Adjunct academic staff employed at Queen's University have ratified their first collective agreement. The three-year deal was concluded after six months of negotiations.

Queen's University Faculty Association member services officer Colin Galinski says "the settlement significantly improves the working conditions, compensation, job security and academic rights of the members of the per-course contract academic staff bargaining unit at Queen's."

The agreement guarantees the same academic freedom rights as full-time faculty, and provides for minimum salaries for sessional adjuncts (faculty members contracted to teach less than two courses per academic year) that range from $5,000 to $6,843 per course in year one. Stipends in years two and three will be increased by the annual scale increment which is negotiated for the same years between QUFA and the university for members of the faculty, librarians and archivists bargaining unit. Minimum stipends will be supplemented by a three per cent payment in lieu of benefits.

Members will be eligible for reimbursement of child care costs of up to $1,000 per child annually, professional expense reimbursement, a research/professional development grant, compensation for services requested by a unit head, and library and e-mail access before and after their teaching term. In addition to new posting and appointments procedures, members will now have the right of first refusal after teaching the same course twice and receiving two positive evaluations in two years.

"Not only is this a good agreement for the members involved," Galinski says, "it was reached in a spirit of cooperative negotiations, which has left a good climate for its implementation."