Part-time profs paid par to poverty wage
By Natasha Marar
News Editor
April 2, 2008
The University of Windsor’s 450 sessional instructors are negotiating a new contract that has many contract professors hoping for increased recognition and promotion.
Half of all instruction on campus is performed by sessional instructors.
“Over the last ten years ... this supplemental teaching force has been relied on increasingly to fill non-renewals in teaching,” said Garth Rennie, a sessional communication studies professor for the past eight years. “The sessional [instructors] have met the demand of the expansion, especially the double cohort.”
“It’s looking worse and worse for this pool of people who are looking like a subclass of people,” said Julie Sando the sessional director for the Windsor University Faculty Association (WUFA). “You are working like a workhorse for the department without adequate pay and research time ... you get caught up in teaching only ... and [sessional instructors] don’t have any security knowing if they will be hired back next semester.”
Section 54 of the Collective Agreement between the WUFA and the university’s Board of Governors states that a sessional instructor must teach between one and six courses per academic year, with no more than three courses taught during a single semester.
Sando, who is also a sessional visual arts professor for the past 10 years, explained that sessional instructors receive a $5,000 stipend per course to a maximum of six courses a year, while full-time faculty members teach a maximum of five courses. As a result, sessional instructors can only make up to $30,000 per year. “Teachers here are earning the lowest stipend per course in Ontario,” said Sando. “A lot of sessional [instructors] teach on more than one campus just to make up what would be full-time work.”
Sando is concerned that the recently announced university budget cutbacks will affect the ability of sessional instructors to gain full-time employment. “I was told that there was less sessional [courses] to go around next year.”
Some of the main contract changes proposed pertain to issues of seniority, recognition, and pushing for competitive course stipends. Sando likens the situation of sessional instructors who have worked more than 20 years at the university without promotion to the “migrant farming of academia.”
Under section 54 (3) of the Collective Agreement, “Teaching duties comprise the only function for Sessional Instructors.” Although full-time faculty are expected to perform committee work outside of teaching and research, Sando and Rennie explain that sessional instructors are expected to go above and beyond their teaching roles.
“The horizon beyond teaching continuously emerges [for example], reference letters, graduate supervision,” said Rennie. “I had to be involved in the university process of removing a member of staff, [and] I’ve been asked to be involved in [student] recruitment, even though I stated I can’t do this anymore.”
“The quality of teaching at the University of Windsor continues to suffer under the system,” said Rennie, who has taught six courses this year - three of which were fourth-year courses with over 35 students in each. “As short as four or five weeks before the term I get a list of courses I can apply to, and three weeks before the course starts I find out what I’m teaching,” said Rennie. “We have people who are parachuted into a course at the last minute, and the students bear the bulk of the shortcomings.”
“The quality of education that the University of Windsor is delivering is weaker than in the past,” Rennie added.
Sando explained that new sessional instructors are given limited support, including poor pay, no or shared office space, and no access to library resources before the semester begins –making it difficult to prepare for their courses.
Despite their apparent contributions, Rennie explained that administration does not want to admit that the success of a program or school term is largely the result of the work done by sessional instructors.
“The full-time faculty are in the middle because they can see their colleagues being exploited,” said Sando.
Rennie also agrees. “Everybody openly acknowledges exploitation, and yet time and time again the faculty has bargained off the legitimate concerns of the sessional staff for their benefit [during contract negotiations].”
Little has been done recently to improve the situation for sessional instructors. A decade ago, the university created the position of sessional lecturers.
“They appointed 15 people to that rank and [the lecturers] haven’t been happy ... a lot of them have since left the university,” said Sando, who explained that this new class of professors are considered permanent part-time staff that would have to go on unemployment during the summer, and could not be promoted out of their rank. “It had permanence, but it’s problematic,” said Sando of the sessional lecture position.
The revised teaching position that is being proposed will be separate from sessional instructors and will not remove the current sessional lecturer ’s position.
Both Sando and Rennie agree that teaching-only contracts are problematic for the professor’s career, the department’s reputation, and for students.
Rennie believes that the efforts of sessional instructors can be recognized through the creation of a new teaching position that allows for promotion. “We have the title of professor according to the student, and yet teaching more than a full-time course load produces a wage for a family of three that meets just the national poverty wage.”
The problems plaguing sessional instructors are not limited to the University of Windsor. Sessional instructors at many Canadian universities are struggling with the terms of their contracts, including those at Wilfrid Laurier University who have been on strike since March 19.
Sando finds it troubling that so many sessional instructors are silent about their concerns. “The bulk of the sessional instructors are so invisible ... they are scared to speak up. The people who do this as a career are the ones we are advocating for,” said Sando.
Sessional instructors voted on the proposed contract changes Monday, and negotiations will resume in May.
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