Hope For The Future
Recently I wrote (November 2025, “Cowbells”) about the strike action by the part-time faculty here at SMU, and mentioned that the full-time union would also be negotiating a collective agreement soon. As predicted, It’s happening. The two sides haven’t yet reached an agreement, and the union has a strong strike mandate. Watch the CAUT Bulletin to see whether we manage to sort things out.
What I want to write about this month, though, is an unusual feature that’s common to both the union and management proposals, and will therefore presumably form part of the eventual agreement. While there is still real dispute about the actual numbers, both sides are suggesting a new pay scale that is very significantly flatter than has been traditional. At the lowest level, the increase in the first year would be significantly more than the cost of living. To pay for that, at the senior end (where I am now), even the union’s proposal is for an increase below inflation: a decrease in real terms. And I’m pleased.
Thirty years ago, I was looking at academic pay scales from the other end, and thinking (mostly to myself) that the same amount of money over the course of a career, with rather more of it paid earlier, would (in the long run) cost the university the same and be of far more use to the recipient. Mortgages and parental responsibilites come comparatively early, and to pay an assistant professor half what a full professor with very similar responsibilities is paid reminded me then (and still does) of Samuel Johnson’s snarky letter to Lord Chesterfield, where he describes a patron as one who “looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help?” I was in no way struggling, but if I could somehow send a large pre-dated cheque to my younger self, it would have been received with gratitude (at least until the resulting temporal paradoxes destroyed the banking system.)
And is my work today worth so much more than it was thirty years ago? I have, I hope, learned at least a little in those decades. But when I look at my younger colleagues, at their talent, intelligence, and dedication, I think, first, that mathematics, and academia in general, are in extremely good hands; and, second, that age and experience are only a small part of the recipe for good teaching and good research. I’m glad that the management and union seem to agree at least on this principle, and I hope the remaining differences will be resolved.
