annual losses for the bulk of the last decade.

FAUW stands in solidarity with our colleagues at Laurentian University and its federated institutions. We will continue to advocate for the provincial government to restore Laurentian to financial health and to establish a stable funding base for it and other Ontario universities. We call on universities, including our own, to confirm their support for their federated university colleges. We deplore the total inaction of the provincial government, particularly its Minister of Colleges, Training and Universities, Ross Romano, who has dodged his responsibility to manage this crisis since February.

We will discuss the Laurentian situation further at our general meeting on Friday, and consider a motion of solidarity with LUFA/APPUL at that meeting.

FAUW stands in solidarity with colleagues at Laurentian, opposes creditor protection for the public university

The Faculty Association of the University of Waterloo stands in solidarity with our colleagues from the Laurentian University Faculty Association / Association des professeures et professeurs de l’Université Laurentienne (LUFA/APPUL), who are facing grave threats to collegial governance and collective bargaining. On February 1, Laurentian University entered creditor protection under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA), which allows insolvent corporations to renegotiate their debts and potentially make dramatic changes to their labour agreements as well.

This is not the first time a public university in Canada has experienced financial distress, but it is to the best of our knowledge the first time one has sought creditor protection in this manner. The appropriate pathway forward is not creditor protection; it is a combination of support from the Ontario and federal governments to put Laurentian on a sustainable footing and (if needed) the implementation of the process for handling financial exigency already built into LUFA/APPUL’s agreement with Laurentian’s administration.

The crisis at Laurentian is not the fault of the university’s employees, and they should not be suffering as a result of mismanagement. To the contrary, as is true of university faculty and staff across the province, they have been doing astonishing work under extraordinarily challenging conditions since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and this situation only exacerbates their difficult circumstances. FAUW supports our colleagues at LUFA/APPUL.

Additionally, FAUW:

Opposes the use of the CCAA: Laurentian has a cash-flow problem, but clearly has access to substantial resources, and can be backstopped by the Ontario government while it gets its financial house in order. Universities are public institutions, not companies that need protection from creditors. Allowing this to proceed will set a terrible precedent for other public institutions.
Calls on the Ontario government to reinvest in universities in general, and Laurentian, with its bilingual structure and focus on educating Anglo-Ontarian, Franco-Ontarian and Indigenous populations, in specific. This is a manufactured crisis, and the means to handle the problem are in the hands of the Ford government.
Deplores the financial mismanagement of the Laurentian University administration, which has burned through research accounts, retiree health-care premiums, and more while hiding the extent to which it was spiraling into financial disaster. We call for a renewed emphasis on transparency and collegial governance, and an examination of exactly what has transpired at Laurentian, so as to avoid similar mismanagement and crisis at other public institutions. The solution to crises of this sort is not more government oversight behind closed doors; it is more public and collegial oversight.

More information

Breaking down our 2021 Salary Settlement

To help clarify some of the implications and motivations of items in the new salary settlement, we’ve once again asked our chief negotiator (Bryan Tolson, this time) to provide some commentary. Below is the full text of the agreement with annotations, but first, here’s a quick, plain-language summary of the items in the agreement:

1% scale increases each year for three years.
$85 for eye exams (for each person every two years).
A new compassionate care and bereavement leave policy that will provide:
- A salary top-up (to 85%, for up to eight weeks) for members on a Critical Illness Leave or Family Medical Leave (minus Employment Insurance benefits received)
- Four weeks of fully paid bereavement leave on the death of a spouse/partner, child, or step-child; one week on the death of any other immediate family member, such as a parent or sibling.
A deadline to start collecting faculty equity data, including on race and Indigeneity, and an update to the current salary anomaly review to identify and correct race-based anomalies once the data is ready. Corrections will be retroactive to May 1, 2021, and race and Indigeneity will be factors in future salary anomaly reviews.
A Memorandum of Agreement update so that faculty teaching all three terms in a year can now carry two weeks of vacation forward each year (up from one); for lecturers, these weeks will not expire until after their next non-teaching term.

Interpreting the agreement

Bill 124 limitations

Bill 124 limits public sector employee compensation increases to a maximum of 1% each year for a three-year period (our period is May 2021 – April 2024). Specifically, our average salary increase is capped at 1%, and our total “compensation entitlements” (total salary plus all benefits), is also capped at a 1% increase. (See the appendix at the end of this post for the language in the bill itself). Note that selective salary increases (merit) are not affected and will continue as usual.

Our bargaining team estimated that after the 1% scale increase, we had over $600 per member remaining for other items over the three-year deal. Our certified forensic accountant, Linda Robinson, led these calculations. Our actuarial costing, led by Mary Hardy from the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, shows the settlement items have a projected total increase in compensation entitlements of only $160 (items 5 through 8 generate no increase at all). This leaves room for additional benefit enhancements, particularly in the third year of the agreement, in which there is no additional spending as a result of this agreement beyond the scale increase.

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Compensation negotiations proceeding to mediation

Yesterday, after two months of negotiations, the FAUW negotiating team presented a final good faith offer to the UW administration, hoping to reach an agreement on compensation negotiations by the deadline of midnight, February 1. We are disappointed to report that the offer was not accepted. The final offer from the University was also unacceptable. As a result, our negotiations will continue, first going to a mediator and then, if an agreement is still not reached, to arbitration. All these proceedings are set out in section 10 of the Memorandum of Agreement.

We know you will be as disappointed as we are. So, let us explain how we got here.

We didn’t enter negotiations to maximize our pay cheques. We wanted—we believed you deserved—fairer benefits and better equity provisions. Bill 124 already restricts us to a 1% scale increase, so we worked instead, for example, to try to make it possible for lecturers teaching all three terms in a year to take their vacation entitlement. We also tried to get agreement on a cost-neutral compassionate care supplemental benefit plan, so that you can take time away from work to provide care or support to a critically ill or injured person or someone needing end-of-life care. We argued for better bereavement benefits. Currently, if your child or partner or parent were to die, the University would offer you one to four days’ paid leave of absence. This seems cruelly inadequate.

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Anti-Black racism: An apology and a commitment

I have been President of FAUW for almost three years now. In this time, I have not done enough advocacy and work on behalf of Black faculty colleagues to eliminate the systemic racism they face at our University and even within FAUW. For this I am truly sorry. The FAUW Board also apologizes for not doing more on this front.

FAUW is committed to joining the fight against systemic anti-Black racism on our campuses. In addition to this apology, we commit ourselves to:

Listening to Black faculty colleagues.
Learning about the systemic racism Black faculty colleagues face to help inform our next steps.
Better enabling and encouraging Black faculty members to participate in FAUW decision making and reducing barriers to full consultation.
Identifying possible ways to address anti-Black racism, including changing problematic policies and practices that reinforce the racism Black faculty colleagues face.
Continuing to consult with Black faculty colleagues on any actions we identify before implementing them.
Taking meaningful actions that go beyond talking or blogging like this, so that changes in policy and practice actually happen—both within FAUW and at the University.
Advocating for change for Black faculty colleagues.

Although we have not done nearly enough yet, we started this work in earnest after the last Senate meeting. As part of this effort, we have met with the Black Faculty Collective (BFC) three times since then. The BFC informally represent the small number of Black faculty on the Waterloo, Renison, St. Paul’s, St. Jerome’s and Conrad Grebel campuses (they count 8 faculty). Discussions at these meetings informed the steps outlined above.

Our discussions so far have also made clear to me the fundamental importance of white people like me stepping forward to do most of this work, because underrepresented Black faculty can’t possibly do it on their own—nor should they have to. Let’s not forget, Black faculty are here to do teaching and research. So FAUW’s learning, work, actions, and advocacy need to move forward based primarily on significant investments of our own time and energy. But neither should FAUW fail to listen and fully consult.

The process will take much longer than my few weeks left as FAUW President, and longer than the one year I will serve as Past President starting in September. Despite this, I pledge to be in this fight against anti-Black racism for the long haul and I will do my best to equip FAUW to continue this work after I step away from the organization.

Bryan Tolson,
FAUW President

UW statement risks chilling Black anti-racism scholarship

On June 6, in relation to a matter with a faculty member that prompted a public outcry and media response, the University of Waterloo told the press that “The University of Waterloo unequivocally believes that there is no place for the use of the N-word in class, on campus or in our community.”

At the June 15 meeting of University of Waterloo’s Senate, we heard from UWaterloo President Feridun Hamdullahpur that the University would revise and reissue this statement, but we still feel it is important to release our response, originally written prior to this announcement at Senate. At the time we are publishing this response, the University’s June 6 statement is still online in its original form.

FAUW is deeply concerned about the harm that racialized students, colleagues, and community members experience because of racist language. We are also concerned about the chilling effect that the University’s statement will have on University of Waterloo scholars, especially on Black, Indigenous, and other racialized scholars who research and teach about race and racism. Indeed, we are aware that at least two local Black scholars have also expressed this concern to the University in the last week.

FAUW strongly opposes the prohibition implied by the University’s statement. Whether a word is appropriate for use in class is a scholarly decision that instructors must be free to make. In particular, instructors who teach about race and racism must be free, according to their best judgement, to lead unvarnished discussions about racist language.

FAUW President Bryan Tolson made the following statement at the June 15 Senate meeting:

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FAUW’s unanswered pandemic questions

FAUW’s job, in this pandemic and always, is to advocate for our members’ best interests and protect our members’ rights. In the current situation, that means persistently asking tough questions of administrators to make sure your interests and concerns are adequately considered in pandemic decision making.

Unfortunately, FAUW is not being formally consulted about pandemic-related decisions. President Hamdullahpur said at the May Senate meeting that the Integrated Co-ordination and Planning Committee (ICPC) is “constantly” in touch with the Faculty Association. Our members deserve to understand precisely what this means. FAUW requested engagement with the ICPC; specifically, we asked to participate in two of the three working groups in a non-voting capacity. Instead we are getting partial verbal updates from one—the academic working group. I get an update roughly once every two or three working group meetings (which is still multiple updates per week). I then must consult very quickly with one or more of the FAUW Executive team to provide written feedback to the working group chair in support of FAUW members’ interests. In addition, we bring many of the same issues to Faculty Relations Committee, which continues to meet biweekly.

To be as transparent as possible, we are now more explicitly sharing (on our COVID-19 page) the specific questions we are posing so you know what we’re discussing before we get answers. We hope some of you will reiterate anything you feel is important in your own discussions across our virtual campus.

—Bryan Tolson, FAUW President

Here are some of our open questions. We will add more to the COVID-19 page on our website as we ask them.

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