MRFA Workload Study

To definitively capture the reality of your day-to-day work, the MRFA is asking members across all employment categories to volunteer for a comprehensive time-tracking study, which will require logging your daily work hours during nine specific two-week intervals throughout the 2026-2027 academic year. 

The recent (2023) Workload Taskforce Report made our members’ realities unequivocally clear: administrative creep is unrelenting, the emotional labour of teaching and student support has skyrocketed, and the protected time you need for meaningful scholarship and service is constantly being eroded.While we were unable to make significant progress in the prior round of bargaining with the Workload Taskforce Report alone, we are looking ahead to the next round of bargaining with a clear goal: we must negotiate reduced, manageable workloads to address your concerns and put an end to systemic faculty burnout.

To achieve real, structural changes in our Collective Agreement, however, the MRU Board of Governors will not concede to limits based on anecdotes or qualitative reports alone. To win this fight, we need indisputable data. We need to bring numbers to the bargaining table that definitively prove the hours you actually work far exceed what should be expected of you.

We recognize the irony in asking our overworked members to take on another task to prove they have too many tasks. But by participating in this study, you are directly empowering your Bargaining Team. You are giving us the empirical evidence we need to advocate for you effectively and demand a contract that respects your time, your health, and your career progression.

What the Study Involves: We have designed this study to be as low-friction and straightforward as possible. We are looking for members across all ranks and streams to volunteer.

The Commitment: You will be asked to track your working hours using a simplified template during specific intervals throughout the 2026-2027 academic year in order to provide workload data during prep, teaching, marking, and intersessional periods. 

Next Steps: sign up, and we will send you the comprehensive Participant Guide. This guide will provide detailed instructions on how to easily log your time, how to categorize your tasks, and how to use our streamlined tracking templates.

We cannot change the workload reality without you. Please consider signing up to help us secure a better, more sustainable future for all MRFA members.