Year: 2017
Location: Edmonton
Profile: Sandra Macdonald taught in the Massage Therapy Program of MacEwan University, which she helped establish, for 24 years as a sessional faculty member. She loved teaching, and seeing her students grow as people.
Sessional work is precarious work, based on regularly renegotiated contracts. Though Macdonald had robust enrolments, her precarious status meant the employer could take courses from her and change her pay rates. Employer promises to create more full-time positions proved hollow, with only one created during Macdonald’s employment.
Macdonald highlighted the dissonance between MacEwan’s sustainability policies and treatment of sessional faculty, as demonstrated in a contract negotiated without representation for sessional staff between the University and the Faculty Association. The contract shrunk a three-tiered pay scale for sessional staff, based on education and experience, into a flat rate for all. While some of the lowest paid members received an increase, many sessionals faced a significant pay reduction. Macdonald’s pay was to be cut over 22%, down to about $36,900 for the next year.
She believed that accepting such a cut would show disrespect to herself. Macdonald made the heartbreaking decision to leave the program she had been passionate about.
Keywords: Contract negotiation for precarious work; MacEwan University; MacEwan University Faculty Association; Massage Therapy Program; Rates of pay for precarious teaching; Salary disparities; Sessional teaching; Union representation for precarious woerkers.
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See also: Women and Work in Alberta; Precarious Workers in Alberta