Fair Employment Week 2026 call to action! This October during CAUT’s Fair Employment Week, the MRFA seeks to raise awareness about the ongoing challenges of precarious employment on our campus. We strongly encourage all members to show your support by taking time to learn more about these critical issues and joining our local organizing efforts to secure better working conditions for our colleagues. Scroll down for details!
Get Students Involved!
- Share information with Students about Fair Employment – Post this infographic on D2L (see pg. 2)
- Get your Students to show their support for Fair Employment on Social Media
- Encourage your Students to Sign up to join the MRFA mailing list so they can support Fair employment throughout the year and stay informed during the upcoming 2027 – 2028 round of collective bargaining.
- Encourage Students to attend the Panel on Fair Employment at MRU (details below).
CAUT Virtual Keynote
Register Here (October 19, 11:00am – 12:00pm online)
Keynote address by Sarah Ryan, a Senior Research Officer at the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), will explore worker power and how unions can organize to give workers a meaningful voice in the introduction of AI and other technologies. The discussion will also examine how collective bargaining and organizing can prevent these technologies from increasing precarity, surveillance, and inequality.
Panel Discussion on The Inequities of Academia: Fair Employment for Contract Academic Staff at MRU
Register Here (October 22, 11:30am – 12:30pm in the Ideas Lounge)
Contract Academic Staff teach a massive proportion of post-secondary courses. Yet, they face systemic job insecurity, limited academic freedom, low pay, low access to benefits, and exclusion from institutional governance. Learn how chronic underfunding and the casualization of academic work impacts MRU instructors and threatens quality of post-secondary education.
Join the MRFA for a panel discussion during Fair Employment Week (FEW). Hear directly from current and former contract members as they share their experiences and from the MRFA’s Advocacy Officer on the systemic impacts.
Join the fight against precarity. Fair employment starts right here on our campus. Support equitable, stable working conditions for Contract Academic Staff and protect the quality of our education.
Contract Faculty Survey to Support Bargaining Efforts
Respond to the Survey by December 1, 2026
Your Association wants to bring the realities of your work to light through your own experiences. The goal of this brief survey is to collect anecdotal evidence regarding the specific working conditions, structural barriers, or lack of resources that prevent you from fully engaging in your faculty role on campus.
Your shared experiences are a powerful tool for advocacy. To be most effective, as you respond, feel free to share specific examples. Please note how your feedback will be used:
- Supporting Bargaining Efforts: The results of this survey will be shared directly with our Bargaining teams, providing them with crucial, real-world evidence to support negotiations.
- Building Awareness: With your permission, your stories may be incorporated into a video compilation that will be shared with the broader community, including (but not limited to) during the 2026 and/or 2027 Fair Employment Weeks and Advocacy Weeks.
This survey will ask about your experiences in the academic workforce. Completing this survey is anonymous. At the end, you will indicate if you want insights/quotes from your experiences to be shared only anonymously, or be given the opportunity to share your email and to have your quotes attributed to you for even greater impact. This choice is entirely yours.
Your voice matters, and your experiences will help us push for meaningful institutional change.