Growth of Part Time Teaching at Our College: YOU NEED TO ACT!
Due – at least in part – to grievances under Article 2 from your local Union leadership, there has been a steady number of full time professors at Durham College. These hires, however, DO NOT balance against the growth in student enrollment and replacements of retired full time faculty. In the last 3 years, the number of full time professors at our college has remained fairly consistently around 325 or slightly above.
How is the college making up for this shortfall? The following numbers explain the trend here at Durham College:
TOTAL NUMBERS of CONTRACT teaching, PART TIME (1-6 hours/week) and PARTIAL LOAD (7-12 hours/week) by semester:
SEMESTER: FULL TIME PART TIME: PARTIAL LOAD:
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Fall, 2011: 333 (Jan 2011) 260 22 positions
Winter, 2012: 323 (Jan 2012) 269 24 positions
Fall, 2012: 316 34 positions
Winter, 2013: 314 (Jan 2013) 327 59 positions
Fall, 2013: 364 67 positions
Winter, 2014: 325 (Jan 2014) 412 78 positions
Fall, 2014: 422 positions 83 positions
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Per Cent INCREASE over 3 years: No increase 62% 277 %
The situation at our college for part time teachers (1-6 hours per week) is the most alarming trend! Currently, in this semester, fall 2014, there are 422 part time professors, and your Union has NO ABILITY to protect these people due to the wording of the Collective Agreement!
Put simply, even with growth in student enrollment, and even with on-going Article 2 grievances, college management has chosen to hire ever-more poorly paid, poor-job-security Partial Load and part time faculty.
Your Union leadership has pressured management to choose partial load over part time hires (Partial Load are somewhat protected by our Collective Agreement, but they have far fewer benefits than full time). Ever-increasing Partial Load numbers are NOT what we want, but it is preferable to part time and we have been doing everything we can under Article 2 to force management to hire full time.
What can be done? Most importantly, it is time to start conversations with your fellow faculty. Nothing can be done as long as current faculty are not aware of and do not care about the numbers above.
If there is genuine concern, current faculty need to contact local Union leadership here at the college. Your Union will consider such methods as a petition from us to forward to management to express our alarm over this trend. Other ideas will be welcomed!
Ultimately, if conversations lead to a genuine and wide-spread feeling that we need to demand more, then your Union will have the strength it needs to demand more at the bargaining table in the next round of negotiations.
However, if our Union membership continues to believe that everything is okay and the current drift is acceptable (as expressed through our college’s 73% acceptance of our current agreement including a moratorium on Article 2 grievances) then the outcome will be obvious: ever higher numbers of contract teachers at all Ontario colleges including Durham and the eventual insignificance of full time faculty in the system.