Statement from the QUFA Executive April 29, 2008
Presented at the Spring General Meeting
PREAMBLE:
Our university faces many challenges as we strive to maintain the highest standards of quality despite decades of provincial underfunding and pressures to increase undergraduate enrollment and expand graduate studies. The faculty, archivists, and librarians are committed to work collaboratively with the University, through QUFA, to improve and secure academic excellence at Queen's University.
Over the next year, we look forward to working with you in addressing a number of challenges that pose serious threats to the academic environment at Queen's. These challenges include:
- Establishing timely, open and transparent communication between the university administration and its employees;
- Addressing high student-faculty ratios that threaten quality teaching and meaningful interaction and collaboration with our students in various disciplines;
- Dealing with unbalanced workloads and anomalous salaries within departments and across units;
- Improving working conditions that affect our efforts as educators and scholars;
- Establishing an appropriate standard of accommodation for employees with disabilities;
- Committing resources toward ensuring that the faculty reflects our nation's diverse population.
Queen's University has earned a strong reputation for academic excellence over its long history. We fully understand that a collaborative effort to stand up for quality at Queen's University will extend beyond our local community to provincial and federal governments. Therefore, QUFA looks forward to improved opportunities to work with the Administration to ensure all of our actions live up to Queen's reputation for high quality far into the future.
MOTION:
Whereas the QUFA Executive and the Bargaining Team have been directed by QUFA Members to give high priority at the bargaining table to issues related to faculty complement, accommodation of Members with disabilities, inequities in compensation, and control of the pension,
As the end date of our contract arrives, the QUFA Executive directs the Bargaining Team to persist in negotiating for improvements on these issues, and the Executive recommends that the Membership support this course of action.
PLEASE SEND YOUR COMMENTS AND/OR YOUR MESSAGE OF SUPPORT FOR THIS STATEMENT TO poonir@queensu.ca.
