Dalhousie University is the latest in a long line of universities who have claimed they have serious financial constraints in the past year. They announced a hiring freeze last year, and they have been refusing to replace faculty members who retire for many years–some faculties have a majority of members who are on short-term contracts. They continually hire people at the management level (how many vice presidents does the university need?) who then make decisions about the university as if it’s a business. Like all universities, they urged faculties to recruit more and more international students who they charge three times the tuition of domestic students, then were prevented from doing this when the federal government curtailed foreign student immigration last year. But the fact is that years of financial mismanagement is the true culprit: the university has been moving money from its operational budget into its capital spending budget for years. Faculty members are not a liability–we are the reason the university exists.
What does it mean to be unionized?
Like most Canadian universities, Dalhousie has unionized faculty members: 90% of the university’s 1,000 faculty members belong to the Dalhousie Faculty Association (DFA). The DFA also includes our librarians and counsellors. Other Dalhousie staff are also unionized, either with Nova Scotia Government and General Employees Union (NSGEU Local 77) or the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE Local 3912). The DFA leads negotiations on our collective agreements, which we have had since 1979. Being unionized means being part of a group that fights for its members–meaning that we collectively bargain for mutual benefits such as standardized salary scales and rates of increase, parental and sick leaves, etc. When we see some of our members being threatened, we take action. Both NSGEU Local 77 and CUPE Local 3912 are negotiating new collective agreements this year. DFA members are thinking of them as we negotiate fair pay for this region, and will be supporting them if they strike.
In an era of back-to-work orders (and with great appreciation to Air Canada flight attendants for continuing to strike illegally until they finally eliminated unpaid work), why should we support the labour rights of professors? While some people think of professors as living in some kind of privileged ivory tower, the fact is we don’t: universities have followed the trend of increasing their percentage of precariously-employed workers while increasing their spending on administrative salaries. A minority of faculty members in Canada are now tenure-track, meaning that they have permanent positions for five years when they have the right to apply for tenure and promotion. Our limited-term instructors on the other hand have just one-year contracts, living on low wages in precarious employment–Dalhousie has steadily reduced the number of 2-year and 3-year contracts in favour of these shorter terms. We do not want to see the number of precarious workers to increase at Dalhousie. We have seen this at other universities and colleges and know that it means a lower quality of education for students, because people who are precariously employed have to work extra jobs to make ends meet. We also know that it is grossly unfair considering the skills and education of these workers.
For those of you outside of academia: professors do not merely teach. We have PhDs and most have spent between 9-15 years in post-secondary education developing subject matter expertise and learning how to conduct research. Our research is a core function of most universities (particularly in the U-15, Canada’s leading research universities). If we’re lucky our teaching overlaps with our research areas and we can train the next generation of researchers. We lead and participate in endless service activities (e.g. sitting on Senate, school and faculty committees to develop curriculum, addressing student concerns, organizing research and professional events, preparing our programs for ongoing accreditation by professional organizations) that are invisible to our own students, let alone those outside the field. Most faculty members go above and beyond these responsibilities, particularly if it involves their student welfare and their own research achievements. Limited-term instructors are doing all of this for far lower salaries and without a guarantee of employment next year. We also have some sessional instructors, who are not unionized faculty members because they typically teach one or two courses and have full-time jobs elsewhere. Most of our School of Planning sessionals are professional planners in municipalities or the private sector, and they have either a Bachelors or Masters degree in planning. Critically, sessionals do not perform research or service activities–because they have full-time jobs elsewhere. These distinctions may seem confusing (and they are invisible to our students), but they are critical because universities are acting like other corporations in trying to maximize profits by hiring more temporary workers–but permanent faculty do far more work for the university than limited-term instructors.
Our collective agreements are three years in length and the latest agreement expired on June 30, 2025. In anticipation of this, collective bargaining started months ago, but the Dalhousie Board of Governors have not come back with a reasonable offer to our union, and have repeatedly walked out of negotiation or conciliation meetings with the DFA.
Why would we strike?
Earlier in the bargaining process, the Board of Governors stated that:
- they wanted to reduce the percentage of unionized members so they could lay off currently faculty members and underpay new ones (they have now removed this demand)
- they wanted the freedom to place librarians in whichever library they choose, rather than allowing them to work in their area of expertise (they have now removed this demand)
- they wanted to offer a lower than standard pay increase to DFA members
In the Board’s latest offer to the DFA, they removed the first two demands and stuck to the final one. The DFA issued a voting process to ask members whether they agree to this offer, and will wait until they hear from 85% of their members before responding to the Board–the vote is scheduled to close on Aug. 21st, but could be extended to make sure it hears back from the same percentage of its members as initially voted to strike back in July.
Dalhousie is not in a financial crisis–they had a $55 M surplus as of 2024, they saw an increase in $80 M in cash and cash equivalents (for a total of over $400M), they have capital assets they are not using, and they have refused efforts to incentivize the retirement of senior faculty members. Faculty members are now being paid salaries 9% below inflation: we had a 0% increase during the COVID years because the university claimed we would have a huge drop in enrolment–in reality we had a 3% increase. The university has consistently overspent on capital projects like the construction of a new hockey arena because they have moved operational funds over to capital spending. The DFA won a 3% increase for its members in 2022 and 2.5% in 2023 and 2024. We are asking for 3.5%, 4.5% and 5.5% for our three-year agreement, while Dalhousie’s offer is 2% per year for the next three years.
Let me be frank: as a housing researcher, I know that housing costs in Halifax (average rent $2,200) are in the same range as Toronto (average rent $2,465) and Vancouver ($2,700), but we are being paid as if the rents are somehow half of that cost. We have heard from many newer faculty members that they are taking second jobs because they cannot afford their rent–some of them are paying 70% of their salaries in rent. My guess is most of the Board of Governors and the Dalhousie administration are homeowners–and that they bought their homes well before the prices reached the stratosphere in Halifax in 2019. They literally have no idea how much the cost of living has changed since then. If our salary increases don’t even come close to rental price increases (which rose by 7% in the past year alone), how does the university think it will recruit and retain professors?
What is the latest news?
On Monday, August 18th the Board notified the DFA that they will lock us out of our offices, email and other online accounts on Wednesday, August 20th. This makes Dalhousie the first U-15 school to lock out its faculty members. In 2007, St. Thomas University in Fredericton was the first Canadian university to lock out its faculty before a strike. The University of New Brunswick faculty went on strike on January 13, 2014, and were locked out the next day, with an agreement reached on January 30; they got 3.5/4/5% increases over three years after an arbitrator determined they were far behind comparable universities in compensation. Université de Trois-Rivières locked out its members in 2018; their Minister of Higher Education ordered the university to end the lockout, and Carleton University narrowly avoided a lockout in 2018. In the US, the first faculty lockout was at Long Island University in 2016.
It’s one of way of making history, I guess?
If you want to keep on top of this story, follow the DFA on Instagram and X (@dalfacultyassoc), on Bluesky (@dalfaculty.bsky.social) and on Facebook (Keep Dal Strong). There is a special Q&A document for our students here.
