On Monday, February 11, faculty, staff, students, and community members across Ontario participated in OCUFA’s annual social media day of action in support of fairness for contract faculty.
The day was a tremendous success. The hashtag #Fairness4CF was heavily used by community members to voice their support for fairness for contract faculty.
This year’s social media day of action highlighted the fact that issues facing tenure-stream faculty and contract faculty issues are two sides of the same coin, namely the lack of investment in postsecondary education.
The chronic underfunding of postsecondary education has meant that tenure-stream faculty often face challenging workloads. This is especially true as contract faculty teach 58 per cent of all courses at Ontario’s universities. They are hired on precarious short-term contracts and are only compensated for teaching, not research or service work. Hiring full-time tenure-stream faculty instead of precariously employed faculty would ensure fairness for contract faculty and spread the workload more equally among all academic staff.
OCUFA would like to thank faculty, staff, students, and community members across Ontario for their support of the fairness for contract faculty campaign.