The Burnaby campus has been the only post-secondary institution I’ve ever known since I started my undergraduate career. I slogged through my degree before enrolling in graduate school and joined the Teaching and Support Staff Union as a Teaching Assistant to pay the bills, all the while holding a positive image of the University. Then I began to pay attention, and that image fell apart.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that universities have become increasingly corporatized in behavior and organization. The facts are simple: public funding has been shrinking for some time, forcing universities to get more creative and take their cues from corporations as to how and where to raise and allocate funds. While it seems like a natural progression, the central conceit that governs universities versus corporations is indisputably at conflict — the latter driven by profit, and the former driven by idealism.
Universities have always occupied a lofty niche in society that has allowed them to weather ever changing sociopolitical and cultural landscapes. Schools ought to be non-profit organizations, run with the express intent of advancing human understanding, knowledge, the advocacy of intellect and the stimulation of thought.
Perhaps this is starry-eyed idealism, and all the intellect in the world doesn’t power projectors when bills come due. But the people now running the show at these institutions are from a corporate background, and their inexperience in understanding what actually defines a university is telling. SFU is not innocent of this cultural shift, and it signals a definitive disconnect in what we think universities are versus what they really are.
There is a general knee-jerk response to the word corporate; accusations of commodification of people, the environment, memes, social causes, and even disease (breast cancer being a particularly drawn-from well) — these dominate grassroots social movements and the media, especially in BC. But does it actually matter if the university as we know it is no longer a time honoured institution with only the most noble of goals? Don’t corporations, ultimately, produce valuable items? Being a corporation doesn’t necessarily mean that the company is a misleading, faceless Goliath with a hyperactive PR department . . . does it?
Take Mediacorp’s listing of the Top 100 Canadian Employers. SFU has enjoyed a catbird seat over the last decade, making the list for six straight years. It’s quite the feat, and if you pay any attention to SFU’s PR campaigns and job advertisements, it won’t escape your notice. But how accurate a representation is this listing of the university, or any of the other businesses selected?
Mediacorp’s scouting strategy is, at best, flawed. The process is driven by questionnaires filled out by each applicant’s HR Department, without input or feedback from actual employees; it’s akin to a child gleefully filling out their own report card. But, for the sake of this argument, let’s narrow our focus.
SFU has been ranked as “very good,” in employee engagement and “above average” with reference to communication. Mediacorp judges specifically highlighted annual performance reviews, as well as in-house satisfaction surveys and exit interviews conducted by SFU. They also state on their website that feedback is encouraged by in-house newsletters and an intranet site.
Surprisingly, in its last three years of rankings, the judges failed to note (or SFU failed to notify) that a number of unions working on campus remained without a contract. The Teaching and Support Staff Union concluded negotiations last December after two and a half years in limbo, only after the union enacted a work stoppage that threatened to delay delivery of final grades to students.
Even more severe, CUPE 3338 — encompassing clerical and library staff, lifeguards, programmers, buyers and store clerks, amongst others — have remained without a contract for three years now. SFU was found guilty of bargaining in bad faith in January of this year by a Labour Relations Board, a decision that the University appealed for over three months before the LRB upheld the original ruling in April.
In their most recent contract offer, the university offered a package which, including two years of the BC Government’s zero wage mandate for public workers, offered a retroactive increase of 0.5 per cent over each of the last two years of a four year contract; far below the current rate of inflation and, in essence, a pay cut. Contrasted with other BC universities, which have long since settled their labour issues, the offer was blasted as “insulting” by CUPE 3338 president Lynne Fowler. But isn’t this common knowledge? Apparently, not to Mediacorp.
SFU has also been feted for vacation pay that starts at three weeks, increases to four weeks after an employee’s first year, and may reach six weeks for long-standing employees (according to Mediacorp and SFU’s HR department). However, TSSU members are limited to two weeks of paid vacation at the beginning of employment, and longstanding members are not offered any escalators for time employed or performance.
When contacted by The Peak for a response, Scott McLean of the Public Media and Relationships Office stated diplomatically that “the TSSU had an opportunity to address vacation pay during the last round of negotiations.” Scott Yano, involved in the TSSU’s contract committee during the negotiations, was nonplussed by the comment, alleging that “The TSSU had the opportunity and took it. Stunned silence was the only reply.” The TSSU was further, according to Yano, pressed to file a grievance to receive statutory holiday pay. When asked to respond to these allegations, McLean politely elected to decline.
Additionally, to avoid the issue of long-standing workers with seniority escalators, the University instituted a cap on the number of semesters during which an individual could receive a TA position, which results in graduate students who rely on such positions to pay for their schooling to find work off-campus, often delaying the completion of their degrees.
Given that the average time taken for a Ph.D. student to complete their thesis work varies between 5-7 years with no external conflicts, this is a significant issue for a number of students and an absolute non-starter for international students who are unable to work off-campus, requiring them to assume an even more crushing student debt load. However, this still does not address the issue of sessionals and continuing students who are, in essence, long-term workers with no potential seniority-based perks or security. Are these the actions of a Top 100 Employer? You decide.
I don’t want to indemnify SFU as some sort of uncaring corporate giant, but a disturbing trend has taken root at the core of the University. A focus on profit ahead of academia scuttles the very concept of a university, and challenges our expectations of what a school is. It ought to be a public service and the source of an individual alumni’s identity — a brand that they carry as a part of themselves for the rest of their professional careers.
A privatization of said brand does nothing to enhance one’s credentials, despite private and federal attempts to commodify the culture of schools. The core influencing public and university policy needs to be the cadre of academics and faculty, creating an environment conducive to learning and discovery, instead of endless labs dedicated to product testing and the fostering of a consumer culture.
Demand change. Because the status quo isn’t good enough.
