As of Sunday, June 15, at 12:01am, the CUPE 3906 union will be in a legal strike position. Who are the members of this union? Sessional lecturers and music professors. Sessional lecturers make up a good portion of all the teachers at Mac. Although most of the McMaster student population is not taking classes, those who are have become concerned.
Why are sessional lectures at McMaster in a possible strike position? They feel as though they are being treated without respect and fairness. Quite simply, unlike tenured professors, they lack job security. Since they are only hired for a short-term allotment of time, once their contract is over the university never has to hire them back.
Some of the other things sessional lecturers lack include a drug plan, paid maternity leave, a pension plan, a dental plan, the right of first refusal, right to equal participation in faculty/department councils, and guaranteed TA support based on class size. These are all very important aspects of employment, and yet they are being neglected by the University.
Wages are another issue in this matter. Per academic unit, as of May 1 2008, each sessional lecturer receives $2,025 to teach. The majority of classes are either three or six units, so a professor will make $6,075 to teach a class for one term, or $12,150 to teach a class for the entire year. This is regardless of the actual amount of time prepping for classes, spent teaching students, holding office hours, and marking or reviewing student work. Considering the amount of time all of this takes, this really is not a lot of money. According to Louise Ripley’s April 4 2008 article, McMaster sessional professors made the lowest per unit wage out of seven Ontario universities.
When I was in second year, I had one particular professor for four classes over the course of the year. Despite the fact that my classes were still relatively large (smallest around 150, largest around 300), he got to know me and we would chat a little bit. At the end of the year, his contract was over, and he talked to me about the reason why he chose to leave McMaster. To paraphrase, he said he was not going to “stay somewhere where my pay is half the amount it used to be, with no benefits or job security, and still do the same amount of work”. There may or may not have been a couple of explicit words thrown in there too. It is apparent that this possible strike has been years in the making.
What does this mean for McMaster? What about people planning on taking summer school courses for term two? Or even those writing exams for term one as of June 16th? And what about students currently taking a six unit summer school course? I really cannot say. As of posting time, there has been no discussion about the impending strike available on the McMaster Daily News website.
Earlier this year, sessional professors at Wildfrid Laurier went on strike were from March 19th until April 4th. Lisa MacColl wrote an excellent article about it, entitled Some Teachers are More Equal than Others. The article took the perspective of two sessional lecturers as well as two students. It is an interesting read, and it provides a lot of information about the political climate at Laurier, which most certainly mirrors our own.
MacInsiders will continue to provide information about the issue as it comes available to us. For more detailed information about the CUPE 3906 union, their strike platform and more information on sessional lecturers at McMaster, please visit their website.
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