Know Your Rights: Workload & You

Hi Members!

Yesterday, the Union held our first drop-in infosession of the year, Workload & You and one question came up again and again:

What should I do if I’m asked to take more students than the normal course maximum?

It is a good question, and this year it matters more than ever.

As we head into the semester, the CCFA is asking members to be very cautious about agreeing to take additional students, additional duties, or other unexpected work beyond the workload you were originally assigned and agreed to. For the past two years (longer if I’m honest), you’ve been telling us the same thing at every department meeting we joined, while sharing food at pub nights, and on the floor of our general meetings–your workload is TOO MUCH!

All of us, every single person in the CCFA, are being asked to do more with less. So we took that to the Bargaining Table, and because we refused to back down, we are going to arbitration for the first time since the late 90’s. Why was this necessary, you ask? Because our employer refuses to deal across the table on workload. To “balance the deficit,” our employer is busy collapsing sections and overloading courses on top of all the other ways our work has expanded due to AI, student complexity, and austerity measures that have reduced many general student supports at the college. But they have a plan. They are counting on us to save the day. You love your students. You want to give them your best. You care deeply, and you’re doing a lot of extra work to make sure students succeed.

So taking on extra students and overloading your course because “it’s just this one time” or “it will set students back a whole year” doesn’t help students when you’re already over capacity. Students have their best opportunities for success when they’re well supported in classrooms designed with their learning in mind. That’s what the Camosun Advantage is all about, right?

Before you say yes to any overload, stop and ask yourself this question:

Where is this work coming from, and who should actually be doing it?

Workload is more than contact hours. Our Collective Agreement is very clear that workload is not just the number of contact hours you spend standing in front of a class. Article 7.01 says the Faculty Member, Chair, and Dean or Director must determine and agree together on what constitutes your workload assignment. It specifically identifies class size as a workload factor, along with the nature of the course, preparation time, marking, student consultation, support staff, curriculum changes, student intake, educational technology, and other professional duties.

So when someone asks you to “just take a few more students,” it’s not as simple as just adding names to your class list. More students can mean more marking. More email. More accommodations. More individual consultation. More follow-up. More emotional labour. More time. And all too often, that additional work is being added while your scheduled contact hours remain exactly the same.

That is an overload… especially after what we’ve been through in the past year of Section 54 notices for “workforce adjustments.” Other people used to do the work you’re being asked to take.

Chronic under-resourcing is showing up in our classrooms

This fall, more than any other in recent memory, you are going to look around your departments and see fewer faculty.

Each semester there are fewer Term faculty. We have said farewell to continuing faculty who have retired, taken severance, or been laid off. Positions have disappeared, assignments have been redistributed, but in many cases, the work has not. This is what matters when you are asked to take on “just a little more.” Work absorbed informally by one faculty member may be work that otherwise should have been assigned to another faculty member, someone they are refusing to replace… or someone who has involuntarily had to leave.

That is why this is bigger than any individual request. When faculty quietly absorb additional students, courses, marking, administrative work, or other duties, we make an under-resourced system appear functional. Our willingness to help students is one of the things that makes faculty so good at what we do.

It can also be exploited. It is being exploited.

Every staffing shortage solved by faculty working longer, adding students, taking on another task, or simply figuring out how to make it work with less means the College never has to confront the actual consequences of cutting faculty positions.

Overloads can happen, but there is a right way to do it

We are not saying that overloads can never happen, far from it.

The Collective Agreement specifically anticipates exceptional circumstances where excessive workload may be necessary and also tells us how it is supposed to happen. When exceptional circumstances cause the workload guidelines to be exceeded, the Faculty Member, Chair, and Dean or Director must agree to the assignment. Compensation for the excessive workload must be agreed to in advance. That word, agree, matters. The word, advance, also matters a lot.

For continuing and probationary faculty, excessive workload can be compensated through time off or prorated remuneration. Other faculty who accept an excessive workload receive prorated remuneration. Faculty also have the right to Union representation when discussing compensation for excessive workload. I’d go so far as to say, don’t negotiate your overload compensation without union representation and never agree without consulting the Union first. Even if you’ve already done so, please come check in with us; sometimes we can still help.

Class, labs, and section sizes deserve particular attention because it is one of the easiest ways for workload to quietly expand. If your course is already at its established maxima and you are asked to add more students, get curious. Ask what that means for your other responsibilities. Don’t be pressured by registration deadlines. Say you can’t agree until you review the request with the CCFA, then contact us. And one more thing to remember: there is no Collective Agreement requirement to balance our student numbers across multiple classes or semesters, so don’t let that be a reason you consider overloading a course!

You don’t have to say yes

I can’t say it enough: faculty care deeply about students–or many of us wouldn’t still be here during these trying times, and…

…that is exactly why these requests can be difficult to refuse. None of us wants to be told that a student cannot get into a course they need and won’t graduate. None of us wants a program to struggle because there are not enough faculty to run all the courses. None of us wants to leave extra work behind for someone else to do. But these are not problems of our making, and we cannot keep solving them through donated faculty labour.

If you are asked to take additional students, merge and collapse sections, are assigned an additional course, are given extra administrative responsibilities, assigned work resulting from a vacancy, or asked to do anything else that substantially changes your workload, you don’t have to say yes. That doesn’t mean it won’t happen to you anyway; our employer has made a habit of surprising members when they return from the summer break with all manner of workload changes. But you don’t have to agree; contact us at ac.ytlucafnusomac@afcc. We would much rather help you work through an appropriate assignment or compensation arrangement before the work begins than try to help you recover from an excessive workload after the semester is underway.

Our students deserve properly resourced classes. Our departments deserve adequate staffing. And faculty have the right to be compensated for the work we actually perform.