President’s Message: Fair Employment Week starts today: Stand with our Contract Academic Staff
October 19, 2026Dear MUNFA Colleagues,
This week, October 19 to 23, MUNFA joins academic staff associations across the country in marking Fair Employment Week as part of CAUT’s Fair Employment Now! campaign. I am writing to invite all Academic Staff Members (ASMs) to take part. I especially call on tenured colleagues to recognize the contributions of contractual colleagues.
Contract Academic Staff (CAS) are part of everything we do at Memorial, whether you hold a teaching-term appointment (TTA) or a regular term appointment (RTA), or work as a librarian, coordinator, or in another contract role, you teach a large share of our students and help to keep our programs running. Yet you do this work without job security, basic resources, or a meaningful voice in the decisions that shape our working lives. At Memorial, we have seen how quickly CAS are the first to feel the impact of cuts, and those of us left are reminded every day how essential CAS are.
Fair Employment Week is about advocating to change the working conditions of CAS, for the better. This year, we are focused on three things: better working conditions for CAS, a stronger CAS voice in shared governance, and greater awareness of the contributions our CAS colleagues make every day.
Here is how you can get involved:
Follow MUNFA on social media. Starting today, our CAS members are taking over MUNFA’s social media channels to share their stories, their work, and their experiences in their own words.
Join us for a screening of In Search of Professor Precarious. On Thursday, October 22 at 5:00 p.m. in SN-2109 (St. John’s campus), MUNFA will host a screening of this documentary on the realities of precarious academic work in Canada. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the film’s producer, Gerry Potter. Everyone is welcome, and I encourage you to bring a colleague. RSVP LINK. We plan to have a follow-up event in the winter semester at Grenfell campus.
Show your support with a poster. We are asking our tenured colleagues to stand visibly alongside CAS this week. Print a #WeAreMUN poster [LINK], display it on your office door or in your department, and snap a photo of yourself with it. Share it on social media using #WeAreMUN and tag MUNFA so that we can amplify it. When permanent faculty speak up for CAS, it sends a powerful message that fair employment is a shared priority across our entire membership.
Whether you hold a limited-term contract or a permanent appointment, fair employment for CAS is a concern for all of us. Our strength as a union comes from standing together, and this week is a chance to show CAS colleagues, publicly and proudly, that they do not stand alone.
In solidarity,
Erika Merschrod
President, MUNFA
