More than half of faculty appointments in Canada are contract appointments.
During the time when she worried she wouldn’t get another contract, as the country shut down due to the“It’s stressful enough being contracted, in that you’re never quite sure until you sign the contract you know what’s going to happen in the future,” the contract lecturer told HuffPost Canada. “But [the pandemic had] the added pressure of, OK, well, if there’s not this job, then there didn’t seem like any other options.
Pasma said there isn’t official Canadian data on contract faculty, and the information we do have is from surveys that may not be statistically representative. Still, those surveys show that contract faculty tend to be women, are more likely than permanent faculty to have a disability and are more likely to be racialized.found 27 per cent of the 2,606 respondents — not a representative sample — identified as racialized.
CUPE has been advocating for the federal government to extend the emergency wage subsidy to publicly funded colleges and universities so post-secondary institutions can ensure they have the staff they need to deliver courses, as well as staff to disinfect campuses, Pasma said.
Karen Foster, an associate professor of sociology at Dalhousie University who has studied precarious employment, said universities need to make it a priority to extend contracts wherever they can. While it makes sense that occasionally contract lecturers need to be hired to fill in gaps, administrators need to recognize that they are also relying on contract instructors for what should be permanent courses, she said.
“Being in a contract position, you’re still expected to be producing research and preparing for the future and all of those things — but you’re not getting paid for it,” she said. “That’s the situation, coronavirus or no coronavirus. There’s always these underlying issues.” Contract staff are not just in the classroom. One librarian, whose contract was renewed at the last minute after two years at a French-minority university, said that libraries, like other student services, are typically the first to feel the effect of cuts.She said her layoff would have meant fewer staff to directly help with essays or navigating databases, and fewer staff to help the students’ professors find online resources.
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