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FIRST COLLECTIVE AGREEMENT FOR PART TIMERS AT ACADIA
The part time instructors at Acadia became members of the Acadia University Faculty Association (AUFA) in 2001. In April, 2002, we entered into a bargaining session for our first collective agreement with Acadia’s Administration. We were seeking improved working conditions and equity in pay with the smaller universities in Halifax, including an increase in the hourly wage which had not changed in years.
Acadia’s part-time faculty has been an invisible workhorse on this campus. For many years, they have been poorly paid, given difficult working conditions, and expected to do whatever is handed them, often for free. It is unlikely that students who are paying some of the highest tuitions in the country realize that some of their instructors are amongst the lowest paid in the country. Nor do they realize that these same members of Acadia’s faculty, despite the Acadia Advantage pressures, are given neither computers nor office time to see their students privately.
The part time faculty at Acadia was not seeking overnight change. We were not asking for the benefits so many of our colleagues across the country currently enjoy. In this, our first agreement, we simply asked to catch up in pay to our regional colleagues, and to improve those working conditions that most affect our students. Our working conditions are student learning conditions; yet, the administration for seven months staunchly refused to accept these proposals. In July, negotiations broke down and AUFA requested a provincial conciliator. But this, too, led to an impasse.
On October 11, part timers at Acadia voted unanimously to reject the Administration’s final offer, and to strike if necessary. We felt this was the only way that the administration would come to the negotiating table prepared to bargain fairly and equitably. Shortly after this vote, we were called back to the bargaining table by the Provincial conciliator, Darrell Foley.
An agreement was finally reached in late October, after a fourteen hour marathon session, with strike action looming in the background and with student support. The bargaining team included AUFA executive officers, Jim Sacouman as chief negotiator, part time professors and full time professors. We were very fortunate to have the expertise of full time professors engaged in our cause. Although the agreement was not everything we had hoped for, we felt that we set in place some of the significant articles for a first agreement, articles including academic freedom, precedence, a grievance procedure, fair hiring practices, and a professional development fund. While the Administration was not prepared to make lasting promises, they gave temporary ones for the duration of this agreement, such as a computer to each part time instructor teaching a course on campus who could show a need. It was a step in the right direction.
There is still much work to be done in the next collective agreement. We are still behind in salary compared to our Halifax colleagues; we have a precedence procedure, but are not paid for that expertise or experience on a seniority grid as most of the Halifax part timers currently are; we do not have guaranteed office space nor time to see our students privately; we do not have many of the benefits that our colleagues across the country currently enjoy.
The separate bargaining unit of part timers within AFUA, during the same meeting that ratified our first collective agreement also voted to join with the full time bargaining unit of AUFA, which currently includes full time professors, librarians and instructors. We are waiting for the larger body to take its vote, hoping to be able to stand together in solidarity.
Heather Pyrcz