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The Federation of Post-Secondary Educators of British Columbia, which represents more than 10,000 faculty members at universities, colleges, institutes and private sector institutions in that province, recently adopted a new statement of bargaining principles. The statement follows a wave of conversions of several area colleges into universities, which "has brought with it pressures to convert working conditions to the stratified tenure, non-tenure track realities of many old-line universities in Canada," an e-mail last week from at-large executive committee member Frank Cosco to union members read. "Conditions which seem to be the norm in the US."
The new set of principles was adopted at the union's general meeting in May but not distributed to many adjuncts until last week. It calls for bargaining policies to be based on a "collectivist, egalitarian, and equitable university workplace model as opposed to a competitive, stratified model of employment." More specifically, the principles embrace -- for both full- and part-time faculty members -- broad access to tenure and academic freedom regardless of the number of hours they work on a given campus, job protection and a single salary scale. Many adjunct faculty members in the U.S. chafe at their uncertain status in each of these areas.
