Negotiating COVID-19 LOUs

This article, published in the Fall 2020 edition of The Beacon, was written by StFXAUT President Martin van Bommel. The COVID-19 pandemic reached Nova Scotia and impacted all provincial university campuses, resulting in a sweeping mid-March shutdown. Our Members were left scrambling to move their courses, tests, and exams online. During the instructional chaos, the […]

Read More »

Joint Committee Report on LOU # 2 re: COVID-19 Continuing Measures

After signing the first Letter of Understanding [PDF] (LOU) on COVID-19 Emergency measures in June, the LOU Advisory Committee of the StFXAUT began drafting a second LOU regarding ongoing issues for Members arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. Since July, we have been in negotiations on this new language. After many meetings and a strong push […]

Read More »

Precarious Employment

Written by Philip Girvan, this article appears in the Spring 2016 issue of The Beacon “The general consensus is that the longer you spend as a contract academic, whatever you want to call it, part-time instructor the worse off it is for you.” – Anon The Winter 2016 issue of The Beacon highlighted issues raised […]

Read More »

Issues impacting Part-Time Academic Instructors

Written by Philip Girvan, this article first appeared in the Winter 2016 edition of The Beacon. Canadian post-secondary institutions have become increasingly dependent on temporary or Contract Academic Staff (CAS). CAUT director of research and political action, Sylvain Schetagne, notes in the October 2015 issue of the CAUT/ACPPU Bulletin, that “[m]ore than 30 per cent of […]

Read More »

Fair Employment Day

Today, October 7, 2015, is Fair Employment Day. Fair Employment Day is a dedicated toward highlighting the increasingly precarious nature of work in post-secondary educational institutions and takes place in solidarity with the World Day for Decent Work. The StFX Association of University Teachers would like to acknowledge all our academic colleagues working around the […]

Read More »

Exploitation in the Ivory Tower

From The Sunday Edition with Michael Enright:  “Exploitation in the Ivory Tower” (September 7, 2014). Description from the CBC page: Documentary – Exploitation in the Ivory Tower: (49:25) In Economics 101, they might call it a new-fangled form of feudalism. Wage slavery. Certainly a caste system. The modern Canadian university is quietly kept afloat by low-paid, contract […]

Read More »