Ongoing negotiations between the university administration and the union representing contract instructors and teaching assistants are slowing down, according to a member of the CUPE 4600 union.
Salary issues are at the forefront of the negotiations for a new collective agreement after the previous agreement for the groups expired in August 2013.
Dan Preece, vice-president of CUPE 4600 Unit 2, the unit doing bargaining for contract instructors, said the wages these instructors make is way below the provincial average.
“The fact that we’re woefully underpaid at a provincial average, especially in Ottawa, is ridiculous,” he said.
“When I go talk to my landlord and say, ‘Listen, I’m feeling a lot of financial constraints here, I can’t afford a rent increase,’ they don’t listen to that, the rent still goes up,” he said.
Preece is a contract instructor. He said at Carleton they are paid $6,483 per course, compared to the provincial average of $7,014.
Contract instructors are a growing body on campus. There has been a 6.6 per cent increase in hiring contract instructors from 2010-11 to 2012-13, according to the Office of Institutional Research and Planning.
Teaching assistants are also negotiating for better wages, but are facing similar difficulties at the bargaining table.
“There are definitely moments where I think the employer doesn’t have a good understanding or a recognition of what it’s like to be a student or an academic worker,” said Tabatha Armstrong, a member of the Unit 1 Bargaining Team, which represents teaching assistants.
Armstrong, who was a teaching assistant for two years, said they might not have it as bad as contract instructors but have unique issues.
For instance, they’re the only group on campus that have to pay tuition to actually have a job. And she said wages are not rising to keep up with tuition increases.
Online teaching evaluations introduced in the 2012-13 school year have both bargaining units crying foul.
Contract instructors’ continued employment is directly tied to their teaching evaluations. If they get less than four out of five, there’s the possibility they won’t be re-hired to teach the same course, according to Preece.
Students have the option to fill out the forms at any point during the semester.
“This could lead to a scenario where someone who gets a bad mark goes to Oliver’s, is drinking for the afternoon, comes home and says ‘you know what, screw him. I’m going to put in a teaching evaluation now’ and that becomes excessively punitive,” Preece said.
The anonymous responses are allowing students to be excessively critical with no repercussions, he said.
Preece said he used to ask students to write him feedback on the back. With an optional comments section at the bottom, he said it’s difficult for instructors to have an accurate picture of how they’re teaching.
The university issued a statement saying it is “not appropriate” for the administration to “engage in a public debate.”
“Carleton University is currently engaged in negotiations with its contract instructors and teaching assistants and we are making steady progress on a number of issues,” the statement read. “We highly value the important work done by our instructors and teaching assistants and we look forward to continued discussions in the coming weeks.”
No one from Carleton’s department of human resources could be reached to comment further on the negotiations.
