University of Toronto Faculty Association |

Working together, we took action and we won

Thank you. Three weeks ago, following protracted negotiations and an unsuccessful arbitration, we found ourselves facing an Administration that continued to withhold our July 1, 2020 PTR increases—despite the extraordinary efforts UTFA members have been making during the pandemic. In response, we launched an online petition and you immediately responded by signing the petition and writing to the Administration.

Thanks to you, within hours of our petition going live the Administration reached out to UTFA to negotiate a settlement to the PTR impasse. After UTFA obtained clarification on a key provision of the proposal, they ultimately provided everything we asked for in the petition.

Key win on PTR

Good news! Yesterday we wrote to you about the ongoing decision by U of T’s Senior Administration to withhold your July 1, 2020 PTR (Progress Through the Ranks) increase. The response from our membership was immediate and overwhelmingly supportive of UTFA’s position as expressed in our PTR petition.

UTFA year-end update

As this strange and difficult year comes to a close, I’m writing to offer a brief reflection on the work our Association has been doing.

Since March, the pandemic has affected every aspect of our working lives. A series of UTFA member surveys have documented how the rapid shift to remote work has exacerbated the widespread problem of excessive workloads and pre-pandemic systemic inequities. On very short notice and under challenging circumstances, faculty and librarians on all 3 campuses have more than risen to the occasion—routinely sacrificing care for themselves in order to fulfill their commitments to their students, their scholarly and professional communities, and the broader purposes of the University as a whole.

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U of T’s Reopening Plan is NOT Safe Enough. We Need to Take Fall 2020 Online

The University of Toronto’s reopening plan does not guarantee a safe return to in-person work. Until the safety of students and workers can be guaranteed, in-person learning, teaching, librarianship, and other academic work should be paused.

Below you will find articles on some the latest scientific developments affecting in-person teaching, some of the key challenges facing schools, case studies of schools as they attempt to go back, as well as UTFA media coverage around this issue. It will be updated daily so please check back for the latest developments. As well, please sign and share our petition.

Detailed Report of SBPW Negotiations, July 1, 2018 - June 30, 2020

In this long and complex round of bargaining UTFA brought forward a number of monetary proposals (for salary and benefits) as well as policy proposals to remedy long-standing concerns related to the Workload Policy and Procedures (WLPP) and the PTR process. It has long been UTFA’s view that workload and PTR policies, in their current form, are inadequate to ensure fair, reasonable, and equitable distributions of workload for faculty and librarians at U of T.

A settlement of UTFA's financial proposals, in which UTFA made modest gains consistent with sectoral norms, was achieved on April 25, 2018. However, a discussion continued with the assistance of Mr. William Kaplan on UTFA's proposals to amend the WLPP and aspects of the Academic Administrative Procedures Manual relating to the PTR process.

Read the full report

Letter from U of T School of Public Health Faculty to U of T Administration Regarding Work and Health Inequities under COVID-19

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Dear President Gertler, Vice-President & Provost Regehr, and Vice-President, Human Resources & Equity Hannah-Moffat:

As faculty members at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, we write to express our concerns regarding the University of Toronto’s measures to protect the health and safety of all workers, essential and non-essential, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Urgent action is needed to: (1) ensure adequate workplace health and safety measures by consulting with relevant groups prior to the University’s reopening process; (2) provide employment security to workers currently facing precarity, including highly racialized and feminized low-wage workers; and (3) provide gender-equitable work-at-home policies related to childcare and elder care. The U of T is a world leader in public health with extensive expertise among its faculty. Moreover, the Dalla Lana School of Public Health has one of three Canadian graduate training programs in Occupational Hygiene, and the only one in Ontario. This faculty expertise is contributing to national and international responses to COVID-19, yet it has only scantly been consulted to shape internal U of T COVID-19-related policies. The U of T still has the opportunity to model a justice-informed COVID-19 response, marshaling this expertise, to ensure the health and well-being of U ofT workers.

Many U of T workers, and their unions, have expressed concern that the University has to date not adequately informed, let alone consulted with, the 50 joint health and safety committees (JHSCs) about health and safety protections for on-siteworkers. There is a lack of clarity on how the (shifting) public health recommendations are being implemented on campus, what personal protective equipment is needed and will be provided, and how physical distancing will be enforced, nor has there been a clear message on which positions are eligible to work on-site versus at home. Since the JHSCs were not informed about or involved in these decision making processes, worker representatives were unable to communicate with, or share the concerns of, their members. This is a missed opportunity on the part of University administration to engage those who are most familiar with workplace conditions and the day-to-day operations of the University.

Read the full letter including the list of signatories

UTFA Statement on Anti-Black Racism

The University of Toronto Faculty Association strongly condemns anti-Black racism in all of its guises. Like many in the community in which we live and teach, we are outraged by the growing number of violent deaths of Black citizens in both Canada and the United States. COVID and racialized violence are the double tragedy that has wrought untold anguish in families across North America and well beyond. We at UTFA wish to express our solidarity with those in the Black community who have suffered and also our sorrow. For those members who might need help navigating resources at this very painful moment, please reach out to UTFA at advice@utfa.org.

UTFA will hold special meetings of its Executive Committee and Council to discuss and reflect on the cultural shift that is a result of the heinous killing of George Floyd in the United States. Why was the catalyst for Canadian academics an American death at the hands of police—when the Black and Indigenous and Asian communities in Canada have been identifying systemic racism for years? What is UTFA’s role in confronting systemic racism in our community and in our university? What can UTFA do as a labour organization committed to equity both to confront our own lack of diversity and to address practices that are undergirded by racism? How can UTFA use its meeting spaces and its online spaces to give voice to these issues?

The University of Toronto Faculty Association

The List statement on anti-Blackness at the University of Toronto

In the wake of the latest episodes of lethal anti-Black police violence - the killing of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Regis Korchinski-Paquet and D’Andre Campbell - The List stands in solidarity with Black faculty, librarians, staff and students, and communities in this city and across Turtle Island. We also mourn the killing of Chantel Moore, and condemn this and other episodes of brutal and systemic colonial state violence.

This is a moment of reckoning – though one that is long overdue. Even as we call for this reckoning today, we ask ourselves why we were not calling more loudly for it every single day before now. Many statements condemning anti-Black and colonial violence are circulating, and we add our voices to this growing chorus. But if these calls are to amount to more than the usual lip service, if they seek to go beyond self- congratulatory performance and the obligatory ‘check in’, and if they will honor and not simply absorb Black people’s long term labour for change, then this needs to be a moment of fulsome structural change in all of our departments and programs, in all our faculties and on all campuses across the University of Toronto.

We must stand beside and behind Black staff, faculty, librarians and students who have been dealing with racism at this institution every single day. As a group of primarily progressive faculty and librarians, we call on our administration to meet the demands and desires of our colleagues in the Black Faculty Group who have been working tirelessly, day in and day out, for change. We call on the U of T administration to commit to rigorous and systemic address of anti-Black racism and white supremacy on campus and beyond. And we demand a major investment of resources to support the flourishing of Black life and Black excellence at every scale of institutional life.

Read the full statement including the list of signatories

UTFA Pension Change Website

Message from UTFA President Terezia Zorić

September 2, 2020 – Joint Toronto Universities Faculty Associations’ Statement

OCADFA, YUFA, and the Executives of UTFA and the RFA condemn racist policing and related forms of institutionalized violence. We stand in solidarity with Black, Indigenous, and other racialized communities in Toronto and across North America on Turtle Island. We hear the demands for justice from the families of Regis Korchinski-Paquet, Rodney Levi, Ejaz Choudry, Chantel Moore, Andrew Loku, Abdirahman Abdi, and D’Andre Campbell. We also extend our heartfelt sympathies to all who are facing trauma and loss.

We acknowledge that our own Black, Indigenous, and racialized faculty, librarians, staff, and students are bearing the burden of the current moment. Many of the conditions that allow institutionalized violence to disproportionately affect racialized communities have now been exacerbated in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

We join with those organizing #Scholarstrike and #ScholarstrikeCanada who “believe that it’s of crucial importance for those of us in higher education to take a stand in solidarity with our students and the communities we serve [and] ...affirm protestors, workers for social justice, and activists who are crucial parts of making our communities safer places.” Scholar Strike is a labour action/teach-in/social justice advocacy happening on September 9-10, 2020.

We are asking University Administrators to support faculty, librarians, and other staff, and not penalize those who choose to participate in this action. Recognizing the precarious labour status of many of our colleagues in academia, this labour action will invite people to participate in ways that mirror their capacity to engage.

We therefore strongly encourage our members to pause on September 9-10, and to listen, reflect, and join in a broader public dialogue and educational events related to police violence from historical and contemporary perspectives. We ourselves further acknowledge the need to have sustained conversations with our colleagues, families, students, and other community members about how our faculty associations can support and effect systemic change.

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