The FA has three big goals in our Proposal 6: to tidy up the very messy systems for counting and paying sessional faculty for their work; to create more job-security for our most vulnerable colleagues; and to create a real career-path with promotions and reviews for our dedicated full-time sessional faculty.
We imagine a future for teaching stream faculty with a clear simple career path, with lots of checks and balances so that we all feel comfortable with the quality of teaching done at UBC, and meaningful advancement possibilities for these faculty. We think sessional faculty who teach courses at UBC shouldn’t make less in Education than they make in Arts for teaching the same course. We think UBC sessional faculty shouldn’t make less than at Kwantlen, or less than at U of T. We think UBC hires good sessional faculty and should be confident that their abilities match those of sessionals who teach at the U of T. Consequently our sessional faculty should be treated as well as sessionals are treated elsewhere, and paid as well.
We’ve proposed a real career-path for sessionals to the University, with a probationary period and full reviews and then increasing commitments from UBC to provide full-time secure work in accordance with qualifications and need. Long-term, full-time sessional faculty should be eligible for promotion to Instructor if they meet the standard.
As you will note from the University’s first settlement offer, they have indicated that they’re not interested in helping us achieve any of these goals during bargaining. We have not abandoned our aim of making UBC a place where teaching stream faculty and the professoriate alike have reasonable chances at a meaningful career, but we may have to wait until next year to try again for a real teaching path on our campuses, if the University maintains its current position of not wanting to discuss these issues further.
