Open letter: SFU faculty claim working conditions "worsening for years"

THANK YOU to those faculty willing to stand up and speak out.

I cannot fathom faculty remaining silent when the refrain is 'doing more with less' and fellow employees are under attack. Where will you be, who will be standing by your side when it is your turn to bargain with these same employers?

Those who follow the rapid increase in the number of senior administrators in recent years may wish to check out an eye-opening bulletin entitled, "How many Administrators do we need at SFU?":

http://people.stat.sfu.ca/~cschwarz/SFUFA/EBinfo/EB2012/BargainingBullet...

Other stats can be found on http://www.sfufa.ca/.

I am so glad Faculty are taking a stand on this issue. There are a ridiculous number of over paid managers and administrators at SFU. Infact, there are departments with almost as many managers as employees. How can they justify this in the situation? As an SFU alumni I would not recommend SFU for grad school until they fix this funding problem and fire some managers.

As someone who worked at SFU Burnaby for 8 years, I can assure everyone who does not work there that this minor storm in a tiny tea cup will pass and SFU will go back to being the little community on the hill that we see on the occasional tv show.

Otherwise - I have never seen a more disconnected bunch of over paid employees in my life. In fact SFU prides itself on it's isolation to the point of being above the rest of the lower mainland and I'm talking faculty, admin and it's well paid CUPE workers.

The only time the rest of the lower mainland ever see's anything from SFU is there is some kind of harassment issue or its coming up to job action/strike. The irony in the latter is CUPE will never actually strike because it can't afford to lose favour with students/faculty and general public by cutting access to classes.

I confess I have long relationship with SFU from the early 80's, as a student, parent with kids in the childcare centre, as an alumni board member, pub worker, radio station volunteer and CUPE 3338 VP & shop steward. When I finally got out of the place it was like what I imagine being released from prison feels like - institutionalised - just like the people who work there ! I saw so many good people get treated like dirt at SFU, eventually they got around to me.

The irony is despite their aires of cleverness, moral superiority and regulations to prevent harassment, bullying and the like, SFU continues to be a prime example of how nothing ever changes, gets done or actually implements its own idealistic sense of morality. Institionalised harassment is rampant at SFU and no one does anything [including the union] about it because it is so much part of the culture. Too many good people have been traumatised by an overly zealous admin and a toothless union local fronted by the same people for the last 35 years.

Anyone thinking of working at SFU needs to know what they are getting in to - despite the promise of an idealised work place, the conditions are far worse than many other less paid, less regulated and health benefit free work places. And since SFU is the biggest employer of SFU grads - the warning goes out to the students in attendance most of all.

I thank the faculty for providing a show of support during some trying times. Obviously if I shared Ian62 and ex-grad's perspective I would have handed in my resignation and moved on, but feel quite differently about the opportunities students and staff can find within this institution.

Dear Anon: not everything is about you or your department alone.

TSSU Facebook Update: Due to popular faculty demand the list's supporters are now being continuously updated on this page http://sfufacultyopenletter.blogspot.ca/ . 'Science Student', maybe you should send it to your faculty, who knows maybe they just didn't get the notice.

Have another look (sessional) as more are adding their names and it now includes three from faculty of Education. Let's hope many more speak up, after all surely they understand first hand what this means for the state of publicly funded education in BC.
http://sfufacultyopenletter.blogspot.ca/

I agree with Science Student and Anon. The Arts faculty is driving this job action and dragging everybody else down with them.