Neil Balan, 3912 SMU PTA Steward, PTA member at SMU, Dal U, and MSVU
Note: I drafted the items below in the spirit of a “lessons learned” analysis following from my review of the notes I compiled and consolidated during and after the conference. These bullets represent specific insights and important ideas.
S1_ Roundtable: International dimensions of precarious academic work
- Compelling analysis of Denmark in terms of the public funding model and interactions with private sector capital; the Danish Association of Masters/PhDs is different representational engine in a context of publicly-funded PSE where enrollment growth, revenues, cost-containment, and tuition fees are not as substantial political economic forces.
- The UCUUK share more of the structural and political economy context of PSE with CUPE 3912 and Canadian CAS/CTF/PTA unions.
- Bigger and unified closed shops across the sector are a key to leverage collective power and exert our collective interests as academic workers (right to strike and member power wrt Section 107 in C-39 Build Canada Act).
- Casualization and precarity are not inevitable but are rather structural fixes to cheapen our labour and extract more work from is in ways that require and normalize structural inequality.
- Have to focus on intersectional dimensions of our work force and work place; our unions are affected by multiple axes/structural forces (cold spots).
- There ARE structural forces and institutional actors who are hostile to us.
- We have to navigate contradictions and antagonisms within our units and across faculty unions and associations; need unity without uniformity.
S2_ Making gains for contract academic staff at the bargaining table
“Panelists from associations that have recently made gains or are actively bargaining will share strategies, challenges, and lessons learned.”
- Importance of lining up units and other locals or unions to coordinate with each other but also be mindful of constraints or precedents; kick wins and victories to others so they can bargain and consolidate and kick it back your way.
- Wage suppression and reduce the steps and the step height (one stipend); the wins will be uneven inside a unit, but we have to act in solidarity and unity to support other locals and units.
- Wages, pay, and indexation: this may be important because bargaining wages is so fraught and difficult.
- A strike is not a loss; we have a limited window to go on strike, and we have to use it.
- LMC as a space and venue to politicize issues and keep things on the front burner.
- Cannot view things through the lens of one round or bargaining or bargaining cycle
- Robert at CUPA: be at all tables and build our own tables (EDIA, inter-union council)
- Important to balance normative gains versus monetary gains (read the wider material context) in CAs and bargaining.
- Job security and academic freedom go hand in hand.
S3_ Combating precarity in the age of AI
“Discussion of strategies to close loopholes in collective agreement language related to job security and to protect CAS rights in the context of technological change, including generative artificial intelligence.”
- Understanding AI and work as replacement v. displacement and as a process of fragmentation of work that attempts to “Taylorize” our teaching as a practice and breakdown the holistic work we do.
- How does if further cheapen our labour? Is a structural adjustment to nudge us out of access to work?
- The narrow parameters of AI (LLMs) as a productivity tool and the effects of non-competent use of AI (it could serve intersectional and access-based needs)
- AI discourse consumes resources and creates work (the amount of AI discourse)
- We need to get out front and be proactive, not reactive…
- But don’t miss the big picture: techno-capitalist universities in a wider techno-capitalist social context [automation, datafication, and financialization]
- The call to “build the case for human value (what value do I add)”: I understand the premise, but the situation for CAS is that the “value” they /we add is added because we are pools of disposable just-in-time cheap labour (until we’re not!)…we’re once again in a position where we’re pleading for ‘recognition’?!
- Defend professional autonomy and use our collective intelligence to counter the equivocations and alibis about—and application and implementation—of artificial intelligence, LLM, and automation
- What kind of use and normalization is “useful” in the narrow sense, and what will we accept? We have to understand this trend in terms of platform capitalism, spatial fixes for private wealth, and datafication-financialization.
S4_ Building solidarity for contract academic staff
“Chronic underfunding has led to program cuts, job losses, rising tuition fees, and reduced student support. In this context, building strong, cross-campus coalitions is more important than ever. This workshop will explore strategies for bringing together workers across bargaining units and students to sustain collective action in defence of high-quality education and to advance fair working conditions for contract academic staff.”
- Biggest risk today and the common enemy is outsourced governance models to third-party consultants; export management from the managers and away from and shreds of collegial self-government to ‘nearshore’ sites and vendors.
- Beyond austerity and beyond cuts to knowing our enemies in techno-capitalist universities
- Be wary of the efforts to continually de-professionalize and erosion of collegial self government.
- Make this frame visible: NOUS, analytics, and decision making [“A notorious consulting firm is selling austerity. Canada’s universities are buying” (16 Jul 2026) https://breachmedia.ca/a-notorious-consulting-firm-is-selling-austerity-canadas-universities-are-buying/]
- Sit with the contradictions; socialize the struggle across students, staff, and faculty
- What are low-risk collective actions that translate to wins for us on this front as a sector?
- Hit these universities where they live wrt external reputation and targets
- Need unity across CAS + FT faculty, support staff, students, and facilities/custodial staff.
S5_ Building power: campaigning for fair employment
- Totality of influence; the wider context of academic work in terms of how/where people understand the issue.
- Baseline: organizing and educating members all the time; campaigns should be connected to longer term strategic aims/goals (wins), which means that the tactics we develop and use should teach and build to toward mobilizing tangible actions that we can measure.
- Structured, regular, and ongoing: this is crucial.
- Break down silos across the membership, across the unions, across the student/union divide, and across the university/PSE-social threshold
- Need to rethink how we organize to get there because it has to be more than ongoing influence/information operations (i.e., we can just send out information; need to design small tangible actions).
- Mapping existing and informal networks that we can integrate and tap to build power.
- Need measurable structure tests (we’re continually testing the viability of our structures and our collective power); we do want to institutionalize things insofar as we want to generate predictable effects with our members, so we know they are active and engaged! Aside: in a more Maoist register, we [vanguard] have to identify our decentralized cadres and work with them to socialize our material analysis wrt to the party form; the people/members are everything [operational design; “investigate”] [ambient/acute, direct and indirect]
- Charting is not mapping, but charting is important in terms of collecting data
- Agitate, Educate, Inoculate, Organize, unionize [AEIOU].
- We need unity-struggle-unity In our union spaces and not a “go-along to get-along”; antagonisms, structural forces, primary contradictions are productive, and we need them.
- Structure tests also identify how we’re accountable in terms of follow-through and capacity.
- Safety and security are important to build power; people have to trust they have the
- back-up, and members need to know what/which actions they can/should take so that we can level-up commitments.
- We don’t have to be nice with our adversaries or win the self-righteous game in some moral economy; we have academic and intellectual capabilities, but we should start with the direct materials issues we experience (i.e., start as workers!).
S6_ Workshop: Troubleshooting the challenges of organizing contract academic staff
- Organizing means embodying action; it’s more than what we think, and we have to close the gap between our analysis and our actions, we have to avoid the alibis and the
- disavowal even as we sit with the structural inequality of a two/three-tiered teaching system that cheapens our labour.
- In some settings, polite forms of institutional recognition work as methods of pacification and integration that domesticate our efforts.
- CAS/FT = 30/70 complement; 50+/50- teaching allocation
- What we’re able to do in terms of advocating and undertaking tangible actions “tells the truth” about how we can deliver on commitments re: structure tests across leadership and members.
- All labour in capitalism (whether in a public or private setting) is cheapened labour; the surplus or profit is always derived from unpaid labour
- Flexible, JIT, TBA: this is de-professionalization, churn effects
- Multiple axes of injustice and of access and structural effects: intersectionality beyond EDIA as way to identify barriers and generate action; structural barriers are chokepoints 100%.
- Active and engaged members = great to enable; newly activated and engaged members have more room to grow, and the ceiling is higher in terms of tasking and engagement.
- With engaged and more seasoned members, affirm and animate their ongoing commitments.
S7_ Workshop: Getting the word out about Fair Employment Now!
- Incubate ‘cadres’ aka our informal networks and leaders; aim for primary and secondary target and hook; audience perspective/position/location.
- Emotional appeals and education; anticipate logical and illogical arguments
- Discourse/frame; tone and rhetorical methods to make our case about our value as workers and the role we play in the sector.
- An ask: what do we want people to do?
S8_ Regional roundtable discussions
- The current set of political economic conditions are not inevitable; let’s not naturalize or normalize them anymore than university administrators and provincial politicians and minsters who kick the same can down the road [quiet cuts, contract reductions, cost-containment: enrollment-based course offerings and revenue-positive profit-mode assessment + ‘we need to open the international student tap’ aka exploit insourced revenue tranches]/
- Re-politicize that which is depoliticized, normalized, and naturalized.
- Any member engagement is and should be mobilization and education.
- Cross-regional coordination to line-up bargaining; fight to win but need to be organized
- Where to direct our lobby efforts and extra-institutional efforts: BOG businesses and MLAs.
- Consider CAUT organizing school and Organizing 4 Power.