Who will be the president of your local association in 2011? If you plan well, it may be a faculty member who is junior today, or someone who is not even on the payroll in 2006. It could be a person with a young family who will help the academic staff association co-ordinate daycare on campus to ensure meeting times are covered for youngsters, and that meetings are held during the evenings only in emergencies.
Your association’s 2011 president may well be an untenured faculty member who will recognize that advocacy for post-secondary staff rights cannot be put on hold for six years until one gets tenure — otherwise a significant proportion of academic staff will be disenfranchised from association leadership. Your 2011 president will see association members as colleagues united by common interests and goals under the canopy of the association.
The new colleagues — those who have joined your association in the past five years and those who will be hired over the next five years — are the future of your association. They can bring energy, enthusiasm, new ideas and all types of skills. But they need to be made aware of the political significance of the academic staff association.
For some time CAUT has been monitoring the insidious ratcheting up of commercialization in our post-secondary workplaces. Many of our newer colleagues now feel that if they do not publish as much and as quickly as possible, their careers will perish. It becomes more and more difficult for them to identify with the needs of other colleagues, and with the goals of the association as an advocacy organization for teachers, librarians, scholars, and in some cases, general staff.
In other words, our newer colleagues do not readily identify the academic staff association as representative of a vital sector within their community. When they have time for volunteer work, it seems much easier for many of them to find meaning in other kinds of worthy causes.
We have colleagues, for example, who volunteer at the local food bank or women’s shelter, who have never volunteered time to the association. The gratifications associated with working at food banks or shelters are immediate — you give food or beds to those in need. Other colleagues work with political or environmental organizations.
Our colleagues from equity-seeking groups are passionate defenders of their academic associations when given the chance to show what they can do. We are competing with many causes. The future of our universities depends on the participation of our newer colleagues, and this needs to be made clear to them.
Who will be the president of your local association in 2011? It will be someone who sees fellow colleagues as friends in the local community and not as competitors in a higher education marketplace. It will be someone who understands working for the faculty association is satisfying, not because it leads to greater monetary rewards or a higher career profile, but because it provides an opportunity to contribute to the long-term well-being of post-secondary education by advancing the interests of the staff, likely both academic and non-academic.