I Was Not Amused

In which I get a “Thank You” card from the President of the University

This morning, I got my first ever communication from the President of the University. It was a hand written “Thank You” card, thanking me for the “dedication shown to my students” and congratulating me on my teaching award. The teaching award was given to me in December last year, so the note is a little bit late. Mind you, that’s better than the first teaching award, where the Faculty of Science and the Department between them actually managed to forget to invite me to the ceremony.

The emotion I felt when getting this card this morning was utter fury. Since May, I have been in a dispute with the University about making my job permanent. This has resulted in two utterly fruitless meetings with various luminaries from Human Resources. Anyone who has been through one of these procedures will know about the stress, and lets not mince words, humiliation of having to go through the procedure of making your case and getting the brush off. In my case, the University is actually trying to dispute that I work full time for them, because some of the courses I teach are in the summer and so mysteriously “don’t count” towards a full teaching load. Telling someone who works continuously all year, with a break of a week at best, over Christmas that they aren’t a full time employee is insensitive at best. In the second meeting I was also told that their stance was “Nothing Personal”. Well, yes, it is personal to me — it’s my livelihood we are discussing here, not some abstract concept. The difference between contract work and a proper permanent job is at least double the salary, a pension, and better benefits.

So the President is congratulating me for caring about my students, which I do, while her minions are busy telling me that I’m not a real full time employee and they don’t have to even consider me for a permanent position. Then of course, there’s the wonderful procedure which everyone except me seems to have mapped out, in the unlikely event of my appeal for permanency is approved.

If my appeal is successful, then a job is created in the faculty association bargaining unit. The department then assumes it has the “freedom” to define the job position. In other words, they do not have to create a position which does the job I do at the moment, they can define a different job description. And naturally, I might not fit that job description. In fact I was told by the Head of Department that they would request someone who could teach final year courses, and so I might not get the job. Naturally the faculty agreement gives the department freedom to choose who they want for the job, so I can be rejected as an “unsuitable candidate”.

So you have the utterly baffling (to the outsider) scenario of me, appealing to have my current job made permanent, but the job description then being changed by “departmental prerogative” so that I don’t actually get the permanent job. The cynics among you will probably put it down to the fact that the University really, really does not want to make any contract instructors permanent, and is willing to go to any lengths to ensure that they do not.

Actually, a sensible reading of the Faculty collective agreement shows that there is nothing written about the case of a job being transferred in with an incumbent already in post. In a rational working environment, this would be negotiated by all interested parties.

I’m afraid that I was so angry, that I returned the card to President Runte, writing on the envelope that I doubted her sincerity in wishing me well, given that her minions are doing their level best to intimidate, bully and obstruct my request for a properly paying job. They even call me “Professor” on the envelope. I’m not a professor, I don’t have those privileges and never will.

For good measure, I also included a copy of the grievance, the one with the lovely statement that “University, Faculty and Departmental strategic direction are all against me”. It probably won’t make a difference, but it made me feel a lot better.