From: "JD Fleming" <jfleming@sfu.ca>
To: "Ronda Arab" <ronda_arab@sfu.ca>
Cc: "academic-discussion" <academic-discussion@sfu.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, October 8, 2013 7:45:20 PM
Subject: Re: University, Labour, Financial Sustainability
And is it the case that under our current collective agreement, the university will not allow us to look at the spending?
And if so, would trade union status under the Labour Code make them?
(Also--and this was part of the HESA article--when tenured Canadian faculty plead poverty, I don't think a lot of change comes ringing into their cup.) jdf
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ronda Arab" <ronda_arab@sfu.ca>
To: "JD Fleming" <jfleming@sfu.ca>
Cc: "academic-discussion" <academic-discussion@sfu.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, 8 October, 2013 19:37:40
Subject: Re: University, Labour, Financial Sustainability
YES! I do want faculty to have access to the books, and I'd be happy to devote some of my service time to that endeavour. If we could see exactly how the money was spent, we could effectively argue about how it should be spent. In the last round of bargaining, the administration said that there could be no increase in spending on faculty salaries unless there was a decrease somewhere else, and they challenged SFUFA to make suggestions where cuts could be made. I suspect if we could actually the finances, we could see where fat could be cut--real fat, not salaries from working people who can barely afford to pay for an SFU parking spot.
Ronda Arab
Associate Professor of English
Simon Fraser University
8888 University Drive
Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6
ronda_arab@sfu.ca
778.782.8506 (Burnaby)
778.782.5164 (Surrey)
----- Original Message -----
From: "JD Fleming" <jfleming@sfu.ca>
To: "Ronda Arab" <raa21@sfu.ca>
Cc: "academic-discussion" <academic-discussion@sfu.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, 8 October, 2013 17:36:12
Subject: Re: University, Labour, Financial Sustainability
Ronda, how do we know that unionization would strengthen the role of faculty in governance?
I suppose another question is: Do you *want* to spend more of your time looking at the books (in a financial sense)? Can't say I do. jdf
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ronda Arab" <raa21@sfu.ca>
To: "JD Fleming" <jfleming@sfu.ca>
Cc: "academic-discussion" <academic-discussion@sfu.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, 8 October, 2013 16:19:14
Subject: Re: University, Labour, Financial Sustainability
What I find frustrating about articles like this, quite common from a variety of perspectives on all seemingly intransigent social, economic, and political issues, is the lack of any evidentiary base to sustain the claims made. What I'd really like to see is a careful, detailed analysis of what makes university finances in Canada "unsustainable." Where *exactly* is the money going? One of the reasons I support unionisation is that it would strengthen the role faculty plays in university governance, which could lead to greater transparency on university finances.
Ronda Arab
On 2013-10-08, at 10:48 AM, JD Fleming < jfleming@sfu.ca > wrote:
Interesting article from HESA.
JD Fleming
English
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ONE THOUGHT TO START YOUR DAY
Where Responsibility for Financial Sustainability Lies
October 08, 2013, Alex Usher
I often write about the unsustainability of university finances, the lunacy of its cost base, the fact that Canadian profs are better paid than in any public system of higher education in the world, etc. Some people have concluded from this that I am hostile to labour, or to academic unions in particular.
But that's not true. Though I do call BS on some of the sanctimonious nonsense that comes out of academic unions on the beleaguered state of their (let's face it) quite privileged members, I cannot, and do not, blame people for banding together and bargaining in their best interests. If you want to blame anyone for our current financial predicament, try looking at the administrators who keep saying yes to labour's demands.
Although things are slowly changing, we had a pretty serious agency problem on the management side of the bargaining table for most of the last twenty years. While senior administrators are sometimes demonized as aliens feasting parasitically on the body of the academy, the fact is that most of them are academics themselves, and a fair number of them intend to go back to do more teaching and research at some point. That puts them in a bit of a conflict of interest since there's a good chance that they will eventually end up in the bargaining unit with whom they're negotiating. And it's not as if they're negotiating with their own money - if they give away too much, they can always lobby government for more money, or higher permissible fee increases, right?
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It's also astonishing how long it's taken for management to get serious about bargaining. Though not all members are equally appreciative of its methods, CAUT's great success over the years has been to help its members bargain, and - perhaps more crucially - to provide big stonking cheques for strike pay to its members on the eve of work-stoppages (the million-dollar check Jim Turk sent to St. FX's union on the eve of last year's strike played an enormous role in the shape of the final settlement). But university administrations haven't kept pace, and so they get picked off one by one, and keep agreeing to contracts which, in the long run, are unsustainable without significant hikes in public funding, or tuition fees, or both - neither of which, you may have heard, is imminent anywhere right now.
Long story short: university finances are largely a mess, and rising labour costs are a significant part of the problem. But no one made institutions sign those deals. Going to government and pleading for special treatment now because they made dumb deals in the past? That dog just won't hunt.
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--
James Dougal Fleming
Associate Professor
Department of English
Simon Fraser University
778-782-4713
" Upstairs was a room for travelers. ‘You know, I shall take it for the rest of my life,’ Vasili Ivanovich is reported to have said as soon as he had entered it."
-- Vladimir Nabokov, Cloud, Castle, Lake
--
James Dougal Fleming
Associate Professor
Department of English
Simon Fraser University
778-782-4713
" Upstairs was a room for travelers. ‘You know, I shall take it for the rest of my life,’ Vasili Ivanovich is reported to have said as soon as he had entered it."
-- Vladimir Nabokov, Cloud, Castle, Lake
--
James Dougal Fleming
Associate Professor
Department of English
Simon Fraser University
778-782-4713
" Upstairs was a room for travelers. ‘You know, I shall take it for the rest of my life,’ Vasili Ivanovich is reported to have said as soon as he had entered it."
-- Vladimir Nabokov, Cloud, Castle, Lake