The Ethics of SFUFA

 

I suppose the vast majority of faculty members go through their entire careers without needing personal assistance from their faculty association. So one understands why someone would write, “I feel a little uncomfortable hearing I need a union to protect me, when in my 13 years at SFU, I've never once felt the need for protection.”

 

I agree with Bob Hackett’s remark that “some attention to historical realities might enhance the discussion.”   The lack of attention to local historical reality in most postings when this subject was last discussed is doubtless explained by the fact that few people need personal assistance of any great importance. 

 

It would be pleasant if universities all reflected, all of the time, the highest academic ideals.  It seems wiser to anticipate that in practice universities will reflect the ethical standards of the societies in which they are placed.   It seems wise too to anticipate that as in the wider world, psychopathic personalities may occasionally run unchecked, and even reach positions of power.   Perhaps too we should anticipate that as in the wider world, ordinary citizens might be held accountable for small breaches, while those in positions of power are sometimes not called to account for large ones.  In this university, for example, public criticism of any administrator might well be dangerous, given that senior administrators have access to public funds with which to bring legal actions against their critics. 

 

A historical reality that has largely gone unremarked, except by John Lowman and Ted Palys, is the way in which SFUFA deals with grievers.  Drew Parker wrote to John Lowman: “We attempt to resolve issues, including grievances, informally wherever possible.”  In practice “informal resolution” seems sometimes to have meant ignoring the griever until he/she went away. 

 

Some list-members will recall the historian who wrote to SFUFA-Forum just before he retired, mentioning a grievance he had brought to the association, and saying that he had had absolutely no response from David Bell.  His advice to colleagues was that if they had a grievance, they should by-pass the association and get themselves a lawyer.   The documented delays in dealing with the grievance brought by Professors Lowman and Palys reminded me that on September 18, 2000, in reference to the experience of a colleague, I wrote to Drew Parker, noting that “David Bell has repeatedly failed to respond to correspondence; not so much as a word of acknowledgment. He has been the subject of public complaint in the past about this particular behaviour.”

 

Related to a number of cases in which the Association has indulged in foot-dragging, are the questions of how in practice the Association deals with individual grievances, and how senior members of the Executive might see themselves in relation to Administration and Faculty.

 

Professor Wyn Roberts wrote to SFUFA-Forum on December 7, 2000, out of his experience on the executive of SFUFA:  “My own view during that period was that SFUFA's responses and reactions (starting with the Russell Ogden case) were generally, to say the least, weak if not pusillanimous, and in no way a strong and open representation of the interests of faculty - or, by extension, of students - as individuals or as a group. Perhaps a greater and more immediate problem for SFU faculty is SFUFA itself.”

 

I found that observation interesting, and, given the anti-union argument about ambitious labour leaders, consider that we might think about possible motivations for serving on the Executive of SFUFA, taking on its  Presidency and so on.  Am I alone in thinking that SFUFA "service" - like other "service" positions at SFU - may be used by some to further ambitions for administrative positions or consultative functions, with the concomitant personal benefits?   I recall the president of a Canadian university faculty association of the good old days telling me with considerable satisfaction of being “high in the councils of the university” and of having been “at the top of the scale for years.”  Quite possibly that person was neither the first nor the last trusty to serve in that capacity.

 

Of course this is not a blanket condemnation; it would be ridiculous to think of it applying to all or even to most people; but it applies to some.  Anyone who is historically aware of the influence some administrators have sought to exert on elections to Senate will see the danger.  Moreover, experience in the classroom and at departmental level suggests that one or two individuals can do considerable harm. 

 

 

In considering SFUFA’s decision-making practices, I now quote from a letter to the Labour Relations Board, dated February 12, 2003, from John Lowman and Ted Palys.

 

 

“In reviewing SFUFA’s decision-making in relation to us, we note two possibilities for what an appropriate process might entail. One would be for members to submit evidence regarding a proposed grievance to “The University Affairs Committee,” which is described in the Framework Agreement, and whose mandate appears to be to decide what complaints SFUFA should pursue. Section 11 of the Framework Agreement (“Complaints”) says:

 

The University Affairs Committee is a duly established committee of the Faculty Association charged with investigating complaints by members of its bargaining unit. If a complaint is brought to the Committee by a member of the bargaining unit and if the Committee deems the complaint to merit further investigation, the Chair of the Committee has the right, upon one week’s notice to the Vice-President, Academic, to review the University’s personnel file relating to the complainant, provided that the complainant has authorized the review of the file

 

On January 9, 2003, in the process of preparing this Section 12 complaint, we contacted SFUFA’s Executive Director to ask about the University Affairs Committee and its members. He replied, “The University Affairs Committee has never been active as long as I have been in this office” (Attachment 3). He reported that, in SFUFA’s files, the Committee’s terms of reference, i.e. to “consider all grievances,” date back to 1980. He continued, “My suspicion is that the Committee became largely redundant when the grievance procedure was added to the Framework Agreement & also when there was a full-time Executive Director.”

 

This reply raises the question of the role of the Executive Director in relation to successive SFUFA executives.  I assume that as dealing with grievers by ignoring them continues, it must do so with the knowledge and consent of the SFUFA Executive, perhaps by its direction. 

 

Another factor to be considered is the nature of the grievance procedure in the Framework Agreement. The different grievance categories – “association grievances,” “individual grievances,” “group grievances” –allow SFUFA to abdicate its responsibility to provide “fair representation.”  SFUFA can now say, “Even if we do not take it on as an association grievance, you can always pursue it yourself.”   This leads to a twofold problem: (1) SFUFA can download (and thereby abdicate) its responsibility for providing fair representation to aggrieved members; and (2) it creates an extremely difficult situation for the faculty member because, if the association does not take the grievance seriously, why should the Administration?

 

Kenneth Westhues, in his book Eliminating Professors: A Guide to the Dismissal Process, discusses why it is that faculty associations, accustomed to represent the entire faculty, become unhappy and ineffective when asked to deal with individual grievances.  Observation and the comments of some people closer to the process than I, of whose integrity I feel confident, led me long ago to wonder, in relation to SFUFA, whether its failure in that respect did not slide into virtual collusion with Administration, which never likes to admit that mistakes have been made.

 

My endote (1) quotes Grievance C of Profs. Lowman and Palys from their letter of February 12, 2003 to the Labour Relations Board.[1] I suggest that writers of epigrammatic anti-union letters should study carefully that whole section, with special attention to paragraphs 3 and 5 and what follows paragraph 5.  Do not the actions of  SFUFA, as related in Grievance C, bear the appearance of collusion with the administration against two of its own members?

 

 Endnote (2) reproduces Bob Hackett’s letter to sfufa-forum of July 9, 2003.[2]  In relation to the subject of this paper, its conclusion is especially relevant to the concerns I wish to raise: “your members acquire additional democratic rights vis-a-vis the faculty association -- rights that are guaranteed union members to balance the obligation to pay dues to the association.”

 

A Catch-22 situation exists at present, which should give members cause for reflection.  The advice of the historian mentioned above (get a lawyer) may still hold good; on the other hand one imagines that in a court of law the argument would be made that the griever had not pursued the options open to him or her within the university.  One thing seems pretty certain: the administration is content with the status quo, and would rather not have to deal with a Union. 

 

 

How much will change if SFUFA becomes a union I don’t know.  What is clear is that frustrated faculty members need somewhere to go when SFUFA simply ignores legitimate grievances.   And it would be strange indeed if there were no legitimate grievances.

 


[1] Grievance C

 

Our third grievance relates to two letters written by two members of the ethics administration that was the subject of grievances A and B.

 

In December 2000, Prof. Clayman’s term of appointment as VP-Research was coming to an end, and he applied for reappointment. This is the same VP-Research who was one of the subjects of Grievance A, and who refused to deal with the issues raised in Grievance B when SFUFA approached him in February 2000. Michael Stevenson, the University President who had only just taken up office, chaired the fourteen-person VP-Research Search Committee that considered Dr. Clayman’s application. As Chair, Dr. Stevenson invited members of the university community to submit letters evaluating Dr. Clayman’s performance.

 

We made our letter public, and criticized Dr. Clayman’s performance as VP-Research because he ignored persistent and blatant violations of the research ethics policy from 1994 onward.

 

In the end Dr. Clayman apparently was re-appointed only after what several independent sources indicated was a tie vote, and the deadlock broken when the Chair of the Committee, President Stevenson, cast his vote in favour of Dr. Clayman. Shortly thereafter, in March 2001, an anonymous whistle-blower deposited a file of correspondence in one of our mailboxes in the School of Criminology. The package contained 19 letters and two sets of minutes of the Vice-President Research Search Committee. Several sections of the two letters on top of the pile were highlighted. The highlighted sections made reference to us.

 

On closer inspection, it turned out that the two letters were mainly about us, not the VP-Research who was supposed to be the subject of the evaluation. Indeed, it was evident that the writers of the two letters – who were members of the ethics administration that had been found in Grievances A and B to have violated the research ethics policy and Framework Agreement – used the cloak of confidentiality they believed would apply to professional evaluations to mount ad hominem attacks on us and make assertions about Grievance A they must have known to be untrue in a situation where they expected us not to be able to defend ourselves. We believed a prima facie case existed that both letters violated SFU’s Faculty Code of Ethics and Responsibilities (Policy A30.01), which states that faculty “should refrain from denigration of the character and competence of their colleagues.”

 

We understood that letters that provided evaluations of the performance of the incumbent Vice-President Research – the purpose for which confidentiality was intended – would and should be confidential. However, under the BC Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy (FOIPOP) Act, we also believed that to the extent any letter writer departed from evaluations of the VP-Research and started writing about us, we had the right to see the material that related to us. The University’s subsequent ruling under the FOIPOP Act confirmed that we were correct (Attachment 21).

 

We were concerned about the letters for a number of different reasons, not the least of which was that two members of the university’s ethics administration were abusing an ostensibly confidential process to distribute misrepresentations of fact and ad hominem and defamatory comments to senior members of the SFU Administration, who comprised the majority on the VP-Research Search Committee, and who, in future, would be making decisions about us on matters including applications for grants, salary review and consideration for promotion. Our concerns were accentuated by three other developments at SFU:

 

i)                   First, in a case that made national news, Professor David Noble of York University accused the SFU administration of procedural impropriety when it blocked his hiring as the Woodsworth Chair of Humanities at SFU. The problems with Noble’s appointment began when President Stevenson sent the Vice President Academic an email saying, “avoid this appointment like the plague.” We then learned that Noble had been an adversary of President Stevenson at York University during a strike. Noble accused the SFU administration of attempting to orchestrate additional letters of reference from people who would, in his view, provide SFU with a “character assassination” that could be used to block his appointment. We do not know if Professor Noble’s allegations were founded. However, we do know that President Stevenson sent two letters to the VP-Research Search Committee that constituted “character assassinations” of us and may thereby have facilitated the reappointment of the incumbent VP-Research.

 

ii)                  In another case discussed in the Vancouver news media, the University sued a SFUFA member for defamation because he called an Associate VP-Academic a “liar.” The SFUFA member was a well-known and vocal critic of the SFU administration. It appeared to us that a double standard was being applied. When a critic of the administration was alleged to have crossed a professional line, the University used public funds to call him to account. However, when two supporters of the University administration crossed the same professional line to defame two critics of the administration (us), the University ignored the impropriety and used the letters in the process of re-appointing the incumbent administrator.

 

iii)                Third, both letter writers were members of the ethics administration that was the subject of our grievances. The author of Letter A was a member of the University Research Ethics Review Committee that violated our academic freedom by blocking two of our research projects for eighteen months. Both authors were members of the ethics administration that was the subject of our October 31st 2000 and December 14th 2000 complaints (see Grievance B) that the URERC was systematically violating university policy. They were both members of the research ethics administration, and yet here they were submitting information about our grievance that they must have known to be untrue to a University Committee. None of this would have come to light had it not been for the whistle blower who left the Search Committee file in one of our University mail slots.

 

On March 29, 2001 we contacted SFUFA to ask for advice about the letters (the ensuing correspondence and other relevant documents are included as Attachments 39-1 through 39-43). The following day we met with Drew Parker, then President of SFUFA, and David Bell, SFUFA’s Executive Director. We explained in general terms what had happened and that we believed the two letters were probably defamatory in addition to violating SFU’s Faculty Code of Ethics and Responsibilities. Also we informed Professors Parker and Bell that we believed both letter writers were members of SFUFA. We said this knowing that the Framework Agreement allows for member-to-member grievances, in which case SFUFA would need to bear this in mind in the process of making decisions about how it would provide fair representation to both them and us.

 

Because Profs. Parker and Bell were about to leave campus for several days they suggested that they think over the situation and that we meet again upon their return. On April 17th we met with them again, at which point several actions were taken:

 

1.      The President and Executive Director decided to read the two letters in question. We appreciated this as a form of “reality check” for us. If the letters did not appear to violate the Faculty Code of Ethics, we could have destroyed the entire package then and there, and the University authorities would never have been any the wiser. However, Professors Parker and Bell confirmed that we had reason to be concerned about the content of the two letters. They did not suggest that we return the two letters to the University.

 

2.      We decided to shred the remainder of the package of letters and Search Committee minutes because we believed they were confidential and that we had no right to them. Dr. Parker offered the services of the SFUFA paper shredder for this purpose, and he shredded the letters in front of us. He returned these to President Stevenson, but advised us that we should not attend this meeting. At the meeting, Prof. Parker presented a list of our suggested remedies to President Stevenson (Attachment 19).

 

3.      Prof. Parker offered to hold on our behalf our only copies of the two letters. We warned him that the University would argue that the letters constituted stolen property. The Executive Director phoned a lawyer at the Canadian Association of University Teachers, who informed SFUFA that there was no legal problem in its becoming a repository for our evidence. As far as we know, this is the only legal opinion SFUFA obtained about the letters. When Prof. Parker promised that he would not give the letters to anyone else – and particularly the University administration – without our permission, we decided to leave our copies in SFUFA’s care. Had Prof. Parker not made this promise, we would not have left the letters with him.

 

4.      In discussing what to do next, we agreed with SFUFA that we would submit an “Access Request” under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPP Act) to determine what parts of the letters we could use publicly in a book that we are writing about the research ethics controversy at Simon Fraser University.

 

5.      We decided to meet President Stevenson to discuss the letters. The President had extended an invitation to meet with him after he ruled on our complaint that nearly all research with human subjects being conducted at SFU had not been approved by the URERC (grievance B). Both letter writers played a hand in this blatant violation of University policy.

 

Prof. Parker arranged the meeting with President Stevenson. But when we arrived on April 24, 2001 we were surprised to learn that Prof. Parker had neglected to inform President Stevenson of the reason for the meeting, i.e. our complaint that the two letters violated the Faculty Code of Ethics and were probably libellous. The President thought the purpose of the meeting was to discuss the policy violations we had brought to his attention on December 14, 2000. The meeting was unproductive, but this is hardly surprising given the President had not been properly briefed. He quickly dug in his heels and took precisely the position that we warned SFUFA he would take and demanded that we give the letters to him.

 

From May 2nd to the 19th 2001, one of us (Lowman) was in England. SFU President Michael Stevenson continued to pressure Prof Parker to surrender the letters to him. Both letter writers contacted Prof. Parker demanding that our copies of the letters be given to the University. On May 10th, while Lowman was away, Prof. Parker phoned Palys to discuss SFUFA’s continued holding of the letters. On May 11th he sent us an email saying that everyone had gone “ballistic” and that he believed our copies of the letters held by SFUFA in trust were now “redundant” and that SFUFA’s position was “untenable” (Attachment 39.7). On May 11th Palys sent an email (Attachment 39-6) to Prof. Parker clearly stating that we wanted to retain possession of the letters. On May 11th and 14th Lowman sent three emails (Attachments 39-8, 39-9, 39-10) expressing the same sentiment.

 

On May 14th Professor Parker held an “emergency” meeting of the SFUFA Executive. At that meeting, the Executive decided to surrender the letters to President Stevenson. They decided not to tell us until after the letters were surrendered to President Stevenson.

 

Prof. Parker’s account of the events and the reasoning behind the decision is provided in an email he sent to us on May 18, 2001 (Attachment 39-13) and in an email to the SFUFA Forum – a listserve for SFUFA members – on July 19th 2001 (Attachment 39-25).  Our responses to the first account is contained in our June 1, 2002 email (Attachment 39-19) to the SFUFA Executive and the July 20, 2001 email to the SFUFA forum (Attachment 39-26).

 

We were stunned by this betrayal, which we view as highly problematic for several reasons beyond the obvious violation of trust it involved:

 

i) Prof. Parker never warned us that SFUFA was considering giving the letters to President Stevenson. When he emailed us on May 11th (Attachment 39-7) and said, “I’m not blinking” and that SFUFA’s position was “untenable,” we both assumed that he intended to return the letters to us as promised.

 

ii) The reason we assumed he would return the letters to us is because he promised he would not, in any circumstance, give the letters to anyone else without our permission. We made it clear to both him and the SFUFA Executive Director that we were not prepared to leave the letters with SFUFA without this promise. However, Prof. Parker did not mention this promise in his public account of the events leading up to his extraordinary breach of trust. In retrospect, it now appears to us that he did not inform the Executive of this promise either. If he did not inform members of the Executive of this promise to us, he acted in bad faith. If he did tell them and they decided to break the promise, they acted in bad faith.

 

iii) The SFUFA Executive decided to not inform us that they were surrendering the letters to President Stevenson until after the fact. By doing so, the Executive deliberately denied us our right to seek independent professional legal advice about the letters in the process of pursuing our own grievance and, possibly, a defamation lawsuit.

 

iv) In his July 19, 2001 open letter to the SFUFA listserve (Attachment 39-25), Prof. Parker asserted that, “There was no situation we could envision that physical possession would be a benefit.” To us, this is bizarre. The only legal opinion they sought was when we first brought the letters to their attention in March 2001. They asked a lawyer working for the Canadian Association of University Teachers whether there was any kind of legal problem in SFUFA’s holding the letters on our behalf. By Prof. Parker’s own admission, there was not. If they had sought a legal opinion about whether it would be advantageous for us to keep the letters, we believe they would have been advised that one of the main reasons to keep the letters was to retain continuity of evidence. In fact, we do not know if the copies of the letters that were released to us are the same as the ones we originally held. We now have no way of finding out. By effectively destroying our evidence, SFUFA put us in the position of having to win back something that, according to the legal advice they received, we already possessed legally. By failing to seek a legal opinion as to whether it made sense to retain copies of allegedly defamatory letters, SFUFA acted arbitrarily.

 

v) Before the SFUFA Executive made a decision to surrender the letters to President Stevenson, Lowman clearly stated that he was contemplating a grievance against the letter writers for violating the SFUFA Faculty Code of Ethics and Responsibilities (Attachments 39-8, 39-9, 39-10). By effectively destroying our only evidence against two other SFUFA members, the SFUFA Executive acted arbitrarily when it intervened in a member-to-member grievance. As a result of SFUFA’s actions it is not possible for us to continue the grievance against the other two members.

      Generally, SFUFA mishandled its responsibilities to both the letter writers and us. When Dr. Parker offered to hold the letters on our behalf, SFUFA took on a fiduciary responsibility with respect to our interests, which included an obligation to live up to Dr. Parker’s promise to not give the letters to anyone else – and particularly not the President of SFU – without our permission. When Prof. Parker read the two letters and confirmed that their contents were, indeed, problematic, SFUFA placed itself in a conflict of interest with respect to the authors of the two letters. In the event that the letter writers questioned SFUFA’s decision to hold the letters, SFUFA had an obligation to ensure that the letter writers were properly represented and should have provided them independent legal advice. When members of the Executive concluded that they had backed the wrong horse, they should have returned the letters to us. By giving our evidence away, the SFUFA Executive did the worst possible thing it could – it not only betrayed our trust, it acted on behalf of the two letters writers against us in a member-to-member grievance without informing us they were doing so until after they had surrendered the letters, thereby denying us the right to legal counsel concerning the content of the two letters.

 

In sum, we suggest that, when the SFUFA Executive decided that their holding the letters was untenable, the only acceptable course of action was to honour Prof. Parker’s promise and return them to us. This would have taken the pressure off SFUFA and put it squarely on us, because it was, after all, our grievance.

 

In the months that followed, we asked SFUFA to retrieve our evidence. No attempt was made to retrieve the letters. When we asked to meet with the Executive we were effectively stonewalled. When we asked SFUFA to convene an independent inquiry into the Executive’s actions, they refused. When we asked to meet with the members of the SFUFA Executive under Step 1 of the Framework Agreement’s procedures for resolving member-to-member disagreements, they said that the procedure did not apply to them.

 

There was then a hiatus in the correspondence as we waited for the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy decision with respect to the two letters. The SFU Information and Privacy Coordinator ruled in response to our access request (Attachment 21) that the University should order the entire contents of the letters that related to us be released to us, plus the names of the two letter writers. The letter writers appealed this decision to the Information and Privacy Commissioner and, after mediation involving the two of them and SFU, decided to abandon their challenge regarding the contents of the letters that pertained to us (and which, consequently, were released to us), and challenge only the decision to release their names.

 

With the letters in hand, and knowing that both we and Dr. Stevenson knew the identity of the letter writers, we wrote to him on March 26, 2002 and asked to meet with him as per Step 1 of the Framework Agreement (Attachment 22). We wanted to discuss his role in distributing the letters to the Search Committee under the banner of confidentiality. On April 8th he refused to meet (Attachment 23), saying that he wanted to wait for the result of the Information and Privacy Commissioner’s review of the University’s Access Decision, to which we responded (on April 17, 2002) that we wanted to proceed with a complaint against him for distributing the letters to the Committee, and that we did not need to wait for the names of the letter writers to be able to proceed (Attachment 24). On May 15th President Stevenson wrote to us again reiterating his earlier position (Attachment 25). On June 20th we asked again to proceed with our grievance against him (Attachment 26). By this time, three months had passed since we first requested a Step1 meeting. According to the Framework Agreement, such a meeting should normally occur within ten days of the request to meet and, in any event, “Efforts at informal settlement should not be unreasonably prolonged.” We were at an impasse, convinced that President Stevenson was giving us what is known colloquially as “the run around.”

 

On June 20th, 2002 we wrote to Prof. Neil Abramson, the 2001-2002 President of SFUFA, explaining that we had failed to secure a Step1 meeting with President Stevenson, and that under normal circumstances, we would like SFUFA to represent us (Attachment 39-27). We then explained, however, that “we see no way that SFUFA can represent us when we have an unresolved complaint against the Faculty Association Executive for breach of trust involving the same two letters.”

 

On July 2, Prof. Abramson responded and told us, amongst other things, that he had already inquired as to whether a grievance could move from Step 1 to Step 3 (Attachment 39-28). However, although we told him that, by effectively refusing to meet with us as per Step 1 of the grievance procedure, President Stevenson was in blatant violation of the Framework Agreement, SFUFA did nothing to encourage him to meet with us. It was another four months before the University acceded to our request to proceed with the grievance. By ignoring the President’s violation of the Framework Agreement in this way SFUFA acted arbitrarily.

 

Because of SFUFA’s conflict of interest arising from its breach of trust and intervention in a potential member-to-member grievance, we requested that the Association pay for a lawyer of our choice so that we could proceed with the grievance against President Stevenson. In response, SFUFA President Abramson wrote, “The SFUFA policy on payment of members' legal expenses states that under exceptional circumstances the Association may reimburse all or part if the expenses had received the prior approval of the Executive.” In a memo dated October 23rd, 2002 Prof. Parker, who returned as SFUFA President on September 1, 2002 again made reference to SFUFA’s “legal defence policy” when he confirmed that SFUFA would not pay for a lawyer Attachment 39-42). On November 11, 2002 we emailed the SFUFA Executive and asked for a copy of the policy (Attachment 39-43). SFUFA did not reply to this request. To this day we do not know what the policy is or how SFUFA members can access it.

 

We would draw attention in particular to Prof Abramson’s email of August 26th 2002 (Attachment 39-33) in which he says in describing President Stevenson’s role as Chair of the VP-Research Search Committee:

 

I believe that a committee chair has a responsibility to disallow letters that provide either (1) inappropriate information, or (2) information about a third party. My understanding is that if you had a grievance it would be related to this point, and it would be a reasonable complaint. Since you were granted access to this letter you now have the ability to drive this point home.

 

If you are now prepared to initiate step 1 of the grievance procedure, then you have the rights (1) to receive a fair hearing from the President in 10 working days; and (2) to receive full and fair representation from SFUFA at the first stage, and then our best help as you carry on beyond stage 1 assuming that there is no resolution at Stage 1.

 

We can find no better illustration of the way SFUFA fails to provide fair representation to its members than this statement. The SFUFA President agreed that we have a “reasonable complaint” and yet he did not take the matter to the SFUFA Executive to ascertain whether to initiate an Association grievance. By failing to consider whether there should be an Association grievance, SFUFA acted arbitrarily. Further, Prof. Abramson stated that we have the right to receive “fair and full representation at the first stage of the grievance,” but only SFUFA’s “best help” thereafter. This argument suggests that SFUFA does not understand its responsibilities under the Labour Relations Act.

 

Prof. Abramson’s email acknowledged that once we had access to the letters we had the right to receive a fair hearing within ten days. When we were given the letters in March 2002, we immediately contacted President Stevenson and asked him for a Step 1 meeting (Attachment 22). The reason we contacted Prof. Abramson on June 20th 2002 was because we did not get a fair hearing from President Stevenson in ten days following our request (Attachment 39-27). And yet SFUFA did nothing about President Stevenson’s blatant violation of the Framework Agreement. Consequently, instead of 10 days it took eight months for us to move beyond Step 1. By failing to consider whether it should initiate a grievance when we informed SFUFA that President Stevenson had blatantly violated the Framework Agreement, SFUFA acted arbitrarily.

 

While we were in the process of trying to negotiate with SFUFA some kind of resolution to its conflict of interest over our outstanding complaint, further exchanges between President Stevenson and us occurred on June 26th, (Attachment 27), September 9th,(Attachment 28) September 12th (Attachment 29) and September 25th (Attachment 30). On October 22nd, fully seven months after we asked to meet with him as per Step 1 of the Framework Agreement, and in lieu of some kind of action by SFUFA to hold President Stevenson accountable, we requested that we proceed to Step 2 (Attachment 32).

 

Because the Framework Agreement requires that, at Step 2, “Grievances should be submitted to the administrator immediately above the person whose act or omission is the basis of the complaint,” we asked the President to whom we should submit our grievance. In a letter dated November 7th, 2002 Judith Osborne, the Associate Vice-President Policy, Equity and Legal, informed us that SFUFA and the university had agreed on a procedure allowing us to proceed directly to Step 3 (Attachment 33). Again, at this juncture SFUFA did not consider whether it should initiate an Association grievance, thereby acting arbitrarily.

 

On November 21st we replied to the Associate VP asking to hold the grievance in abeyance because we wanted to submit a complaint regarding SFUFA’s actions to the Labour Relations Board (Attachment 34). On November 29th she informed us that the University would agree on the condition that we submit a detailed statement of our grievance by December 16th (Attachment 35), which we did (Attachment 36). She acknowledged receipt of the grievance on January 7th (Attachment 37) and asked us to inform her in writing once our complaint to the Labour Relations Board concerning SFUFA’s actions is resolved.

 

Outstanding Issues and an Impending Grievance

 

 

 

Summary of Complaint and Suggested Remedies

 

 

Grievance C

 

SFUFA acted “arbitrarily” in dealing with the grievance we initiated against the President of SFU in March 2002. The SFUFA Executive never applied clear criteria, known in advance to decide whether it should initiate an Association grievance. Further, SFUFA acted arbitrarily when it intervened in a member-to-member grievance by giving away the evidence that two members (us) held against the other two members.

 

Remedy: SFUFA to fund a lawyer of our choice to complete the grievance we initiated on March 26, 2002.

 

 

[2] Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2003 23:23:50 -0700

From: Bob Hackett <hackett@sfu.ca>
Subject: Unionization and academic freedom

 

Recent comments on the relationship between union status and academic

freedom indicate that some attention to historical realities might enhance

the discussion.  While the current opinion survey may be completed, this is

a long-term issue; and I offer the following observations from Jim Turk at

CAUT, sent to me by individual request:

 

 

The debate about the effect of unionization on academic freedom raged during the 1960's and early 1970's as Canadian university faculty associations began to consider unionization. There were many, like some of your colleagues, who argued that unionization would undermine academic freedom.  We now have thirty years of experience with unionization. The empirical evidence suggests that far from harming academic freedom, unionization has strengthened it. By building protections of academic freedom and tenure into collective agreements, academic freedom is better protected than previously. Twenty to thirty years ago, CAUT's Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee often had to deal with as many as 100 cases of violations of academic freedom yearly. Now they have very few cases since most are resolved through grievance and arbitration procedures under collective agreements. Most of the cases that come to us now are from those who do not have the protection of collective agreements -- clinical faculty.  [Cf. the recent cases of David Healy and Nancy Olivieri at the U of Toronto, sufficiently egregious as to attract national media attention. - RH.] There is no evidence to support the fear that unionization undermines academic freedom. Quite the reverse, the evidence shows academic freedom is enhanced through unionization and enforceable collective agreements.

 

In any case, the issue at SFU is not whether to unionize, but whether the arrangements you already have constitute what the Labour Relations Code considers to be a trade union and a collective agreement. If they do, nothing changes except for two things: (1) your agreement with the University is enforceable through the Labour Relations Board; and (2) your members acquire additional democratic rights vis-à-vis the faculty association--rights that are guaranteed union members to balance the obligation to pay dues to the association.