Contract profs, Carleton reach tentative contract

Instructors and teaching assistants on picket line for just an hour

It’s one thing to teach Victorian literature, it’s another thing to live it.

After an hour of picketing Monday morning, the union representing 2,400 contract instructors and teaching assistants at Carleton University announced it had reached a tentative deal.

CUPE Local 4600 announced the deal on social media shortly after 7 a.m.

Details of the settlement were to be released after a ratification vote by members of the union’s bargaining group and Carleton.

Pickets were set up just before 6 a.m. About 40 people paraded near the entrance to Carleton, briefly snarling traffic.

Contract English professor Rosemarie Hoey was among the first at the picket line, arriving around 5:45 a.m.

She said she’s fed up with the insecure tenure and poor pay for the part-time professors who make up a big chunk of the Carleton teaching staff.

Hoey has five degrees, including an interdisciplinary PhD with a specialty in English literature.

She half jokingly compared her working conditions to those of British coal mines in Birmingham in the Victorian era.

“It’s one thing to teach Victorian literature, it’s another thing to live it.”

Contracts professors are used only when needed, and are forced to continually reapply to teach courses, said Hoey, who has worked at Carleton for 17 years. Most contract professors have PhDs, but the pay is so poor that many string together temporary jobs from Carleton, the University of Ottawa, and community or private colleges to try to make a living, she said.

Elise Bigley, a teaching assistant in the history department, says some of her fellow assistants in other departments teach classes with up to 100 students, and work extra unpaid hours.

Diana Hiebert, a 24-year-old teaching assistant in the art history department, said they also wanted to support the contract professors. The poor working conditions of contract profs could be in their future, too, if they pursue academic careers in academia, she said.

Shortly after 7 a.m., union officials announced the tentative deal had been reached. The picketers cheered and dispersed.

The union warned last month that after more than seven months of bargaining, it had sought a “no board” report from the conciliator appointed the Ministry of Labour, beginning the countdown to possible job action. The local had been without contracts since Sept. 1, 2016.

The “no board” reports follow strike votes in which contract instructors voted 91 per cent in favour of taking job action if necessary. TAs voted 84 per cent in favour.

Outstanding issues had included wages, teacher-to-student ratios and improved job security for contract instructors, who the union complained have to reapply for their own jobs several times a year, even after decades of continuous service.