Ontario’s community  colleges have devised a wide variety of ways to make life hard for part-time employees. Starting today, the web site at www.collegeworkers.org will keep a running log of part-timers’ stories. Send us your name, college, and contact information, and we’ll post your story – anonymously – on the web.

It doesn’t have to be long – it can be one sentence if you like. Just tell other part-timers what has happened to you.

It doesn’t even have to be a “story.” Just tell us how you feel.

Send your story to collegeworkers@opseu.org  or call our hotline at 1-866-811-7274 or (416) 448-7433.

The stories below are just a sample of the stories collected at meetings across the province. Let’s hear yours!

• I was reading the reference to "disposable staff" with the Colleges and thought I would share my experience with you from when I was a student as well as part-time staff at one of the colleges in Ontario.
  
  I was hired to work part-time at the college while I was a student in the two-year Secretarial Science course. A short time into the course I was hired to work part-time for the Information Services Department. This was over 25 years ago and it's sad to see that their treatment of part-time workers hasn't evolved in all that time. I was even pulled out of class when needed since I had been trained on specialized type-setting equipment. At that time we did all of the course calendars and pamphlets, President's speeches, press releases, etc. Once I graduated I could never get on staff full-time so I quit my job at the college and went to work at a credit union, again only part-time but I had high hopes to get on full-time. My supervisor from the college came to the credit union and begged me to come back to work, and as naive as I was I did. thinking that this time, since they obviously appreciated how much of an asset I was (not), that it would result in full-time employment eventually. At least that was what I was led to believe. Once again, it did not. So, I again left. Time has moved on obviously but their tunnel vision on how they should treat their part-time workers has not. It's a sad situation that I can relate to and my heart goes out to those in this situation. It is very stressful.
   

• I teach part time at a Toronto college. This past summer, I was offered a full-time job elsewhere. I talked it over with my boss at the college, and he promised to give me enough work to make it worth my while to stay at the college. We even had a detailed discussion about what amount of work I would require in order not to leave. We worked out a schedule for the summer term that had me earning close to what I would have in the full-time job (although still without benefits).

Based on this, I turned down the full-time work. (You can probably see where this is going.)

My boss called me the night before the first 8:00 a.m. class to tell me that the course had been cancelled due to low enrollment. It turned out he had known that the class would be cancelled at least one week before he contacted me, but he waited until the last minute – even until after I had done the prep work for the first week – to tell me. He called back the next day to say that the rest of my classes had been cancelled as well.
 

After making a deal with me to turn down other work, he went back on his word and gave me no work at all for this semester. I still don’t know whether this was just the usual terrible treatment, or whether it was done on purpose to punish me for considering other work!

• I returned to Canada five years ago after more than 20 years abroad. I thought I was lucky finding a job right away at a community college. I didn’t know, until more than half way through the year, that my job was only temporary and that there was no one to turn to for information or support except other what are euphemistically called “part-timers.”

I have been an English as a Second Language teacher for 25 years. I love my work and I have no desire to do anything else.

My situation is complicated by the fact that we have a diabetic teenager. Diabetes supplies (insulin, needles and test strips) cost over $200 a month. As a college part-timer, I receive no benefits and no sick leave or vacation days – not to mention the ridiculous rule that part-timers can only work for 10 1/2 months out of 22. This puts a tremendous strain on the family finances. I never know if and when I will be working or how many hours I will receive.
 

My husband is an independent small businessman. Sometimes he has enough work to support the family, but sometimes he does not. You can imagine the difficulties. In fact at the beginning of July, we were hard pressed to put food on the table because neither of us had money.
 

Politicians like to tell us that Canada is lucky that there are so many immigrants. The English teacher is often the first Canadian to spend time with the immigrants. Our job is important , we are told by those wanting to be re-elected. Well, if my job is so important, why can’t I keep it? Why do I have to prostitute myself begging for employment every few months, wondering why I can’t get extra health care, lose money for every civic holiday and every time I am not at work? I feel I am entitled to be treated with respect and dignity, but with no respect from the college, where is my dignity if I have to look for work so often?
 

This is why I want to get involved in this movement- so that I and my colleagues can have decent working conditions just like the full-time workers in the colleges across Ontario.

• Some of us work part time by choice - to care for small children, very sick children, very sick spouses, ill parents, etc. To have been full time and making a certain wage and then go part time and be earning 50 per cent less for the exact same work is so unfair and demeaning. Often you are at a low point anyhow, surrounded by very tough circumstances but still trying to be a valuable worker and put bread on the table and keep up your skills. Why can’t the government get this?
   

• I feel lucky. I was able to get a full-time faculty position at my college, but it took a bit of a showdown. I started teaching part-time and sessional in 1999 to supplement my income as an IT contractor and also because I liked teaching. The teaching income was not enough to support myself so I continued my contract work. The dual responsibilities to both students and clients were difficult to juggle — it’s awkward to tell a client, “I’m sorry your web server crashed – I’ll look at it after my class which starts in twenty minutes.” Eventually I decided that I would prefer full-time teaching, but there were never any positions available. After a couple of years of asking, I finally presented my manager with an ultimatum: I accept a full time offer from a company in Toronto unless a full-time position opens up that I’m qualified for. My manager offered me a deal: Stick it out one more school year, and a position will open. He kept his promise and I was hired the next year.

Now from my position as a full-timer, I see that I am one of the few for whom that showdown worked. We constantly lose talented and knowledgeable teachers who accept full-time work elsewhere. There is a clear impact on students: a constant stream of inexperienced teachers. They know their subject material, but it takes experience to become an effective teacher. As a result, there no continuity with subject material, and an additional load on full-time faculty to support part-timers with learning materials and coaching. There is also a lot of complementary work that doesn’t get done because it would have to be done by part-timers on a volunteer basis.

• Please remove my e-mail address from your lists. I will no longer work part-time for any college because I’m tired of working for significantly less than minimum wage. The courses I taught were primarily in the computer field. Since this is a dynamic field, much time and effort is required to keep up with the technological advances. The college does not pay for this and I WON’T DO IT FOR FREE ANYMORE.
   

• I’m so glad you are asking for, and publishing, our part-timer stories. I have taught at an Ontario college for four years (in addition to teaching for a public school board and working as a restaurant server to supplement my wages while still accommodating the college’s schedule). I have a B.A., a B.Ed., and an M.A., and all my end-of-term course evaluations have been excellent. I routinely get rave reviews and sincere thank-yous from my students, because like so many others I am a committed, enthusiastic, damned good teacher whose professional pride will not let her limit her working hours to her paid hours. You could apply most of the stories I’ve already read on your web site to my experience. If I told you one or two incidents in my college part-time experience, I would only be revealing the tip of the iceberg, so instead of sharing my many horror stories, I will tell you how I feel.
  I feel alienated. I feel professionally isolated. I feel repeatedly taken advantage of. I feel powerless. I feel very sorry for the students who really are cheated by the colleges’ hiring practices. I feel extremely angry. I feel cynical. I am ready to leave the teaching profession, despite my conviction (shared by my friends, family, and colleagues) that I am meant to be a teacher.
  
  Compare these feelings to how I felt when I graduated from my teaching degree: proud, optimistic, motivated, committed to my students and colleagues, a potential part of a team with a great deal to contribute to my society. I was ready to lend my considerable talent and brains to make a difference in this world.
  
  The current system is not the only reason I have changed, but it is certainly a major reason. Good work, Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities – you’ve really transformed my future, and the futures of all my potential students who will now never know me, since I am leaving.
   

• I am a part time support staff person, and I’d worked at the college for 14 months. Last year I requested some unpaid time off, which was approved. When I came back to work, I was told that there wasn’t a job for me to come back to. The work didn’t disappear. It “morphed” into another job which they hired someone else for while I was away. I asked my supervisor whether I’d done something wrong and was assured that my work was above standard. I asked if it was a budget issue, and was told it was not. In fact the person hired was being paid more than me. They couldn’t give me a reason!
   

• I’m a part time faculty member. I got a call from one college on Sept. 3 for a class starting on Sept. 4. I was asked: “Do you have a degree? How comfortable are you talking in front of people? OK? Good, you are hired.”
   

• We are always given the sense that we are begging for work. At the end of November, I have to ask: “What about teaching in January?” And then we’re not called until the last minute. One time I was woken up at seven a.m. on the first day of classes and was told “Come in quick! We need you!”
   

• I had an idea for a new course and was told, “Go ahead. We don’t know if we will be able to pay you, but go ahead. It’s a great idea.”
   

• I’ve been teaching part time for 18 years and am getting about half of what others get paid. I cannot do it any longer.
   

• I’ve been teaching for three years at one college. At times I’ve been called one week before the course starts and told what I’m teaching. Now I’m a sessional at another college and I teach 15 hours a week. I share a computer and there is no desk for me.

• Surely the person who is doing a good job for you at the college should trump the outside applicants for full time jobs! Why bring us back in to teach then, if we’re not capable?
   

• I’m a Library Technician and have worked at the college for almost four years. I started at 24 hours and after two years they reduced my hours to 12, but they kept changing them. First they had me on a yearly contract, then they started renewing it every semester. Now they renew my contract every two months.
   

• I’ve applied for several full time positions and, on one particular occasion, after they had given the position to the manager’s son, I was told: “Oh, I didn’t know you wanted full time work!”
   

• We are told that we can come to department functions - staff picnics and so on, but that we won’t be paid to be there. For the annual Christmas dinner, we have to pay if we want to go. Everyone else gets it free.
   

• I find it unbelievable the way courses are assigned. I started with a five hour contract in September, then was asked to fill in and teach another three hours, so now I’m partial load. Now I’m back to begging for hours again. Two managers both said there is nothing available for January, yet there are two courses scheduled with no teachers assigned. I saw an ad in the local paper for these courses, and yet I am available.
   

• I’ve been told that the pay scale for part timers is now set at $39, $49 and $59. But they say on my pay slip “Part-time maximum - $52 per hour.” The system has no basis and is demeaning.
   

• I’ve been teaching at the college for eight years and this is the first year I’ve had an office.
   

• Everyone I speak to gives me different answers. In our college there are too many discretionary decisions left to managers and there is no consistency across the college. There should be clear cut policies.
   

• Parking, parking, parking! Payroll deduction for parking permits is not available to part-timers. We have to pay the same amount even though we are not at the college every day of the week.
   

• We had benefits on a shared cost basis until a year ago, then they were removed.
   

• I teach five hours a week. During midterm break, we are asked to attend meetings, but are not paid for the time.
   

• Job security is the biggest problem. People feel that they cannot say anything, lest they feel branded.
   

• I waited 40 minutes after I found out that my father had died, so that I could inform my class, I did that because my supervisor asked me to, and because I was concerned I might lose my job.
   

• I taught part time for 15 years and did more than 450 hours more than I was being paid for, when you take into consideration preparation, marking and follow up. I had no rights and no guarantees that I would be rehired for the next semester.
   

• I teach ESL and am being paid $20 an hour less than I make for the same job at a university. The college offered me classes at two campuses, but by the time I paid for gas and parking, and considering travel time, it was almost not worth it. I find that insulting.
   

• I’m support staff at the college. After 17 years I’m still only at Year Two on the pay scale.
   

• I’m working as a technician at the college. Every summer I get laid off and they replace me with two students.
   

• I was teaching two sections of the same course – three hours each. Now I’m teaching the same number of students, but in one section.
   

• Until December 2004 we got stat holiday pay and vacation pay. Then the college said: “We never had to give it to you, so we’re not!”
   

• I’m sharing an office with 13 others.
   

• At our college, people working full-time can take college courses for $25. Part-timers have to pay 85 per cent of the cost.
   

• I’ve worked at the college 24 hours a week for 10½ years, and have never taken a vacation.
   

• I’ve worked as a support staff at the college for more than six years. I work alongside three full-time people, and my pay is about $8.00 an hour less than theirs for the same job.
   

• As a part-timer, I am never given the opportunity to participate in training. Sometimes I feel like I’m not there.
   

• At our college it’s definitely who you know, not what you know. Nepotism is rampant in hiring at our college.
   

• At our college, Continuing Education teachers don’t get paid until the end of the term after grades are submitted.
   

• Part time faculty get paid less for night courses than those they teach in the day. I’ve also had to make up teaching hours lost because of statutory holidays.
   

• I’ve been told that I have to post office hours for students, even though I’m not being paid for them.
   

• I was asked to teach two courses, but they found out they had enough students to add one more class. Instead of hiring me, they hired someone else with fewer qualifications, so they would not have to pay me at the partial load salary.
   

• There is a lot of stigma associated with being a part-time support staff. I was hired without a written contract and six times in the past five months I’ve been in the position of being “about to be laid off” the next day, and then extended at the last minute.
   

• The part-time support staff at our college get laid off from mid-December until early January, while full-timers get paid for the entire break. We also get laid off for the summer months, especially in the library.
   

• If a part-time instructor is sick, he or she doesn’t get paid. But when the college calls to say a class is cancelled, there is no compensation for all the preparation work that has been done for that class either. Once I was called an hour before my 6:30 to 9:30 class regarding the cancellation of that class. I wasn’t paid for either the prep work or the teaching.
   

• I was handed the course outline and the text for a class one day before the class was to begin. The college exploits the loyalty, responsibility and commitment that part-timers feel, and yet there is no reciprocity when it comes to hiring for full time positions.
   

• I would have to teach 50 courses a year in order to be paid equally to a full-time academic.
   

• I’ve been asked to take a pay reduction when enrollment in one of my classes doesn’t meet the minimum.
   

• When we bail out the college by taking a course at the last minute, they are very happy, but when it comes time for the next semester, they treat us like lepers.
   

• We can never relax. We feel that any time the manager can say: “Pack your bags, you’re gone!”
   

• I never know what days I’m going to be working, and it is stressful not knowing!
   

• I have been teaching at the college part time for two years now, and also for a board of education. I am unionized at one place but not at the college where I put in more working hours.
  
  I am not paid for committee meetings, workshops, activities, etc. Sometimes, I find it a pity since I do not participate and I miss the opportunities of building relationships with my colleagues and my students.
  
  One semester, apparently, someone made a mistake. I was hired as a temp and I enjoyed a full salary and working conditions in line with my skills. Since then I was told that it was impossible to repeat because classes I taught have already been given to others. Was that a good strategy to keep me?
  
  I must work the hours I miss on public holidays, sick days and so on.
  Why do I tolerate such nuisances? Because I like to teach and want to have a full-time position one day. It may never happen. It is not a lack of classes to teach. The problem is the system presently in place which deprives students of good teachers. It is really discouraging.
   

• I’ve been a teacher at the college for 14 years and have applied for several full-time teaching positions. Each time I have been turned down, someone on the hiring committee invariably calls me a couple of days later to find out if I can teach a course the following week because she’s desperate for an instructor. So, apparently, though I’m qualified to teach, I’m not qualified to be full-time. That makes no sense. (Of course, if I declined, I know I’d never get another teaching job at the college again.) This creates an atmposphere of resentment, and ultimately the students are the ones who suffer.
   

• I spent 3 years working in Human Resources for a large organization in B.C., where one of my duties was to post job positions for at least five different union affiliates. Full-time and part-time staff were paid equally, and even though the benefits differed, part-time staff were still eligible. Now, I am part-time support staff at an Ontario college, and I cannot grasp any reasoning why full-time staff are compensated more than part time staff. Have Ontario’s colleges taken a step back, when the rest of the country have advanced two steps? Read the headlines: “We do not value our part-time workers as we do their full-time colleagues, but we fully expect them to work as hard and diligently for less pay with no or little benefits!” How do they expect to retain or attract experienced staff? How do they expect to keep morale high? Where is the incentive? Where is the justice?
   

• After 20 years of part-time teaching, with a few sessionals thrown in, I have lots of stories to tell but will share only a few right now.
  
  After teaching a course for several years, I realized that the existing course manual was outdated and contained misinformation. I spent over 20 hours putting together a detailed proposal for a new manual. The proposal was approved by the department co-ordinator, with the condition that the new manual would be completed and I would be compensated during the Fall term. This agreement was in keeping with department budget and would still have the manual ready for the Winter term. In September, the department co-ordinator pulled me aside at a meeting to tell me that I would no longer be teaching the Winter course and therefore did not want me to rewrite the manual. I received no compensation for work that had already been done. After teaching a wide variety of courses over 16 years and having written several other manuals, I now refuse to teach any lecture courses that involve unpaid preparation.
  
  Over 5 years ago there was a full time position posted for the department in which I had already been teaching part time for 15 years. I met with the co-ordinator and department chair to discuss the position. The posting was for a teaching instructor. I was told that an instructor was not involved in course development, did not make decisions on curriculum and basically taught what ever was put in front of them. At that time I had been writing manuals and developing course curriculum as a part time instructor and was not interested in this particular position. I was also told that there was little chance that this posted instructor position would lead to a professorship because it was a completely different level position. Within less than a year, the department chair unilaterally decided that the newly-hired instructor (who does not have a university degree) would all of a sudden become a professor. I approached the department chair to challenge this unilateral decision to be told that he had the power to make these decisions whenever he felt.

It seems to me that each department keeps the salaries of its part time staff a secret. When I started teaching at the College 20 years ago I was paid $70 per hour (partial load). After five years was told that the COLLEGE POLICY was to no longer hire partial load staff so I had to stay within the six-hour limit to be considered part time. The salary for this position is $30 per hour. What are other part-time people paid?

• I am an alumna of the college and have been a part-time employee with a non-post-secondary program for close to a year. Upon gaining employment with the college, I was just happy to get a job.
  
  I have a great coordinator who told me not to get too excited over the wage. I did not quite get it until the end of August when my contract was completed and I did the math.
  
  Because I walked in and was handed course outlines and nothing else, I spent an average of 25 hours per week prepping for the two courses I taught all summer. On top of the prep, I also dedicated plenty of free time to the students for tutoring and extra help. I still offer the same extra help now because in the end it is the students who suffer. I recall having teachers who were in the same position as I am in now and they were never available for help. My grades suffered in those courses and that is not something I want my students to face. To supplement my income I have attempted to find work at the college in a support staff position. Although I come with high recommendations, I do not get a call for an interview, even when I apply for positions posted with the faculty I work in. Amazing, isn’t it? A Dean’s List graduate who is a part time faculty member cannot even get an interview for a position, for which she qualifies, at the same college from which she graduated. I feel as though I have been labelled an outcast.
   

• I have been a part-time instructor in Civil Technology for seven years teaching six hours a week.
  
  The worst thing that has happened to me of all is the lack of consideration in letting me know that the program software had changed. I instruct a highway design program of which they changed the program not once but twice. I had no idea the change has happened. The preparation for course notes, approximately 60-70 pages, are technically wasted (unusable). I had to learn the highway design program on the fly with the students, which is not fair for me or the students. The students deserve better.
  
  The college has currently gone to paperless paystubs and I found out Feb. 14, 2006, thinking that someone was taking my paystubs because the college negelected to tell me this. No respect.
   

• “It was there that the... lawyers proved that the demands lacked all validity for the simple reason that the banana company did not have, never had had, and never would have any workers in its service because they were all hired on a temporary and occasional basis.”
  
  - from One Hundred Years of Solitude by Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The colleges like to talk about “empowering” everyone, but have treated contract workers like migrant workers for decades.... Faculty who have done great jobs for five years or more (in this time they have applied for the own jobs 15 times – the colleges contrive to collapse jobs for two or three weeks between semesters to avoid paying for holidays) almost NEVER are hired for full-time jobs. I believe that the HR departments of all colleges have a POLICY that contract faculty are by default not considered for full-time jobs....

There are almost no academics in any managerial position above coordinator. The management model is an ersatz, failed 1980s-style Enron model in which “directors” strut through an EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION as if it were their corporate fiefdom.

HR at the Colleges has contrived that contract faculty continuously apply for their own jobs. There is just enough time between these jobs – with no pay – that EI is impossible if the job is lost....

Over several decades, HR and upper management have contrived that at least half of the work needed is done for free. In most departments, the students being “empowered” will have far more secure jobs and be paid more than the faculty teaching them! This is what I call “empowerment”. When the actual time needed to present a course is used, most contract faculty are working for about $20 per hour. Continuous Learning faculty “prep rooms” have about 50 banker’s boxes on shelves in a 15-square-metre room; this is the “office” for this faculty. Management likes to say of this faculty that they do it for “love of teaching....”

Ontario has let this issue –which is a human rights issue –evolve over a long time, incrementally, to the point where it is ruining the quality of education in colleges. Contract faculty I know used to say that the “car wash model” was that used by HR at the colleges. I have looked into this, and now think that, with tips, the car wash attendants hired off the street make about the same $ and are not subjected to continuous insult and disrespect.

Regards,

A banana company worker

Got something to say about the way your college treats you?

Send your story to collegeworkers@opseu.org or call our hotline at 1-866-811-7274 or (416) 448-7433.