Contract academic staff and officials of member associations from across the country travelled to Edmonton May 28 for CAUT’s third biennial contract academic staff conference.

David Johnson, president of the Academic Staff Association at the University of Alberta, welcomed delegates to the campus venue and spoke to his audience on the importance of efforts to overcome inequities that have plagued contract academic staff for years.

CAUT and its locals are markedly improving the conditions of employment for contract academic staff, said CAUT president Greg Allain, in delivering the keynote address, but warned there’s more to be done to secure the rights of part-time academics.

“We’ve come a long way in organizing and bargaining for advantage, but we still have further to go on the larger issues of conversion, regularization and the integration of teaching, research and service,” Allain said.

Among the presenters, Geoff Martin, professional officer of the Mount Allison Faculty Association, made the case for contract academics and their unions to incorporate CAUT’s pro rata policies on “rebundling” teaching, research and service tasks at the bargaining table, while Tom Friedman of Thompson Rivers University reviewed the experiences of BC’s Federation of Post-secondary Educators in winning “regularization” for their locals in past rounds of bargaining.

George Davison, a history instructor at the College of New Caledonia, and Michael Skeleton of Wilfrid Laurier University also shared anecdotes and their insights on surviving the contract academic staff experience.

The conference also hosted a series of ‘how to’ sessions for delegates, including mobilizing the membership, negotiating paid research and service time, transitioning from the current stipendiary system to a pro rata model of appointments and negotiating a benefits package.

In her closing remarks Cindy Oliver, president of the Federation of Post-secondary Educators of BC and chair of CAUT’s contract academic staff committee, highlighted the importance of the forum in bringing together people to share and discuss their experiences and in providing new tools and techniques that can be taken to bargaining tables on local campuses.

She also pressed the need to organize for better positioning in achieving equity and fair treatment for contract academic staff and to educate tenured faculty about the problems afflicting their contract colleagues.

“The conference underlines CAUT’s ongoing commitment to achieve fairness for contract academic staff in Canada,” she finished. “Our delegates leave Edmonton armed with information and better equipped to overcome the challenges they face in bargaining.”