By Holly Morgan
I have been a contract academic worker of various sorts at 9 universities, so when the CAUT Contract Academic Staff conference was announced as a local event and it became clear we could send a number of delegates, I knew I wanted to attend.
Many institutions have agreements and practices that CUPE 3912 could learn from, but at the conference it became very clear to me that, particularly as a result of the last year and a half, CUPE 3912 also has a lot to offer other unions. Seeing our members speak about building solidarity during the 2025/6 strikes made me proud of our local and of my roles within it (then as Dalhousie PTA steward and currently as your Recording Secretary).
Friday panels began with international speakers from the UK and Denmark. These speakers were of particular interest to me due to the international nature of my PhD program and my teaching focus on gender equity. I appreciated Janne Gleerups’s overview of gender breakdowns in Danish higher education, where women represent approximately half of the population of people earning PhDs but only about a quarter of people in permanent academic positions. Mark Pendleton shared a similarly alarming statistic about the gender-based pension gap among UK-based academics. It was saddening to know that these issues are so widespread, but good to hear that some unions and governments have brought about positive
change, too.
I also engaged in a number of conversations with members of other unions about how they are structured and funded, and it became increasingly clear to me that we must lobby our institutions for more support for the local as a union as well as for rights for our individual members. Many conference participants belonged to unions where members were compensated by their employers for union and committee service, and I would like to see us
achieve gains on this front in our next round of bargaining.
The Saturday morning sessions on mobilization gave me some tips for reaching our members and building solidarity, particularly on a Communications front. I learned of a few different tools we can use for member engagement, and repeatedly saw the value in personal connection
reaffirmed. I hope to take this knowledge forward and participate in more outreach for the Dalhousie unit (my current home unit). The final moment that stood out to me at the conference was when we looked around the room and made a note of who was not there, particularly from the Atlantic region. In some cases, we deduced that part-time academics from those institutions were not represented by a union, and in others we could not explain the absence. This moment highlighted for me the significant impact of recent efforts by a team at Dalhousie to bring representation to members of the Architecture department, and the sheer volume of work that is out there to be done by anyone
who wants to make a difference in the working conditions of contract academics in our region.
In sum, it was a productive and valuable conference, and I encourage members passionate about Contract Academic working conditions to try to attend next time!