Treat part-time faculty fairly

RE: Ontario college strike

The Ontario-wide community college strike serves to highlight a much larger issue within our province: there’s a significant lack of enforceable policy surrounding the idea of equal pay for equal work.

Colleges are taking advantage of contract faculty by granting them little job security, as per their part-time temporary contracts. It is not uncommon for a contract faculty member or sessional instructor to hold multiple teaching posts just to be able to support themselves. Many are living semester to semester, which is unfair to those doing the same work as full-time tenured faculty who do not have to worry whether or not they will have a job in the new year.

As a university student, many of my favourite lecturers have been sessional instructors working on contracts that need to be negotiated on a yearly basis, providing very little job security and an income significantly lower than what they deserve. Unfortunately, the trend toward using contract-based sessional instructors instead of full-time tenure track professors has increased dramatically over the past six years since I have been in post-secondary education.

Although the government’s proposed Bill 148 includes a new equal pay for equal work provision, it isn’t strong enough to end differential pay for contract faculty. Colleges and universities must lead in paying their part-time, contract faculty equally to full-time faculty, and the Ontario government must strengthen equal pay language so that it’s enforceable in all sectors Matt Kerslake, Hamilton