Hello NASA members,
Mediation continued on April 29, 2025 between NAIT and NASA with the assistance of mediator Greg Francis.
Highlights of second day
At Francis’ suggestion, NASA got to talk NAIT through Article 16 – Instructor Workload in the agreement, and the workload issues the language is not addressing including (but not limited to):
- Despite 16.02 spelling out an assignable workload averaging 36.25 hours a week, many instructors have workloads requiring more time than what they are paid for to complete their work. Despite SIH only being a part of your workload and not the entirety of your workload, a number of staff have been told if their SIH is below their threshold that they don’t have workload issues and nothing would be adjusted.
- Despite 16.04 spelling out the need for consideration of factors like course complexity, student load, new course assignment, and instructor experience into workload assignments, many instructors have not had those factors result in any adjustment to their workloads.
- Article 16 has no established timeline to provide instructors with their workload assignment in advance of the next year, semester, or intake.
- The class size formula in the agreement has not prevented significant class size increases that have had no consideration for the workload impacts caused by that. Instructors are expected to take on the same assignment and somehow not work any (more) unpaid hours with larger classes.
- The workload review process in 16.09 has resulted in some successes for individual instructors, but there are still issues. Only a few NASA members have used the process, and while every one who has done a review has convinced NAIT to reduce their workload, they were still not reduced to the levels spelled out in 16.02 – an average 36.25 hour work week.
NAIT discussed SIH loading and that only a minority of NASA members are in overload. NASA explained that this in itself is not key to the discussions, as the total volume of work including work outside of SIHs is requiring staff to spend unpaid evenings and weekends completing their work.
NAIT also talked about the class size factor and suggested that the average NASA member is not seeing class sizes large enough to trigger any SIH credit under the formula, which maybe unintentionally affirms NASA’s point. The existing formula does not protect workload for many members when class sizes increase, and NAIT’s proposal to increase the formula threshold and allow even larger class sizes can only make that situation worse.
NASA was given the opportunity to highlight individual workload issues from members of the bargaining committee’s own assignments, with two examples given, one where the overall workload was 27% higher than the assignable hours in 16.02, and another with at least a 9% higher overall workload.
NASA was then given the opportunity to review with NAIT the proposals on Article 16 that were tabled on August 1, 2024 which NAIT questioned NASA on through the fall. While NASA and NAIT have exchanged counter-proposals on the workload review process, NAIT has yet to table counter-proposals on any other aspect of NASA’s significant workload proposals.
NASA has been told that there will be some discussion this morning on NAIT’s view on possible solutions to the workload issues raised. It was hinted that some of that solution can involve “supports” (e.g. an IA I to help with marking, and maybe even in NAIT’s view an IA II delivering technical lessons), and NASA did inform NAIT that while some supports have helped some instructors, the workload issues we’re being told about are occurring with a number of existing supports in place, and that they should not be seen as a blanket solution to these problems.
Another survey question – Managing your workload
Yesterday’s survey question was overwhelmingly in favour of the idea that any proposed agreement should protect against Instructional Assistant IIs delivering technical lessons, which is unsurprising. It was still good to re-affirm that with the possibility of mediation producing an agreement to vote on. Add that now to a list of things NASA members expect in a new collective agreement.
Today’s question is about managing instructor workload. Thinking about the whole academic year, which for some instructors includes periods with not teaching often in May and June, how often is it that you have to work more than 36.25 hours to teach your classes, prep for them, complete marking, and all the other work NAIT assigns to you and requires of you.
The question asked in the email was: “How common is it for you to work more than 36.25 hours per week?”
April 30, 2025 is the last mediation day scheduled this week, with the next session coming later on May 27th during the day. Look for an update after today to discuss what progress we can speak to after three days in mediation.
In solidarity,
Trevor Zimmerman