Message from the President

By Kristine Hansen, UWFA President

The end of term is now here, and we’re all busy marking, invigilating exams, dealing with anxiety-stricken students, doing a multitude of administrative tasks, and trying to squeeze in enough time for some progress on scholarly endeavours.  I wish everyone well in concluding the tasks of the fall term, and I wish you some well-deserved peace following that. The pace of UWFA’s work will continue unabated, at least until late December, and I am deeply appreciative of those UWFA members who carry out the Association’s work on top of their day jobs. Main Unit negotiations have required a very substantial time commitment from the negotiating team, and the Job Action Committee has been busy preparing for the possibility that we need to take action to back up our negotiators. Meanwhile, all of the regular UWFA work continues: grievance handling, dealing with various workplace issues that arise almost daily, and meeting with the Employer on Collective Agreement and other issues.

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Control Matters: Intellectual Property and Electronic Files

Submitted by Alexander Freund, UWFA Grievance Officer 

From 11 to 13 December 2009, some fifty grievance officers and others involved in grievance processes at universities across Canada met in Ottawa to learn about the protection of intellectual property. The three-day CAUT workshop, Care, Custody and Control: Protecting Members’ Correspondence, Documents and Intellectual Property, introduced participants to a broad range of issues that have been disputed between universities and faculty associations and have even been taken to arbitration and the judicial process. Lisa McGifford and Alexander Freund represented UWFA, which was one of forty faculty associations present at the workshop.

Intellectual and legal ownership of documents and ideas has, over the last decade, moved to the centre of disputes between university administrations and faculty associations. At issue is the fundamental question of who owns the emails, syllabi, administrative files, research results, inventions, and other intellectual property created by faculty. This is especially important now as data networks (such as email systems and servers) are making it easier for employers to have access to this information. Do universities own the documents created by faculty members simply because, as university administrations have claimed, faculty are employees of the university?

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