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Peter MacKinnon: AI use at universities not something to be negotiated with unions

The responsibility for digital transformation lies in academic hands, not at the bargaining table

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A recent article in the Canadian Association of University Teachers Bulletin is a reminder to pay renewed attention to governance in our universities. York University’s Hannah Johnston wrote: “unions should negotiate for ongoing consultation and co-governance rights about how digital technologies are selected and implemented at work.”

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Consultation should not present a problem but union/management co-governance in our universities must be avoided.

Peter MacKinnon: AI use at universities not something to be negotiated with unions Back to video

Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered digital transformation is here. The Harvard Business School’s Kate Gibson explains that “digital transformation is the process of adopting new technologies” and includes rethinking models, optimizing operations and improving user experiences.

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The transformation is bringing excitement and some unease within organizations. The Globe and Mail’s Vanmala Subramaniam writes that public sector unions “are trying to codify language around artificial intelligence and layoffs into collective agreements, a push that is facing resistance from employers, who see the technology as integral to transforming their workforces.”

University leaders must join the resistance for two reasons; first, because AI-powered transformation is about much more than the working conditions of union members; and second, because governance within our universities places responsibility for this transformation in academic hands, not at collective bargaining tables.

Some historical context is necessary here. From their founding until the mid 1960s, Canadian universities were governed by boards of external members in their business and financial matters, and by senates or like bodies of faculty members in their academic affairs. This bicameral governance was embedded in provincial legislation, endorsed in the 1966 Duff-Berdahl report — University Government in Canada — and remains current for most of our universities today.

Soon after Duff-Berdahl, faculty associations sought and gained union status — not all but most of them, and the difference between associations that are unions, and those that are not, is immaterial here. All faculty associations have representative duties to their members and there are tensions — real or potential — between them and academic senates. Their memberships overlap; and the distinction between academic matters that are the responsibility of senates, and the associations’ duties to represent their members may be blurred or lost.

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The authors of Duff-Berdahl could have predicted this. They understood the importance of the distinction between faculty members acting as members of the academic community and faculty associations acting as bargaining representatives for employees. To pursue the latter, they wrote, faculty associations should stay “completely outside the formal structure of university government.”

This means that Hannah Johnston’s plea in paragraph one above must be rejected. The incorporation of digital technologies into university activities is one of academic substance for university administrations and academic councils, and must not be a subject for the give and take, and push and pull, of collective bargaining.

Peter MacKinnon served as a dean of law and as a president of three universities, and is a senior fellow of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and the Aristotle Foundation.

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