It's Time to End Unpaid Labour
Did you know that Carleton’s Contract Instructors (CIs) work on short-term contracts that begin when the term starts and end after exams are complete? We are paid to teach each course as a flat-rate stipend for the time we are employed during the term.
For years, we have been expected to complete pre- and post-contract work, outside the dates of our employment, almost always without pay. Because of the precarious nature of our employment and our commitment to student success, most of us don’t feel like declining that work is an option.
Recently, the amount of unpaid post-term work (e.g., grade appeals, academic integrity cases, administrative work for accreditation purposes, meetings with chairs / departments, etc.) has grown significantly, requiring us to work without pay, weeks and sometimes months after the end of our contracts and, for most of us, at times when the University does not even recognize us as employees or provide us space or resources we need to do the work.
In spite of this increase, Carleton has for years resisted paying CIs for the post-contract work we do. Because we are not recognized as employees in these periods, we are required to do work for which we are not compensated, at a time when we have turned in our office keys, lost regular access to resources such as the Microsoft Office suite, and are denied subsidized health insurance and access to basic benefits such as the Professional Development Fund.
Our bargaining position, shared by workers everywhere, is very simple: if you are not paid or recognized as an employee, no employer should be able to compel you to do any work.
CUPE 4600 Unit 2’s Bargaining Team is proposing a fair, pragmatic solution to end this practice, one that would see CIs being paid a per-hour wage for all work we are required to do post-contract or outside the scope of our contract.
Our working conditions are students’ learning conditions. It’s time to end all arrangements at Carleton that require unpaid labour.