FINAL COMMENTS Last chance: Are there any other issues you would like to draw to our attention?

I would like to see some policy in spousal hire as this is an important issue with respect to retention of younger/junior faculty.

No.

With respect to pension matters, I would very much like to see an effort made to move in the direction of ethical investment strategies.

I think the admin. has to address the issue of equity and they should (like Dal.) hire an equity officer. This person will peruse all fac. applications and note the equity issues. We still have many depts with a paucity of women, and/or visible minorities. I think the issue of the disabled or aboriginal appointees is not at all recognised by the administration. Every year the admin. should be filing an employment equity report with the federal govt as SMU has more than $300,000 in grant monies etc. from the feds.
There are no targets, no overview, no look at who is hired, and who is not.

I will try to get something started on behalf of the faculty union in this regard -- perhaps it should be a real responsibility of the union -- but the univ. does not take this issue seriously at all. And it should be taken seriously.

1. On the role of a senior lecturer or primarily teaching position I would support being more open to these options. For instance, someone who teaches 8 courses a year (not 10) and whose scholarly activity is more pedegogical may be quite an asset to some departments. Our current structure of 9 month lecturer contracts with no renewals after 3 years is outdated and inappropriate for some departments. Renewable two and three year contracts should be more easily allowed where needed.
2. Overload and summer school stipends are far too low. It seems rediculous to me that our underpaid part-time instructors actually make more than the more qualified full time faculty members. At least move the stipend up to the level of the Presidence List rather than locking it in at the lowest basic level for inexperienced part-timers.

More vacation! Presently we are entitled to 20 days of vacation, whether you've been here 12 months or 35 years. I'd like the union to consider negotiating for an increase to the number of vacation days. For example: Dalhousie University - faculty get 25 days; Memorial University faculty get 25 days, plus an additional 5 (30 total) after 10 years of service; UNB faculty get 22 days increasing to 27 after 10 years of service.

It would also be nice to be entitled to a moving day.

n/a

I would like to see salary top up for maternity leave be changed to parential leave so that it can apply equally to both male and female faculty members.

You've covered the major points. Good job!

I think it is absurd that the ERIP is supposed to be a cost-saving measure for the university, but that only a certain number of applicants are approved each year, leaving out some who want to take advantage of the program. I have learned a bit about why this is so (the university has to pay out the whole benefit at once, so budget-wise only so many early retirements can be supported in any given year - correct?).

The union and university need to figure out a way so that ERIP is an automatic option for anyone who wants to take advantage of it. It is in the agreement, but it is not available equally to all. It should not be dependent on submitting an application and then waiting to find out if the university can afford it. If a faculty member taking early retirement is indeed a net cost-saving measure as it is promoted, then why should there be any question about granting it?

none

Parking : not enough, too expensive, no alternatives in the works

More discussion about student abilities and their relationship to retention

Initial discussion on the future of the University: if enrollments drop, what will SMU do?

Serious discussion and action on faculty recruitment and retention: less administration bullshit about "concern" and more evidence of action; surveys; follow-up with faculty who have left (carried out by an arms-length group) to get to the root of causes. More accountability on the part of administrators and Chairs for promises (or suggestions of work changes) made during recruitment drives; these are often outright "smoke and mirrors."

none

I would like us to move towards a system that rewards faculty performance in the areas of research and teaching. Salary incentives, extra promotions step jumps etc are a great way to encourage and reward excellence and should be adopted at this university.

At SMU, a new graduate hired on contract gets the same amount of vacation as a 35 year employee. That does not seem appropriate. I feel that more vacation days should accrue with years of service.
UPEI starts with 23 days, then goes to 25 after 10 years and 30 at 18 years. Dal gets more vacation than SMU.

Also, Dal allows a day for moving:
30.10 Release from scheduled teaching, professional service and departmental responsibilities, with regular salary and benefits shall not be unreasonably denied to Members who request it for personal problems and emergencies, including medical appointments, the illness of a child, unscheduled daycare closure, dental appointments and relocation of residence, provided arrangements satisfactory to the Chairperson, Head, Director, Chief Librarian or Dean concerned are made to reschedule essential teaching, professional service or departmental responsibilities, if possible. In case of emergency, the Chairperson, Director, Head, Chief Librarian or Dean shall make the arrangements for rescheduling.

I feel SMU should also provide a moving day.

Two more issues:

1. Increase the annual vacation allowance to at least 25 days. In other agreements the vacation period is explicitly defined, so that 1 month means 25 days, for example. There could also be an increase in the vacation days based on years of service.

2. One day's leave for moving would also be desirable.

Thank you for all your work on our behalf.

I really feel that the present economic climate has to be taken into account in the upcoming negotiations with administration. We have to be realistic, but not give away the shop! Also, if enrolment increases as jobs dry up, there should be clarification that increased resources will be available to pick up the additional workload. It should not fall on faculty to take on increased class sizes.

The union has lost it's legitimacy, in many ways, over the last decade. While I'm sure that most members of the union leadership are well-intensioned, I'm also sure that, over the years, too many individuals have opted to posture over relatively inconsequential issues while letting the university creep farther and farther into matters over which the faculty should have all or at least dominant control. Our academic freedom, our tenure system, our ability to ensure that the university remains dedicated to higher education rather than profit, is being eaten away. SMUFU threatened to strike to take over a health insurance fund, which has not been of any real benefit to the membership, but, at the same time, accepted annual performance reviews and the right of the university administration to come into classroom to judge teaching performance. Class sizes are expanding and part-time hiring is exploding. The union needs to identify real academic issues and defend these, even if they don't market as well as increasing salary micro-percents or seem as grand as taking over the health insurance fund.

In general, it seems as though the pay at SMU is quite low. In terms of real wages, I earned more as an adjunct prof in the US than in do in my current tenure track position at SMU. A friend from grad school (who has yet to complete his PhD) is currently an adjunct at Dal and earns $10,000 more than me. I wish that I would have known this before moving to Halifax!!

Two suggestions:

1) We should negotiate to have a clause added to the Agreement, probabaly to Article 11.1.10, regarding the Dean's communication with external assessors for applications for promotion and/or tenure. The Dean's letter should be included in the file, and that communication should conform to clear parameters. At present, it seems there are inconsistencies across the faculties in terms of the content and style of the Dean's letter to external reviewers. This is a critical communication and de-identified copies should be included in the file.

2) The University should consider a preferential hiring policy for spouses of faculty being recruited from out-of-province. Nova Scotia has an insular culture that makes it very difficult for new comers to find gainful employment, and a preferential hiring policy might help with recruitment and retention of highly qualified faculty. I know of a number of newer faculty whose spouses struggled for years to find meaningful work in their area of expertise, some of whom have been only marginally successful after several years of active job seeking.

I would like the union to consider the question of job sharing of tenured positions and how this can be accommodated in an equitable way.

Members of departments should not be evaluating each other's annual reports. The new procedures about annual reports in the last Collective Agreement are the thin end of the wedge of an attack on tenure. Also, the process has not been implemented in a similar manner across the university, as should have been the case.

I would remove the provision that promotion to full professor can be gained by outstanding service. A full professor should be "an outstanding teacher and scholar." Nothing more, nothing less.

Standards for tenure and promotion in each discipline are not clear in terms of the weight of each of the three areas and number of publications required. Currently, such criteria seems to be subject to personal judgment of the department members, the Dean, and the Review committee and keep changing from one case to another. Comparing teaching evaluation across different fields might not be fair, because it is well known that professors who teach quantitative oriented courses are at disadvantage. I suggest that ecah department should make it very clear to faculty members in terms of how many publication (and the quality of the publications) he or she should have to get promoted to the next level.

Introduce merit pay based on research achievement

As you are aware, the new mechanism for transition between salary scales has proved to be deeply unfair to a number of new faculty members who appear to have been badly advised. Restoring the old system might deal with some of the issues, but the best method of addressing the problem is to take the pressure of promotion by continuing to compress the salary scales. This will likely be difficult given the current climate but compressing the scales should be the central issue in this round of negotiation (aside from ensuring that the administration does not try to impose a salary cut!).

I don't know how to convey this, but my own sense of the faculty mood is that it has declined precipitously in recent years. The collegiality issue is at the core perhaps, but the issue of fairness is not far behind. Overscale payments in Commerce, the lack of office space (and the apparent privileging of Psychology), teaching load in Science...faculty members in Arts are increasingly grumpy I think, and that escalates the number of people seeking early retirement as well as those leaving for other universities. Part of the problem is that the Dean of Arts is not the most able defender of the Faculty, but given that most of the membership is in Arts I would submit that it is also the union's responsibility to watch out for Arts faculty as well.

In some areas finding good instructors with PhDs is very difficult. I would be in favour of some form of limited number of positions being considered for non-PhD but very qualified and much needed faculty in a department. The 3-year contractual limit is very detrimental to consistency and constantly creates a learning curve for each new sessional.

No.

Health benefits should be admininstered by the University as before, not by the Union.

I would like to see a better articulation in the new CA of faculty administrative obligations. It is not clear how the various levels of service (Depts. / university / interdisciplinary programs / community at large ) are being priorized. Faculty avoid administrative responsibilities within Depts. by arguing that they do work elsewhere or by simply vanishing from Departmental governance. This creates a great inequality in terms of work that falls on the backs of the remaining faculty members willing to provide administrative service, as well as needless animosities among faculty members.

Age should not be a determining factor in employee salary or benefits. Full time employment should mean the same for all, regardless of age.

1. Regarding salary issues above: I feel there should be no market or merit pay adjustments. Faculty choose to be professors vs. private enterprise. All faculty should have the same pay scale.

2. Disentangle student enrollments from course releases for program coordinators. It is nearly impossible to find someone willing to take on the duties of a coordinator if there is no course release for less than 10 declared majors. Students don't declare majors until very late at SMU (this should be enforced at the end of 2nd yr) and this penalizes program coordinators.

NEW FACULTY CONCERNS:
3. Faculty retention is a recognized problem throughout Atlantic Canada and is often tied to 2 academics in a household. SMU needs to become more proactive in retaining new faculty through spousal hires. Memorial U. has this in their collective agreement.

4. Part-time childcare for infants (under 18 months) is needed on campus. The current daycare offers only full-time care for under 18 months at a cost of $760/month. Part-time care on campus is a necessity, and a subsidy for children should be considered as the cost is prohibitive for junior faculty members.

1) The current system of removing a greater portion of contributions in the first half of the year, rather than evenly across the year is annoying and surely benefits the employer in terms of interest in salary withheld. It is particularly awkward for newer faculty whose salaries are lower but whose January fuel bills, etc. are likely no lower than those of others.
2) Food services remain poor.
3) Classroom conditions have declined, especially in Burke, but also in McNally.

I think that this may be time to consider survival with minimum demands and maintaining position on important issues.

I think this round of negotiations should be mindful of the needs of young faculty, as I feel the last round was weighted unduly to retirement issues, many of which turned out to be irrelevant anyway.

Full tuition coverage for children and spouses of Saint Mary's Faculty.

Some of the agreements regarding such things as appointment of coordinators, hiring and review for promotion within interdisciplinary programs is very problematic with the changes made in the last contract. The composition of governing committees for these programs does not work especially for the smaller programs. This ought to be re-visited.

A defined benefit, or even a hybrid pension plan is probably not tenable by an institution as small as Saint Mary's. Most major firms have abandoned them because they can no longer afford the downstream liabilities. I doubt that any agreement we would be able to reach with SMU would ultimately be enforcable because the university would probably not be in a position to pay, and it is probably idle to assume that the province would bail the university out.

I find there is a serious problem of resources at SMU -- at least in my department, but
I understand in other ones as well.
We expect high teaching standards (in my view quite high with respect to other institutions),
high research activity (unless you don't care about promotion), supervision of students, and
service (at times quite heavy, such as serving unwillingly as a dept Chair / program coordinator). At
the same time, in most cases course releases are not sufficient or cannot be used efficiently
(as this would compromise the course offerings of the department). In addition there is some
pressure for community outreach, which appears to me rather as an effort to engage faculty in
student recruitment.

I think the root of the problem is as follows: the government cannot afford to support three
Universities in a city the size of Halifax. Given the fact that new faculty are research oriented
and there are no sufficient resources at SMU for all of the above activities, we should all agree
to create the single University of Halifax, under the following principles:
1. The concept of Nova Scotia Higher education is more important than each of the three
Halifax universities
2. The process of amalgamation could take a long time as long as people do not lose their jobs.
3. First year courses (and possibly 2nd year ones) will be taught by full-time faculty with
strong teaching skills so as to preserve in the single new University SMU's high teaching
standards.

Something needs to be sorted out when it comes to interdisciplinary programs. The way they are currently structured through the collective agreement means that they are supported on the backs of departments--to teach in an IDP means a course buy out of some kind (through teaching in another program or through the administration of an IDP program). In departments where a large number of faculty support IDP programs (which amounts to faculty doing their bit to support the intellectual climate of the university), this can mean as much as a full time faculty position (five courses) being "taken up" by these demands--and yet these positions are consistently filled by part-time faculty by the administration--which undermines the work a department can get done (asking a part time faculty to contribute to the department's administrative requirements is, for example, entirely unreasonable). If the administration and the university wish to support IDPs, then it needs to be done in ways that do not pull resources from the departments.

sabbatical and parental leave benefits should be improved.

On question 27.
I am totally opposed to a defined contribution plan. Any plan in which the payment of the pension relies on a percentage of salary is discriminatory under our current collective agreement for two reasons.
1) Women are less likely to go forward or do not present themselves as early for promotions, they are not rewarded by the big salary jumps as early in their careers, in part because they often have their research and grant activities interrupted by childbearing and rearing. Academic women and female professional librarians still lag behind male colleagues in terms of rank and salary.
2) if we continue with the madness of 'market supplements', then all the faculty in the humanities, social sciences and sciences not receiving these supplements will be unduly penalized and this unfair compensation will be compounded and continue even after retirement.

How about more choices in terms of funds ( ie at least 2 per category) available to us in our registered pension plans? The Acadian International (International Equity) didn't even have a good track record when the alternatives were removed from our SunLlife package and has an MER or almost 1% more! What happened? How about the MSCI EAFE index fund- low MER,widely used. Or the Mackenzie Cundill Value Fund Series C (Global Equity) if some members want an actively managed fund. I would much rather see choice within our existing package than any idea of a percentage of salary which would just compound salary inequities accumulated over a career.

I would very much like to see an increase in vacation time for librarians. Currently they have four weeks' vacation per year, which never changes. I am aware that teaching faculty also have the same length of vacation, but the fact is that professors have much more flexibility in how they arrange their time than do librarians. Members of the staff union who have been here for many years have up to six weeks of vacation. Librarians at other Canadian universities are entitled to five or six weeks of vacation, either at once or as an increase to vacation time after a number of years of employment. Having one or two more weeks off a year would increase job satisfaction and productivity for librarians.

Explicit recognition in the contract regarding criteria for renewal, promotion and tenure
of applied professional work in any and all disciplines that have applied branches, together
with a a statement of how such work may be properly evaluated. As it stands, our
collective agreement is set up to recognize research, principally in the form of publication.
While SMU does not have music performance or art departments, nor medical or dental schools,
we do have engineers, chemists, psychologists, etc., who engage in applied professional
activities. Those who practice their profession, including those who function as consultants,
should have such work recognized and rewarded, as it reflects an aspect of commitment to scholarship and informs teaching. However, the current system of external and anonymous referees is inappropriate to these kinds of evaluations, which would more likely be analagous to course and
teaching evaluations, if some recognition and standards were to be implemented. (How would
we appropriately evaluate the practice of a practicing dentist who teaches and engages in
research?).