Abstract
My main contention is that racism should be read beyond the registers of discrimination, human rights, or harassment – rather, I approach racism as a workload issue that labour organizations and employers need to address at the level of collective bargaining. To illustrate this argument, I focus on racism and workload as it relates to Black faculty, faculty of colour, and Indigenous faculty in universities and colleges in Canada, although the argument can be applied to other job types and other places. While many unions have policies and statements in support of local, national and international anti-racist struggles, the idea of racism as a workload issue has not been seriously taken up by unions/associations, or for that matter by anti-racist activists on university/college campuses. I offer reasons why racism is a workload issue, and consider the potential role of unions in addressing racism.
Highlights
On June 2, 2019 Shelby McPhee, a Black graduate student was racially profiled while attending the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences annual conference in Vancouver
The labour of Indigenous women, Black peoples, and women of colour was necessary to respond during the academic gathering, but for how many of us is this type of work recognized and compensated by universities? My central premise is that racism is an issue of workload and not just a matter of discrimination, harassment or human rights, and should be addressed as such
My goal in this paper is to examine racism in universities at the register of workload, and not just the conventional registers of discrimination, equity, human rights, or harassment in the workplace
Summary
Racism Augie Fleras (2014) notes that racism is critically approached through five overlapping frames: racism as biology, in which intelligence and morality are thought to be determined by fixed genetic and/or phenotypical differences; racism as ideology, in which humans are organized hierarchically into distinct and discrete categories based on ideals about physical, cultural, and psychological life; racism as culture whereby perceptions based on what people do and how they practice their religion and culture are anchored in discourses of national unity, identity, and citizenship; racism as structure whereby oppression is regularized by virtue of being in systemically embedded in normative fabric of society; and racism as power whereby authority and coercion is monopolized and abused by ruling classes, and nonwhites are disciplined through willful coercion as well banal practices and acts that routinize white privilege (Fleras 2014, 27-53). Faculty workload is designated through departmental standards, written and unwritten expectations, and collective agreement clauses on appointments, duties and responsibilities, evaluation of members (annual reviews, merit pay, and student evaluations), tenure and promotion, study leaves/sabbaticals, professional development, contract work/sessional agreements, sick leave and long-term disability, and compassionate leave. Despite all of these clauses, policies, and practices, workload issues for faculty are severely under-addressed by unions and associations, perhaps not least because they are already under attack in this neoliberal age. Despite the gains made by unions and association, universities have demanded “in the name of competitiveness and restoring the profits that are the lifeblood of a capitalist economy, a lowering of both material expectations and intensified workloads.”
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