The AUFA President Communicates

Janice and Ray 1.jpg

(Photo: J. Longley)

A call for applications was sent to students in September with a deadline for submissions of October 31. The application form is also available online: http://www.acadiau.ca/prospective/finance/documents/AUFAEquity2009_000.pdf. The $25,000 donated by AUFA will be given out to students in 2009–2010. Money donated by individual faculty members (over $30,000 to date) will be used to fund a second round of scholarships and bursaries in the 2010–2011 academic year.

The newly established AUFA Equity scholarships make clear our association’s commitment to the principles of equity and set the stage for our next round of contract negotiations.

Some work in this area has already been carried out over the course of the summer. In May, representatives from Acadia (Jim Sacouman, Beert Verstraete and Janice Best on behalf of AUFA), as well as representatives from other employee groups at Acadia and members of the Senior Administration, attended a meeting of the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission where a new Employment Equity Partnership was launched. Melissa Connell, an Acadia graduate who now works as a Policy Research and Public Education Officer in Race Relations, Equity and Inclusion for the Human Rights Commission, is helping coordinate this new initiative. Other partners include Bell Aliant, Dalhousie University, and the Nova Scotia Government Employees Union.

At this meeting, Acadia announced its commitment to the partnership and to the goals of promoting the principles of equity, inclusion, and diversity through a series of open dialogues with employers, employees, researchers, and communities across Nova Scotia. The target is to achieve equitable employment through the reduction of discrimination and barriers to employment for disadvantaged groups within our communities. Creating a more diverse workforce at Acadia that is representative of the groups in society will make it easier to achieve our goal of recruiting and retaining students from a wider variety of backgrounds.

One of the first steps to implementing employment equity is to prepare an equity plan. This includes developing a workforce survey – a self-identification questionnaire which asks employees questions to determine whether they belong to any of the four designated groups identified by the Employment Equity Act and provincial Human Rights Legislation (Aboriginal peoples, persons with disabilities, visible minorities, and women), or other disadvantaged groups which we may wish to include. The AUFA Equity committee is currently working with other employee groups on campus to put together a sub-committee of experts to develop our workforce survey.

These types of surveys are a common feature of equity programs in most universities across Canada which must comply with the provisions of the Federal Contractors Program (FCP) in order to remain eligible to bid on large federal contracts, including grants from the three federally regulated granting councils, SSHRC, NRC and CIHR. The Federal Contractors Program was initiated by a Cabinet Decision in 1986 and operates in parallel to the Canadian Employment Equity Act which covers federally regulated employers. The Federal Contractors Program, on the other hand, applies to provincially regulated employers with 100 or more employees and who receive at least $200,000 in federal contracts annually. These organizations are required to certify in writing their commitment to implementing employment equity. Employers who refuse to honour this commitment and are found in non-compliance with FCP requirements may lose the right to bid on or to receive further federal government funding valued at $25,000 or more. Acadia has long maintained that because of its status as a small university, it does not have to comply with the requirements of the FCP. Whether or not this is really the case, most other universities our size (Mount Allison, Saint Mary’s and Saint Francis Xavier to name but a few in our region) have long ago made a commitment to employment equity and there is no reason for Acadia to continue to lag behind and run the risk of jeopardizing our members’ right to apply for and receive federal grants.

Employment equity is not just about numbers and statistics, but also about fair employment policies and practices. Once we have the results of our workforce survey, we can compare these numbers to Canadian labour market availability data. Next, we need to undertake an Employment Systems Review (ESR) of our current policies and practices in order to determine whether they pose barriers to the designated groups. Based on the results of the review, we can begin to develop an employment equity plan which aims to eliminate the barriers that obstruct the hiring and promotion of designated group members by establishing positive policies and by setting short-term and long-term numerical goals to ensure that reasonable progress is made in addressing any under-representation. These goals are flexible targets, which may be adjusted, and should not be confused with the quota system used for U.S. affirmative action programs. In fact, section 33(e) of the Employment Equity Act (which regulates federal employers) specifically prohibits the imposition of quotas. Finally, we will need to monitor our progress towards the implementation of employment equity by conducting periodic workforce surveys, and by assessing whether modifications to our equity plan are needed.

Achieving equity is both an individual and a collective responsibility. In my view, AUFA is well poised to take a leadership role on our campus by negotiating strong equity provisions in our next Collective Agreement on issues such as an Employment Systems Review, pay equity, employment equity, elimination of systemic discrimination, and reasonable accommodation of differences. It should be a requirement that a sentence appear in all job advertisements stipulating our commitment to equity and encouraging applications from members of designated groups. Such policies and practices should apply to all employee groups at Acadia, but our only means of ensuring that they are adhered to for AUFA members is to include provisions on equity in our Collective Agreement. This does not preclude us from continuing to work with other employee groups on campus to create a more equitable workplace for all students, faculty, and staff at Acadia.

In order for Acadia to become a truly inclusive university we need to be active in promoting equitable employment policies and practices. Many barriers to equitable employment opportunities continue to exist which can include unvoiced or systemic biases and assumptions, employment and education inequities, and lack of accommodation. We need to begin by acknowledging inequity and take a proactive approach to create policies and practices aimed at redressing the effects of systemic discrimination by negotiating strong, clear language in our Collective Agreement.

Let’s make AUFA’s commitment to equity become a reality!

Janice Best

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