Claire Drummond
CUPE 3912 VP, NSCAD

Part-time academic workers at NSCAD University are some of the lowest paid in the country, living in the second most expensive city in the nation. Teaching Assistants at NSCAD haven’t gotten a raise in over 40 years, and course instructors struggle to pay for groceries and rent with their low wages. Needless to say, the situation for precarious Instructors, Teaching Assistants and Research Assistants at NSCAD is dire, and we had never had the protection and bargaining power of a union until we joined CUPE 3912 in the spring of 2023. Unsurprisingly,100% of members voted in favour of unionizing, and it was about time that we demanded more than the scraps that we’re given by our employer.

Artists are precarious workers to begin with — so many of us have grown accustomed to being paid little or not at all for our labour. This is the danger of a labour of love — aren’t we so lucky to spend our time making images, sculpting, weaving and performing? In many ways, we are, yet the stereotype of the starving artist exists for a reason: art, though essential to the wellbeing of our communities, does not pay the bills (in fact, as many of my colleagues can attest, we spend more on our art practices than we make). 

How, then, as the cost of living soars to unfathomable and fundamentally unliveable heights, are artists meant to live? This is the question that haunts myself and my colleagues at NSCAD. The answer is often to teach. For artists, a 9 to 5 job makes sustaining your own art practice very difficult. The flexible schedule of teaching art combined with the general expectation that as an art teacher, you yourself are a practicing artist, means that you don’t need to sacrifice your art practice for a paycheque. Many artists who pursue teaching do so at the post-secondary level — a Master of Fine Arts allows you to teach at University, for example, and working as a Teaching Assistant or Research Assistant is meant to give you the work experience you need to get a job post-graduation. There was a time when getting an MFA and a tenure-track position seemed like a foolproof way to make it work as an artist. However, this idea is quickly becoming a dream that feels like it will never be realized for many of us. 

Universities like NSCAD are increasingly run like for-profit corporations that rely on the underpaid labour of contract instructors such as those now represented by CUPE 3912 to teach the breadth of their courses. Rather than hiring full-time faculty and paying for benefits, they opt for the cheap labour of contract instructors. Over half of the courses at NSCAD University are taught by contract instructors. Students pay the same amount of tuition as they would for a course taught by tenured faculty, yet contract instructors are paid a pitiful fraction of their salary. It’s a win-win for the university — they get more bang for their buck, as it were — the same quality of courses taught by highly specialized instructors for next to nothing. But at what cost? The cost is a human one, as it always is in instances of corporate greed. Unfortunately, many of us are so desperate for a job that we settle for the poverty wages that NSCAD pays us in the often unrealized hope that it will lead to something better and more permanent. We love our students and we love teaching, but this cannot mean that we have to pay the price of NSCAD’s greed, the price of which is the suffering of Instructors, Teaching Assistants and Research Assistants.

Contract instructors are profoundly struggling to pay their increasingly absurd grocery bills and the cost of rent in Nova Scotia, costs that only continue to rise. To add insult to injury, contract instructors are only hired on a per-semester basis with absolutely no job security and no benefits. Many of us would never even dream of going on vacation, let alone eating at a restaurant. How does our employer expect us to live? What is the university doing with all of the money that they’re making from exploiting part-time academic workers? All we know for certain is that Instructors, Teaching Assistants and Research Assistants aren’t seeing a cent of it. Through the process of joining CUPE, we will change that.

The NSCAD Bargaining Committee has nearly finished the first draft of our collective agreement, and we plan to send NSCAD the notice that we will begin bargaining in the beginning of July. We are demanding a liveable wage, benefits, more job security, and equitable working conditions. Through collective action, we will hold our employer accountable and demand fair wages and working conditions. We will have our labour justice cake and eat it too — a labour of love, and a livable wage (and actual cake because lord knows NSCAD workers deserve a little treat)!

Claire Drummond is an artist, educator and labour organizer from Tio’tia:ke Montreal. Her creative and pedagogical practices work at the intersection of care, visual art and social justice, engaging with the inextricable relationship between activism and art. She recently completed an MFA in Painting and Drawing at NSCAD University. Before studying at NSCAD, she was almost entirely self-taught, though her mother taught her to paint when she was little. She previously completed an MA in Cultural Studies at McGill University, focusing on gender and performance in postwar film. She finished her MA longing to pursue painting full time, which led her to embark on an MFA as well as a lifelong career in creative practice. Her expertise in gender studies nevertheless informs her current practice, as well as her focus on the ways in which representations of the human figure can promote awareness of social issues. She is currently the CUPE 3912 NSCAD Vice President and is excited about mobilizing for systemic change at NSCAD University and beyond.

Robert Henman

Introduction

Question: Does economics affect every citizen of every country in the Global society? Yes, would seem to be the appropriate answer. A further question might be: How or what form of affect does it have? There are lots of statistical data available that provide more than sufficient evidence that wealth distribution is hardly an efficient component of economic activity. One statistic presently available is that less than 1% of the human population control 50% of the world’s wealth. The other 50% of wealth is shared out amongst the other 99% of the population. What follows is a few comments on problems in economic theory and Bernard Lonergan’s solution to those problems.

What is the origin of such disparity? 

One is that the current objective of economic theory is maximization of profit. Yet, some economists hold that the objective of economic activity is to provide a standard of living for the human population. Can you have profit maximization as the goal of economic activity and provide a standard of living for all at the same time. It would seem not. It contributes to the disparity both locally and globally. 

Locally we witness an increase in homelessness and a rise in rents that more and more people cannot afford. Globally and historically, we witness the drive for profit over the past 500 years of colonialization in Australia, Africa, Far East and the Americas. These invasions exploited the earth’s resources and the indigenous people’s culture and heritage all for wealth. In doing so they have arrested the development of the people and today we experience efforts of renewal of indigenous cultures, languages, religions and spirituality. Due to these centuries of exploitation, many of these cultures lived in both spiritual and economic poverty making equity a huge challenge in these times. Transnational corporations have elevated exploitation to a level beyond that of colonization which is now further complicated by the ecological crisis and the rise of populism. 

Now, what is the failure in economic theory? Current establishment economic theory work with models that do not analyze the actual data of economic activity. In other words, it is not concrete or empirical. Models are imagined and applied to circumstances from which central bankers and governments develop policies that affect our lives. Currently central banks have increased the basic bank rate causing people’s debt load to increase. 

News programs offer stock market reports and Gross National Product (GNP) numbers daily. These do not provide an actual view of the economy as a standard of living. Stock markets are a place where gambling occurs and affects only the wealthy for the most. GNP provides an overview of how the wealthy are doing, not how each individual is doing. 

What is the problem with economic theory? Models do not help. That is not science and only scientific understanding is an appropriate basis for developing policy. So, to analyze economic activity is to take any business and notice that there are two types of firms in any economy. A surplus production circuit and a basic production circuit. These circuits operate in relationship to each other. Science would work out the function of each circuit and reveal that the two circuits need to be in balance all the time. When one circuit draws on the other circuit an imbalance occurs which may be inflation. If the imbalance is sustained, it can deepen towards recession and depression. If we understand how the circuits affect each other, policy can be developed to retain the balance.

An Example

You can take any small local business and work out how the two circuits function and relate. Take a local cafe in Malaga, Spain that sells café con leche and bolleria to its customers. This cafe first buys a coffee machine from a coffee machine producing company. The coffee machine does not enter into the standard of living. The coffee machine can be used to make numerous cups of café con leche. So, it is still part of the surplus production circuit. If coffee machines are produced to be sold for domestic use, they are part of the basic production circuit as they enter into the standard of living for use in a domestic household. The producing of coffee beans and their sale to a coffee shop are part of the basic production circuit as they are eventually sold to consumers. When the café con leche is sold to you or me, it is a final sale; the café con leche is consumed and becomes part of our standard of living. If we purchase a quantity of coffee beans from a grocery store for home use, they are still part of the basic production circuit as it is a final sale that enters our standard of living.

One might think of what occurred during the pandemic as an example of the relationship between intelligent science and policy. First, virologists found out how the virus spreads and recommended policies of wearing masks, restrict close gatherings, washing our hands frequently. At the same time virologists worked at developing a vaccine and when they had done so, they recommended dosage amounts and time periods for follow up vaccinations. Intelligence preceded policy. 

Because, economics is not yet a science, by its focus on imagined models, policy tends to be guesswork. Witness what occurred during the 2008 Wall Street crash. The y did not know whether to print more money, let the banks fail or bail them out. They decided to bail them out. And the casino mentality began all over. 

Communicating to economists about this problem is and has been difficult as economists do not study actual economic activity and subsequently, do not have any experience of what is science. I have experienced this in conversations with economists as have my colleagues who have worked in this field much longer than I.

Conclusion:  

Communicating with economists has not been helpful, so I offer this very brief description of the problem and solution and should you wish to converse with economists, journalists or politicians, it would be a most worthwhile effort. Also, discussions with friends within the context of this brief essay might also be worthwhile. This analysis was worked out by a Canadian philosopher, Bernard Lonergan, in the 1930s and 1940s. His works on this topic are published with the University of Toronto Press. I add below Lonergan’s texts as well as a few others that have been published on his economic theory for those who wish to go more in-depth into what would constitute a science of economics that would eventually provide a standard of living for all and ease the disparity of wealth in the global community. Lonergan states in his book that it is not greed that is the root of the problem, but ignorance on the part of current economic theory and theorists. Greed is easily possible when one believes that profit is the goal which is based on a mistaken theory of economics.

Robert Henman has been lecturing in Philosophy, Ethics, Peace Studies and Child Studies at Mount Saint Vincent University since 1984. He taught Medical Ethics at The Dalhousie Medical School from 1990-1994. He has published three academic textbooks, two co-authored text books and one novel. He has published articles in Neuroscience, Philosophy, Ethics, social science methodology and education in various academic journals. Over the past five years he has been performing research in economics and has provided lectures on economics in 2018 and 2023 in Malaga, Spain where he and his wife, Olive, have been spending their winters since 2007. He was born in Amherst NS and is married to Olive Dewan-Henman. They have two grown children and three grandchildren. They have spent their winters in Spain since 2007, where his wife sings with a choir and he carries out his research. 

References 

Primary Sources

Bernard Lonergan, For a New Political Economy, CWL 21, ed. Philip McShane, University of Toronto Press, 1998. 

Bernard Lonergan, Macroeconomic Dynamics: An Essay in Circulation Analysis, CWL 15, University of Toronto Press, 1999. Edited by Frederick Lawrence, Patrick Byrne & Charles Hefling Jr.

Secondary Sources

Robert Henman (2024) Academic.edu (99+) A Brief Introduction to Bernard Lonergan’s Economics as a Science Current Economic Theory | Robert Henman – Academia.edu

Philip McShane, Economics for Everyone: Das Jus Kapital, Axial Publishing, Vancouver, BC, 3rd Edition, 2017.

Philip McShane, Piketty’s Plight and the Global Future: Economics for Dummies, Axial Pub., 2014.

Philip McShane, Sane Economics and Fusionism, Axial Pub., 2010.

Philip McShane, PastKeynes Pastmodern Economics: A Fresh Pragmatism, Axial Pub., 2002.

Philip McShane & Bruce Anderson, Beyond Establishment Economics: No Thank-you Mankiw, Axial Pub., 2002.

Philip McShane, James Duffy, Robert Henman & Terrance Quinn, Seeding the Positive Anthropocene, Edited by James Duffy, Sean McNelis & Terrance Quinn, Axial Pub., 2022.

Terrance Quinn & John Benton, Economics Actually: Today and Tomorrow Sustainable and Inclusive, Second Edition, Island House Press, Toronto, Canada, 2023.

Lauren McKenzie
CUPE 3912 Vice President, SMU, the Language Centre

The first stop for most non-native English speaking students (NNESS) attending universities in Canada are language schools within the university. Language schools also act as a pipeline for international student tuition fees as learners are accepted conditionally to university programs upon completion of language courses, usually called ‘bridging programs’. Students undertake intensive courses in academic communication, critical thinking and research standards to prepare for full time study.  Moreso, students are welcomed into a community where they find safety.

The Language Centre (TLC) at Saint Mary’s University (SMU) has been supporting the cultural and academic transition of learners and newcomers for 25 years. Thousands of students have passed through these doors and many have gone on to earn degrees from SMU and become permanent members of our community. 

Closure of The Language Centre

Once a thriving, profitable school in the heart of Halifax, TLC was left unrecognisable as a result of poor management and neglect. On January 23, 2024, CUPE 3912 was informed that all operations at TLC would cease by the end of April 2024. SMU has chosen to abandon all English language programs, the IELTS Testing Centre and the teacher training course that share the building. 

Impact on Instructors

In spite of the importance of their work, language instructors are amongst the most precariously employed workers in the increasingly unstable labor force. Very few English language teachers in post secondary education are unionized and most have no more than 8 – 12 weeks of job security. Most have no health benefits or access to university pension programs. They are typically excluded from perks such as access to parking or to wellness facilities and tuition discounts. Despite the fact that these are highly educated and specialized workers, they are second-class citizens in our sector.

Local 3912 is disappointed with the callous way that TLC instructors have been treated. The university administration did not consult with instructors and no business plan or vision for the future was ever communicated. The University stood by as the previous director of TLC hired three full-time instructors from outside the union to teach English language courses. This ignored precedence and robbed CUPE 3912 members of their right to bargained work. That director was fired, and the position left vacant. For the past several years the employees have stood witness as more administrative staff were hired, even though the University stopped recruiting and student numbers dwindled. 

The first time instructors, many of whom have been at TLC for decades, heard from the senior administrator overseeing the unit was in an after-hours email from a complete stranger who laid off the entire workforce over their lunch break, before they had to face awaiting students. They were deeply saddened by the loss of their jobs and the impact that this will have on international students and the community.

Impact on Students

The other casualty of the university’s callous actions are the international students who came to Saint Mary’s in good faith. These learners gave their significant international student tuition fees to The Language Centre with hopes of starting full time study at SMU, which has now abandoned them in their journey to full-time post secondary study. This is not just about money as these students have strict visa rules that require them to attend the programs they have been approved for. Thus, SMU has cast students out with no clear plan as to how they will begin full time study in the fall, bringing doubt and uncertainty to their visa status, educational plan, and future.

We are left asking what will future language learners at SMU do and how will their academic needs be addressed? The internationalization of higher education means more than just accepting large tuition fees from non-citizen students. It requires meaningful academic support so that learners are successful. Saint Mary’s has systematically disassembled the academic community that created a fair and equitable academic environment for international students who speak English as an additional language. International students are poorly served by an institution that depends so significantly on them because students are marginalized by their language and immigration status. 

CUPE 3912’s Response 

We were in the midst of bargaining our next Collective Agreement when the Employer indicated that they would not return to the bargaining table, as TLC would close. Our CUPE National representative advised us to request a return to the bargaining table from the Employer, citing the statutory freeze in place due to the status of active bargaining and the possibility of filing an unfair labour practise complaint. Fortunately, the employer agreed to return to the bargaining table to discuss the terms of the closure of TLC.

After a difficult day of negotiations, we reached an agreement for TLC instructors. This included non-monetary items, such as access to the Extended Family Assistance Plan, SMU email accounts,  Brightspace course shells, the Patrick Power library, employee records, and the health clinic for those who receive primary care at SMU. The Employer agreed to 3% retro pay and a lump sum payment to the local, so that members at TLC can determine the most equitable way to allocate funds. The Employer repeatedly referred to the dire financial situation at SMU – and we reminded them no one feels that more than instructors at TLC.

In Parting

I extend my heartfelt best wishes to all my colleagues at TLC. I thank the CUPE 3912 Executive Board for moral support, the knowledge and experience that helped to navigate this situation for the instructors at TLC. Being a CUPE VP has opened my eyes to the world of the labour movement and the incredible challenges facing the post-secondary sector. I intend on staying involved, continuing my education and activism and stepping up when and where I can make a difference. I look forward to attending the first All Committee Meeting (ACM) of the Post-Secondary Action Committee in Ottawa this month, where I will speak to the issues – the creation of a second class within the higher education sector, shoddy contracts for newcomers, and international students’ contentions with citizenship issues – while building solidarity with workers facing similar challenges across our sector.