A perennial and serious issue for CUPE 4163 Component 3 members is overwork. Academic work is unlike working on the factory floor or in a retail or office setting in that when doing academic work, one does not simply punch and punch or work set hours; academic work hours can be much harder to keep track of, and thus much harder to be compensated for.
With that in mind, the union is making available an Hours Tracking Sheet. The purpose of this hours tracking spreadsheet is to ensure that the actual hours you work as a Sessional Instructor do not exceed the hours for which you are paid. The greater the number of members who track their hours, the easier it will be for us to more accurately determine which departments (and even which courses) have overwork issues. The union needs to be able to locate the problem areas before we can deal with them.
There are sheets to track your hours in both the Fall (September – December) and Winter (January-April) semesters. There are also three sheets for each semester. These are for instructors who are teaching multiple courses per term. If you are teaching more than one course, please use a different sheet for each course.
To make tracking your hours easier, there are rows for each day of the week (weekends included) so that you can enter hours on the sheet as you work them. We’ve also included space for you to describe the task (lecturing, grading, prep, etc.). The sheet totals all of your hours automatically, so all you need to do is enter your hours, enter your name and the course name and number, and enter the total number of hours you’ve been assigned for this course.
If you find that your total number of hours worked is greater than the number of hours in your assignment (208 hours for a 1.5 unit course), or if you find that part-way through the semester you’re in danger of exceeding the number of assignment hours, you should contact your administrator as soon as possible. The administrator must schedule a consultation meeting and decide whether to assign additional paid hours, provide additional work supports, assign the work elsewhere, or reset priorities. If you can’t resolve the hours discrepancy with your administrator, contact the union at office4163@gmail.com.
Please download the sheets here: