Entrenchment of Employment Inequality in the Academic Workforce: The Implications of “An” Appropriate Bargaining Unit
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The academic workforce has changed dramatically in recent years. Formerly, universities were staffed primarily by tenured faculty, making possible the collegial governance models under which they operate statutorily. There has been a shift away from this model, however, and universities now rely more heavily on part-time professors. Postsecondary institutions are among the most heavily unionized workplaces in Canada. Yet, while academic unionization is widespread, the unionization model is inconsistent: some unions are faculty associations, while others are not; some unions represent only full-time professors; others represent part-time instructors; others represent both; and some also include other types of academic employees. The multi-union fragmentation of campuses reflects the fragmentation of the academic workplace, but bargaining unit structures in the Canadian university sector fall short of effectively or fairly aligning with the academic goals and functions of the university. This has consequences for academic freedom, collegial governance, and the quality of education and research that academics provide and undertake. This paper opens with an overview of the evolution of the academic workforce in Canada. It then reviews the principles behind the Wagner model of labour relations and the factors used to determine bargaining unit appropriateness, including the community of interest test. The third section analyses the benefits of the multi-union campus model and why it is prevalent. Finally, the article considers the disadvantages of the multi-union campus and argues that it likely exacerbates systemic inequalities. It proposes that to better protect academic employees and the mission of universities, mechanisms should be developed to promote the broadest units possible to counter legal and institutional structures that contribute to workplace fragmentation. Le personnel universitaire a changé radicalement au cours des dernières années. Autrefois, les universités étaient principalement composées de professeurs permanents, ce qui rendait possible les modèles de gouvernance collégiale en vertu desquels elles fonctionnent statutairement. Les universités se sont toutefois éloignées de ce modèle et s’appuient désormais davantage sur des professeurs à temps partiel. Les établissements d’enseignement postsecondaire comptent parmi les plus syndiqués au Canada. Pourtant, si la syndicalisation des universitaires est très répandue, le modèle de syndicalisation n’est pas uniforme : certains syndicats sont des associations de professeurs, alors que d’autres ne le sont pas; certains syndicats ne représentent que les professeurs à temps plein, d’autres les instructeurs à temps partiel, d’autres encore représentent les deux, et certains incluent également d’autres types d’employés universitaires. La fragmentation multisyndicale des campus reflète la fragmentation du milieu universitaire, mais les structures des unités de négociation dans le secteur universitaire canadien ne s’alignent pas efficacement ou équitablement sur les objectifs et les fonctions académiques de l’université. Cette situation a des conséquences sur la liberté académique, la gouvernance collégiale, ainsi que sur la qualité de l’enseignement et de la recherche, que les universitaires dispensent et entreprennent. Cet article commence par un aperçu de l’évolution de la main-d’œuvre universitaire au Canada. Il passe ensuite en revue les principes qui sous-tendent le modèle Wagner des relations de travail et les facteurs utilisés pour déterminer la pertinence d’une unité de négociation, y compris le test de la communauté d’intérêts. La troisième section analyse les avantages du modèle de campus multisyndical et les raisons de sa prédominance. Enfin, l’article examine les inconvénients du campus multisyndical et soutient qu’il exacerbe probablement les inégalités systémiques. Il propose que pour mieux protéger les employés académiques et la mission des universités, des mécanismes soient développés pour promouvoir les unités les plus larges possibles afin de contrer les structures juridiques et institutionnelles qui contribuent à la fragmentation du lieu de travail.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.009 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.010 | 0.023 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".