Tag: sessionals

Board meeting report: February 2, 2023

This was a packed meeting! Here’s what we covered:

Black and Indigenous faculty mentorship. The Equity Committee is creating an informal mentorship program to support faculty hired through the Black and Indigenous Excellence initiatives. FAUW is funding one-on-one meetings to support this.

Policy development. FRC has received new drafts of two policies: Compassionate Care & Bereavement Leave (12) and Employee Accommodations (57). The Board reviewed Policy 12 at this meeting and will discuss 57 at the next. What we negotiated for compassionate care and bereavement leave is documented in our last settlement, and Policy 12 will cover at least those provisions—which are already in place! You can find out what leaves and benefits you have in our Faculty Guide.

One open question is whether requests for extension might be handled by a central office (as is proposed for accommodations under the new Policy 57), rather than by deans or other supervisors/managers (as they currently are). FAUW’s position is that this central, arms-length office is absolutely necessary for fair, equitable, and compassionate treatment of employees. Another question is whether the policy will apply to post-doctoral fellows and research faculty (which we hope it will).

Compensation negotiations. We are starting to look for compensation negotiating team members. A detailed call for members is available on our website; please get in touch with Mary Hardy if you are interested or would like to recommend someone.

Research professors. The Board got caught up on the pre-pandemic progress on representing research professors. To recap: There are significant gaps in the working conditions of research professors compared to faculty and staff groups who have formal representation, and the FAUW membership voted at its 2019 fall general meeting to move forward with representing research professors. We were very close to formal agreement at Faculty Relations Committee about the next steps by March 2020, but discussions were disrupted by the pandemic, and then by work on policies 76 and 77. The Board has agreed to resume work on this now to support this particularly precarious group of faculty.

Pay frequency survey. The Board reviewed the results from our recent poll about bimonthly vs monthly pay frequency. As with the Staff Association’s similar results, this is likely not a strong enough argument to convince the administration to change the pay schedule, but we will keep a watching brief, alongside the Staff Association.

Sessional unionization. A member raised concerns about changes that could come about as a result of the unionization of sessional instructors. We will keep a watchful eye on this issue.

Bookkeeping. The Board endorsed a plan to hire professional bookkeepers, which will come with the ability to do electronic funds transfers and save on some other costs including the cost of our audit.

Board meeting report: January 19, 2023

Here’s what the Board talked about at its last meeting:

  • The Policy 76/77 update and panel discussion, and the policy drafting committee’s process so far. You can watch the P76/77 panel on Microsoft Stream here (UW login required) and read the PDC members’ report on this blog.
  • The CAUT Equity Conference is coming up on February 10. Two or three members of the Equity Committee will be attending, and registration is still open.
  • Policy 3 (Sabbatical and other leaves). The Board agreed to proposed changes to Policy 3 that would allow faculty to transition between sabbatical and sick leave in the event of extended illness. This should be approved at Faculty Relations Committee soon and then sent to the Board of Governors. These changes were prompted by recommendations based on past Academic Freedom & Tenure Committee cases.
  • FAUW leadership transition. As we announced earlier this month, Lori Curtis has stepped down and vice president Mary Hardy has now assumed the role of president. The Board voted to have president-elect David Porreca begin his term in May this year, instead of July, and to have David join the board in a non-voting capacity until his term as president begins, to facilitate a smoother transition. David is a past president of FAUW (2012–2015) and will bring experience and institutional memory that will be very useful at this time.
  • Salary Anomaly Working Group. The Board appointed Rashmee Singh, Kate Rybczynski, and Michael Wallace as the FAUW representatives on the working group.
  • The salary negotiation team. Salary negotiations begin late this year, and will be issuing a call for interested team members in the coming weeks. Please send us any recommendations you have! We need a strong leader for the team, and at least one accountant.
  • The University’s mask policy. We’ve heard from several members who do not feel safe in small, crowded classrooms without asking students to mask. FAUW is considering asking for the data on which the University is basing its masking decisions.
  • CUPE sessional unionization. President Mary Hardy met with CUPE representatives and expressed support for their organizing efforts. She notes that there’s no disagreement about who represents whom.
  • Mary also met with the Staff Association to discuss common issues, including snow days and pension & benefits.

Bleak, but… (GM and board meeting reports: December 2022)

The highlight of the fall general meeting on December 7 was definitely Jay Dolmage’s audio glitching and getting stuck in a loop of him saying “bleak, but” as he tried to provide an update on the employee accommodations policy. (Jay later summarized in the chat: “PDC 57 has some reason to be optimistic that we can move this along in the new year.”)

“Bleak, but…” turns out to be a good summary of how members seem to be feeling about the role of faculty in governance at Waterloo. Policy development keeps stalling, faculty feel like senate meetings are rubber stamping sessions, and we don’t really get a say in a lot of university guidelines and academic processes that affect our work.

But there’s cause for hope. The administration agrees that the policy development process isn’t working, and we’ll be talking about how to fix that as soon as we see how the new Policy 76 process works out. There’s some real desire and momentum right now among members to find better ways of doing things, whether that’s a revised Policy 1 (the policy on policies), moving more items into the Memorandum of Agreement, or considering certification. And, most importantly, a whole lot of faculty members are interested and engaged with these issues and offering some great suggestions. Now we just need to make them happen. Some ideas we’ve heard recently—at this meeting or otherwise—include:

  • Regular open discussions about hot issues
  • Mobilizing faculty senators—maybe meeting in advance of senate meetings
  • Better tracking of member suggestions and Board follow up
  • Negotiating a workload policy
  • Solidarity with other employee and student groups at UW
  • Improving APRs (the process for these is governed by the MoA, but standards are currently set by each Faculty and department)
  • A member engagement committee to build networks and identify opportunities for members to work on issues
  • And, of course, the internal governance review that will be starting soon

What do you want to make happen, and how? Let us know in the comments, or contact Mary Hardy, acting president, or David Porreca, president-elect.

2023 negotiation priorities

We asked for ideas for goals in our next round of negotiations, which start in late 2023. Here are the most common suggestions:

Continue reading “Bleak, but… (GM and board meeting reports: December 2022)” →