CAUT Policy Statement
All academic staff members have privacy rights over their personal information. Private personal information includes but is not limited to information in a personnel file(s) such as an employee’s address, date of birth, performance appraisals, and leave records. Post-secondary institutions must comply with privacy laws and principles in protecting the confidentiality of and access to employee personnel records.
All personal information collected, used, or disclosed by post-secondary institutions should be safeguarded by appropriate language in collective agreements, including protocols for its collection, storage, access and protection.
Post-secondary institutions should release personal information only as required by applicable legislation or collective agreement articles, or with the prior written, informed consent of the academic staff member. Any release of aggregated data must protect the privacy of individuals.
The post-secondary institution should, on request from academic staff members, disclose to them the contents of their personnel records. Academic staff have the right to access and verify the accuracy of all personal information held in their personnel file(s) and to have inaccurate or inappropriate information amended or removed from their file.
Access to academic staff’s personal information should occur only when absolutely necessary and only by those who are authorized and need to know the information, and then be limited only to those parts of the file that are relevant to the issue at hand.
When it is no longer needed or required by legislation, personal information held by a post-secondary institution should be destroyed in a manner that protects the employee’s privacy
Approved by CAUT Council, November 2004;
Approved by CAUT Council, April 2005;
Editorial revisions, September 2010;
Approved by CAUT Council, November 2016;
Revised by CAUT Legal Staff, October 2021;
Revision approved the by the CAUT Executive Committee and referred to Council for consideration, October 2021;
Revisions approved by the CAUT Council, November 2021