RAAS Report
RAAS REPORT
A biweekly newsletter from your
Association of Academic Staff
Friday, March 13, 2020
CAUT NEWSWIRE (March 12, 2020)
Renison Academic Staff Vote in Favour of Unionization
CAUT Newswire (March 12, 2020)
Members of the Renison Association of Academic Staff (RAAS) have voted to certify as a trade union. Following the vote, the Ontario Labour Relations Board declared RAAS a trade union. Barring any further objections from the administration, the certificate of unionization will be issued shortly. The RAAS was formed in 2018 and represents 49 academic staff at Renison University College.
FROM THE ARCHIVES (May 1, 2018)
Academic Staff at Renison University College Join CAUT
CAUT News (May, 2018)
CAUT Council delegates voted April 26 to accept the membership application of the newly-formed Renison Association of Academic Staff, representing 35 regular faculty at Renison University College, affiliated with the University of Waterloo. […]
“The RAAS constitution was adopted on Feb. 12, 2018, and a motion to affiliate with CAUT was passed unanimously by the membership,” said Renison association president Kristina Llewellyn. “We are excited to be a part of CAUT and pleased the organizational members supported our application.”
Renison joins 85 other academic staff associations and three federated organizations in CAUT membership.
NEGOTIATION UPDATE
The RAAS negotiation team remains committed to resuming negotiations and moving forward from where we left off before the certification vote. Some specific language will have to be changed and some specific new articles added, but for the most part we expect that agreements reached on proposed articles to date will still stand. Our next negotiation session is scheduled for March 31.
Our most recent negotiation session was on Friday February 28. We spent time hashing out final details of an article on Chairs & Directors (not yet agreed), and we persisted in pressing for the continuation of a Disciplinary article that is consistent with UW's and Renison's existing policy (not yet agreed). We have also been proposing language committing to the exercise of Management Rights "in a manner that is fair, reasonable, and consistent with the MoA" (which is the language found in most agreements in Ontario's university sector). The Admin Negotiation team prefers the narrower and less common language of "... not in bad faith, arbitrary, or inconsistent with the MoA." We will be discussing this language further towards finding a resolution.
The Admin team presented new proposals, on the 28th, on Program Redundancy, Termination Due to Program Redundancy, Financial Exigency, and Non-Disciplinary Termination (all of which are standard articles in MoAs and collective agreements). The RAAS team will be responding to these proposals -- and a few others -- at our March 31 negotiation session.
Rob Case,
Lead Negotiator
ELECTIONS UPDATE
Laura McDonald,FAUW (March 10, 2020)
The results are in, and your RAAS Executive Committee for the term starting July 1, 2020, will be:
President – Kristina Llewellyn
Vice President – Rob Case
Secretary/Treasurer – Trish Van Katwyk
Voter turnout was 70%. Thank you to everyone who voted!
SATIRE
The New Ten-Factor Authentication Process for University Faculty
Jennie Young, McSweeney’s (March 10, 2020)
Beginning next semester, we will be moving from two-factor to ten-factor authentication requirements for accessing the university’s digital resources. The first and second factors, signing in and entering a passcode from your phone app, will remain the same.
NOT SATIRE
Fourth Week of UCU Strikes at 74 UK Universities
UCU News (updated February 11, 2020) [edited]
Seventy-four UK universities have been hit with strikes in February and March. The strikes started on Thursday 20 February and escalated each week, culminating with a week-long walkout from Monday 9 March until today.
The disputes centre on the sustainability of the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) and rising costs for members, and on universities' failure to make significant improvements on pay, equality, casualisation and workloads.
OCUFA NEWS
RAAS is a member of the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA), a province-wide association of our peers.
Sherbrooke lecturers go on strike
Academica Group (March 11, 2020)
Lecturers at the Université de Sherbrooke have begun a general strike this week after the union and the institution were unable to come to an agreement.
CUPE 4207 [Brock] Potential Strike Action
Joy Werner, BUFA Updates (March 11, 2020)
CUPE 4207, Unit 1 is the union representing sessional instructors, teaching assistants, lab demonstrators, marker/graders, and course coordinators [at Brock University]. As you may know, CUPE Unit 1 will be in a strike/lockout position on March 19, 2020. Being in a strike/lockout position does not mean that there will be a strike or lockout on that date but one could be called.
Contract Instructors at Carleton Vote 92.5% in Favour of Strike Action
Brockville Recorder & Times (March 9, 2020)
Contract Instructors at Carleton University, represented by Unit 2, Local 4600 of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE 4600-2), have voted overwhelmingly this week to authorize job action if necessary to secure a fair deal at the bargaining table.
Canadian schools cancel study abroad programs, close doors in response to COVID-19
Academica Group (March 10, 2020)
Canadian schools cancel study abroad programs, close doors in response to COVID-19. New challenges are mounting for postsecondary institutions in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak. Cancellations of study abroad programs in countries and areas experiencing community transmission of COVID-19 have created challenges for students who are already abroad.
Call for Submissions: Annual OCUFA Teaching and Academic Librarianship Awards
OCUFA News (February 25, 2020)
Each year, OCUFA is proud to celebrate outstanding achievement in teaching and academic librarianship at Ontario universities. Through the Teaching and Academic Librarianship Awards, we recognize those individuals whose pedagogical leadership and support have made a positive and enduring difference to their students and colleagues.
Anyone within the university community can nominate a faculty member or academic librarian for an award, so long as the nominee is a member of an OCUFA affiliated faculty association. For the first time, this year’s award guidelines include special nomination criteria for contract faculty to facilitate the nomination of historically marginalized members of the academy. Award recipients are selected by an independent OCUFA committee made up of faculty, librarians, and student representatives.
This year, the deadline for nominations is May 22, 2020. Guidelines for the award can be found here:
Nomination packages should be saved as a single pdf file and submitted online at: https://ocufa.on.ca/awards_application/
CAUT NEWS
RAAS is a member of the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), a nation-wide association of our peers.
STATEMENT ON INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY
CAUT (March 6, 2020)
CAUT and academic staff across Canada mark International Women’s Day by standing united with woman and girls around the world, and celebrating their social, economic, cultural and political achievements.
CAUT continues to call on the federal government to take concrete actions to improve gender equity both within and outside of the post-secondary education sector, including signing on to the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) proposed Convention 190 to end gender-based violence and harassment in the world of work. […]
FAUW NEWS
RAAS has a service agreement with the Faculty Association of the University of Waterloo (FAUW), a campus-wide association of our peers.
An invitation to join the climate justice effort at the University of Waterloo
FAUW (March 10, 2020)
FAUW's new member-driven Climate Justice Working Group brings together faculty members at the University of Waterloo to generate collective action on campus—and within our broader communities—to help foster a just, climate-safe future.
This is a decentralized, action-oriented group that aims to shrink the carbon footprint of our work on campus and beyond, to build climate justice awareness on campus and in our community, and to spark related research with impact across the disciplines.
Faculty and Staff LGBTQ2S+ Coffee
The Working Group on Sexual and Gender Diversity is hosting a follow-up to the last term's lunch event in the form of an informal drop-in coffee event for LGBTQ2S+ faculty and staff, including postdoctoral researchers, sessional instructors, research professors, and other employee groups at UW.
This is a drop-in, so don't feel pressured to be there for the whole time, but feel free to come when you can, grab some coffee, and hopefully meet some new people! Coffee should be arriving shortly after 2:00 p.m.
FAUW Lecturers Committee Events Calendar
Aga Wolczuk, FAUW Lecturers Committee (March 7, 2020)
The next meeting of the FAUW Lecturers Committee will take place on March 17th. It will be attended by Kate Lawson, chair of the OCUFA Board. Lawson and LC members will discuss career progression and evaluation of lecturers at universities across Ontario. Another main topic will be mentorship of novice lecturers by experienced lecturers.
The Lecturers Committee is looking for new members! One will be recruited from the Faculty of Mathematics, but the committee is open to applicants from other faculties. The LC’s Terms of Reference & contact information are available at https://uwaterloo.ca/faculty-association/representatives-and-committees/lecturers-committee.
Full FAUW Events Calendar
FAUW has a full slate of events posted on our website and open for registration, and we’ll be scheduling more, including our annual tenure workshop later in the term.