At the FAM-T table today, we vehemently rejected the administration’s proposal on Management Rights. Their Management Rights proposal gives sweeping and unilateral power to administration, including the power to control the content and style of our teaching—a clear violation of faculty academic freedom. As FAM said at the table, the idea that administration can control “course curriculum, content and style and mode of instruction […] and decisions regarding who is taught, what is taught, [and] how it is taught” is a “punch in the gut” to academic freedom.
In addition to academic freedom, FAM also had a very productive day working to ensure transparency and fairness in cases of Program Elimination and Discipline and Discharge, and clarifying and strengthening Promotion, Tenure, and Evaluation Process and Appealing Denial of Tenure.
Our proposal on Program Elimination aims to protect our bargaining unit members from unfair release from employment and to hold the university to their contracts with faculty. It would guarantee that restructuring will occur for instructional and education purposes only, and not due to economic or financial considerations. Our counter on Discipline and Discharge would strengthen protections for faculty and make the process more transparent and equitable. Our proposals on Promotion, Tenure, and Evaluation Process, and Appealing Denial of Tenure work to clarify and strengthen existing policy by maintaining that promotion or tenure may not be for ideological reasons, biased student evals, or “collegiality.” It also clarifies policy for interdisciplinary faculty and TCPL faculty, and protects the academic freedom of faculty by protecting against ideological bias in promotion decisions.
Help us to win these clarifications and protections! YOU put the U in Union. Show management you mean business by filling out a commitment card and turning out for bargaining on March 13th in Wilks Conference Center in Hamilton (we’ll be addressing financials that day!). Also, help FAM to help the community by donating blood on at our Solidarity Blood Drive on March 20!
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