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At a recent U of G Faculty Association meeting, union certification was discussed. After the meeting, an e-mail was sent to UGFA members that included the following sentence: “At the council meeting on April 6, a motion was passed, with overwhelming support, ‘That council approve an immediate card-signing drive with a view to certification of UGFA.'”
Being a UGFA member, I e-mailed the association to ask whether quorum had been met and how many people attended the meeting. I was told the head count stopped as soon as quorum was met (quorum is 40 people). I again asked how many people attended and was told that roughly 50 to 60 people were there.
This raises two issues. If Guelph has more than 750 faculty but only 50 to 60 people attended the meeting, is it really fair to say the motion to move towards certification received “overwhelming support”? If all 60 people at the meeting voted in favour, then, yes, among those who attended, there was overwhelming support. But does this then constitute overwhelming support by the entire UGFA membership?
Second, I began to wonder if the names of those attending the meeting were recorded. It turns out they were not. How, then, do we know whether everyone at the meeting was a UGFA member?
My issue is not the certification vote itself but the process. I should think that to legitimize the process, the UGFA executive would record the names of those attending and verify they are UGFA members — if only to ensure a transparent and equitable process. Transparency and equity are, after all, the cornerstones of the UGFA's editorial on Guelph's TAPSI system.
In its editorial, the UGFA says “operation of the TAPSI system . . . is shrouded in secrecy,” that “we should treat all faculty members equally in terms of progress up the salary grid” and that merit pay is an inappropriate incentive in an academic environment.
The basis of the argument is that merit pay provides the incentive to be a productive worker in a factory (where worker productivity can be uncertain) but not in a university, where the process of discovery and creativity can take time. The problem with this reasoning is that many people working in other “thinking” or creative professions are often remunerated using merit-based incentives. Why should universities be any different? Moreover, given that the tenure system can, at times, provide an incentive to shirk, merit-based incentives such as TAPSI are a tool to mitigate the risk of shirking once tenure is granted and to do so on an ongoing basis.
Perhaps if the UGFA executive wants transparency and equity, we should abolish the tenure system, abolish the assistant, associate and full professor ranks and make everyone equal. And faculty on the Ontario government's salary disclosure list (which includes six members of the 2005/2006 UGFA executive) could share their salaries with those of us not on the list. Would that not be equitable?
Prof. John Cranfield, Department of Food, Agricultural and Resource Economics
At Guelph welcomes letters to the editor. They should be limited to 500 words and submitted electronically to Barbara Chance at b.chance@exec.uoguelph.ca.
