CANADIAN ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY TEACHERS
Invisible cuts to contract academic staff are everyone's problem

Despite an increase of $17 million to its provincial operating grant for the 2026-2027 academic year, Memorial University of Newfoundland is taking aggressive austerity measures. The impact has been felt acutely in the Department of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences, which has cut 50% of its courses.

This has been achieved by offering fewer advanced courses and fewer sections of introductory courses, raising the enrolment limit in the remaining sections from 100 to 150. Here we can see how a reduction in the number of classes increases workload for the instructors who remain.

The case at Memorial highlights the invisible job losses happening at post-secondary institutions across the country. Last year, the department had eight full-time contract academic staff (CAS) working on successive three-year contracts. All had been in those positions for more than a decade; however, seven of them will not be back in the fall.

These job losses are invisible because institutions never have to officially lay off employees they simply let their contracts run out.

Tarun Kumar's contract with Memorial expired at the end of August. After a decade at the university, he will be leaving the province in search of work. This change will also be hard on his tenured colleagues: large-enrolment classes, which CAS have been teaching for years, have now been assigned to colleagues who are accustomed to teaching "fourth-year or graduate courses." The scale of these first-year classes will be "a challenge for them."

Shannon Sullivan, whose contract expired at the end of April, had been on a fixed-term contract since 2009, but his experience with the department is even longer, since he previously taught on per-course contracts. He notes the department is losing the "strong knowledge" these instructors have developed over years of teaching introductory courses. The loss of experienced CAS will "put a huge onus on tenured faculty" and represents a "further responsibility that faculty need to shoulder, at a time when every other part of their job is also becoming more burdensome."

Job-secure colleagues are noticing how their positions have been impacted by the casualization of academic work. In areas that do a lot of first-year instruction, like math or English, the use of CAS has been pernicious for decades. The problem has now spread from these epicentres: today, CAUT estimates that at least one-third of the 75,000 academics represented by CAUT's 130 member associations are in fixed-term positions, meaning they have an end date on their contract.

CAS issues impact all academic staff, argues Larry Savage, a professor of labour studies at Brock University, as trapping instructors in short-term contracts "creates a downward pressure on wages, benefits and working conditions that eventually affects job-secure academics as well, whether through tenure-stream hiring freezes, increased service work, or the erosion of collegial governance." Furthermore, "this two-tier system undermines the notion of the university as a community of scholars with shared rights and responsibilities, replacing it with a segmented workforce in which some enjoy full academic citizenship while others are treated as disposable labour."

To acknowledge that CAS are treated so poorly in post-secondary education is to acknowledge that employers see academic staff in general as disposable. This uncomfortable reality destabilizes notions of academia as an elite profession. Rather than admit the likelihood of a future where CAS outnumber job-secure colleagues on Canadian campuses, some tenured colleagues distance themselves from both CAS issues and the broader labour movement.

In addition to this ideological barrier, employers often stoke division between job-secure and job-insecure colleagues by describing a landscape of shrinking resources, where each constituency must fight for scraps. A "fear among some job-secure academics that CAS gains might come at the expense of their own privileges can also generate quiet resistance to a more robust form of solidarity," explains Savage.

Finally, there can be organizational barriers in the form of union structures. At some Canadian institutions, CAS are not in the same bargaining unit as their tenured colleagues. Some argue that separate bargaining units allow for job security to take centre stage, as unions that represent CAS alone have an easier time forming bargaining priorities that are specific to their concerns. Others argue that combined bargaining units are best positioned to advance the working conditions of CAS because of the leverage of these combined associations, which can withdraw all teaching labour at the same time.

Both organizational models can promote cross-constituency solidarity, but it may take different forms.

At Memorial, where CAS on fixed-term contracts are in the same bargaining unit as tenure-steam colleagues, the recent job losses have produced multiple solidarity actions. Posters decrying the losses were displayed on office doors. The department head appeared on CBC radio to give voice to the issue. CAS and tenured colleagues co-wrote a letter to the provost. Co-authorship ensured CAS voices were included in the messaging, avoiding the pitfall of paternalism that can arise when job-secure colleagues attempt to speak for CAS, rather than with CAS.

In all these actions, the group repeatedly pointed to how the entire department was affected by the normalization of contract work. Far too often, CAS issues are framed as solely a moral injury for those experiencing the poor working conditions. While this may create sympathy for CAS, it can also create a distancing effect, where job-secure colleagues recognize CAS working conditions as unfortunate but separate from their own struggles.

Reframing CAS issues as pressing for all academic staff sometimes relies on what Finn Makela, an executive member of the Fédération québecoise des professeures et professeurs d'université (FQPPU), terms "self-interested solidarity." This term acknowledges that the capacity of sessional lecturers "to supplant the central role of professors in the university is dependent on them having precarious and not particularly well remunerated working conditions."

However, this "self-interested solidarity" can become thorny if it is not coupled with a sense of obligation to CAS colleagues who have been serving students, programs and departments for years. The goal is not only to open up more tenure-track lines, but also to build pathways to permanency for CAS.

"For job-secure academics who care about equity, academic freedom, and the public mission of universities, it's untenable to ignore a system that relies on structural insecurity for a significant proportion of academic staff," says Savage.

At the Mount Royal University Faculty Association (MRFA) in Alberta, CAS are in the same bargaining unit as tenured colleagues. The association's president, Brenda Lang, has been working at Mount Royal on fixed-term contracts for 23 years. Lang is MRFA's first CAS president and has just been re-elected for a second term. She notes growing solidarity between tenured colleagues and CAS. For example, tenured colleagues have been raising the lack of fairness for CAS in meetings of the General Faculties Council, a collegial governance body equivalent to a senate. In so doing, they demonstrate a growing understanding that combating the casualization of academic work should not fall to CAS alone.

For those at post-secondary institutions where CAS are in separate bargaining units, Quebec's Act Respecting Academic Freedom in the University Sector may serve as a source of inspiration. In Canada, academic freedom is protected by collective agreements, which means that each academic's right is only as strong as their collective agreement language. In 2022, Quebec's academic freedom act reinforced this collective agreement right by inscribingit in "a legal ecosyste," according to the FQPPU.

Makela notes "the strong cooperation" between FQPPU, the Fédération nationale des enseignantes et des enseignants du Québec (FNEEQ) and the Centrale des syndicats du Québec (CSQ), which both represent sessional lecturers . The three organizations were "in lock step" during the parliamentary hearings and various lobby efforts that led to the adoption of the law. All three groups made it clear that CAS had to be covered by the act, ensuring that this tool would not be reserved for tenure-stream academics alone.

The options for solidarity actions are practically limitless. When CAS and tenured colleagues are in the same union, Savage suggests "formal policy statements, bargaining mandates that explicitly reject two-tier arrangements, and internal education campaigns that address precarity and its negative effects. Encouraging and carving out designated space for CAS to take on executive and negotiating team roles can also help to break down barriers and foster greater solidarity."

For associations that do not contain CAS, Savage recommends "cross-union solidarity committees, shared days of protest, mutual support during bargaining rounds, and collective campaigns around common demands." Moreover, "job-secure academics can help by respecting and joining CAS picket lines, co-authoring op-eds or open letters, and using their relative security to vigorously challenge administrations that treat CAS as disposable. When job-secure academics put their own credibility and institutional standing behind CAS demands for example, insisting that fair treatment of CAS is a precondition for claiming excellence in teaching it helps reframe CAS struggles as central, not peripheral, to the university's mission."

It's time to move beyond feeling sorry for CAS to working together to address the problem. If we don't, our departments will remain vulnerable to the kinds of job losses seen at Memorial. We all stand to gain when CAS are transitioned to secure employment, so that they are no longer vulnerable to invisible job loss.

Kristine Smitka is the president of the Association of Academic Staff at the University of Alberta (AASUA), which represents approximately 4,200 members, one-third of whom have an end date on their contracts. She would like to thank Tom Baird, Tarun Kumar, Shannon Sullivan, Finn Makela, Larry Savage and Brenda Lang for participating in interviews.