Working conditions for the University of Winnipeg’s contract academic staff (CAS) has faculty members questioning the amount of respect university administration has for its contract faculty.

CAS, also known as contract faculty staff, are hired by the university on a per-course basis, according to a collective agreement between university administration and the University of Winnipeg Faculty Association (UWFA).

According to Dr. Robert Menzies, a contract professor in the religion and culture department, CAS do not have access to many of the facilities and services promised in the university’s collective agreement.

Menzies outlined his concerns in a public letter sent to several members of university administration, including president and vice-chancellor Lloyd Axworthy.

Menzies’s list of 22 concerns includes: no access to phones or voicemail, being required to relocate offices four times in three terms, access issues in all four office spaces and limited space for private conferencing with students.

Menzies calls administration’s response to his letter “the non-responsive response,” saying administration did not address his concerns.

“It’s not as though they are intentionally snubbing us. It’s benign neglect,” said Menzies. “The contract faculty is invisible.”

According to Menzies, the university is putting too many resources into building expansions, and programming is suffering because of it.

“When we’re trying to educate our students, a bright, shiny building doesn’t do any good if you don’t have a program to back it up,” he said.

According to the UWFA website, CAS at the University of Winnipeg are paid $3,975 per half-course, making them the lowest paid in the country. The University of Manitoba pays CAS $4,796 per half-course, while Brandon University pays CAS $5,101 per half-course.

Menzies said his concerns do not rest specifically with salary.

“It’s more about respect. If you’re the lowest paid in Canada, it’s a similar marker to nobody listening to you when you say ‘My key doesn’t work and I have no access to computers,’” Menzies said.

David Robinson, associate executive director of research and advocacy at the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), said contract staff are exploited countrywide.

“By and large, the major increase in (contract staff) has been to essentially pool cheap labour that the universities have hired,” Robinson said. “It gives some flexibility, some control of the labour force, but ends up hurting the university in the end.”

The percentage of contract staff in universities has been steadily growing since the 1990s, Robinson said.

While there are no concrete statistics on this issue, Robinson estimates almost 50 per cent of university faculty are now contract staff.

With so many temporary professors, students are not always able to build relationships with faculty members and may have difficulty getting references for further studies and jobs, said Robinson.

Robinson said CAUT is working on having universities increase CAS salaries.

“We want to take away the economic incentive of cheap labour,” he said. “There is a very talented group of CAS here and they should be recognized for what they do.”

In a written statement, UWFA president Pauline Pearson said office relocations have caused a large number of issues to arise, and the UWFA is working with the university to resolve them.

“I have been in communication with the employer about the new office space for Contract Academic Staff in 3C70 and look forward to a resolution of the issues involving this space,” Pearson wrote.

University administration could not comment, as this is a collective bargaining issue.

Published in Volume 66, Number 11 of The Uniter (November 9, 2011)