U of O faculty understaffed and overworked, profs' union says

The Association of Professors of the University of Ottawa (APUO) says the school is understaffed and its faculty is overworked, and is calling on administrators to hire more.

The union held a rally Wednesday after filing a complaint to the Ontario Labour Relations Board on Oct. 24, claiming the administration is bargaining in bad faith. The two sides have been in collective bargaining since June after their previous agreement expired at the end of April.

The APUO says the university's current student-to-professor ratio is forcing its members to do more with less, and is demanding the university hire more full-time faculty to ease their workload. That includes professors, librarians and teaching assistants who can undertake "shadow work" such as lesson planning, marking and administrative chores. 

University spokesperson Jesse Robichaud said administrators have met with the union over 20 times in bargaining sessions that he said have led to "substantive agreement on a range of proposals."

Doing more with less

Jennifer Blair, a mobilization officer with the union and an associate professor of English at the university, said retirements in her department have left remaining staff overwhelmed.

"It means that we work all the time. I work more than my peers at the other U15 universities, I teach more classes," she said. "While I love teaching students, the fact is that when we're stretched that thin, it's very, very difficult to have a quality experience."

Blair said she has no teaching assistants at her disposal, so she does all the marking. She said she struggles to offer more detailed comments or meet more frequently with her students.

According to the university's fact book, the registered student population grew by 2.9 per cent between 2021 — when the last collective bargaining agreement was signed — and 2023, reaching 48,259.

The student-professor ratio in the 2021-2022 academic year was about 34 to 1, the fourth-highest found in Ontario by one calculation from the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA), a non-profit advocate organization representing 30 faculty associations, including APUO.

Neither the union nor school could provide more recent numbers.

While the union is not currently in a strike position, president Dimitri Karmis said in a media release that it is prepared to use "every tool available to defend our university's core missions."

The union says its key demands have not been met. Both parties are scheduled to enter into conciliation on Nov. 5.

"We are optimistic that the parties can reach a settlement through mediation and or conciliation," said Robichaud.