Why Does Labour Matter?
The Past, Present, and Future of Labour
and Labour Studies
The Past, Present, and Future of Organizing in Academic Staff Associations in Canada
Summary
This roundtable will explore the strategic evolution of academic staff associations, offering insights into their historical trajectory and future potential as labour organizations. Facilitated by Susan Spronk (University of Ottawa and Co-Chair of CAUT’s Equity Committee) and Larry Savage (Brock University and past Chair of CAUT’s Collective Bargaining and Organizing Committee), the discussion will feature academic staff association activists from select universities reflecting on innovations related to bargaining strategy and member organizing. To ground the discussion, participants will reflect on the organizing methods associated with Jane McAlevey, the degree to which such methods have been integrated into the university sector, and the pitfalls and possibilities related to such methods in the context of Canadian universities. The rountable promises to contribute to a broader understanding of labour’s strategic repositioning in the sector, providing valuable reflections on how to fight growing precarity and the stratification of academic labour in the context of the neoliberal university.
Biographies
Orvie Dingwall (she/her) is a Health Sciences Librarian at the University of Manitoba and is Head of the Outreach unit that provides library services and resources to health professionals throughout Manitoba. She has been actively involved in the University of Manitoba Faculty Association (UMFA) for over a decade, serving as a member of the Board of Representatives, Bargaining Team, Executive, and as President (2021-2024), including during UMFA’s 35-day strike in 2021. Orvie is active within the labour movement, serving on the Winnipeg Labour Council, the Manitoba Organization of Faculty Associations, the Manitoba Federation of Labour, and the CAUT Defence Fund. She is a past President of the Canadian Health Libraries Association (2010) and is an active member of the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) Librarians’ and Archivists’ Committee (2018-2021 and 2024-present). Orvie’s research focuses on health sciences libraries and librarianship, and academic faculty associations.
Paul Christopher Gray teaches in the Department of Labour Studies at Brock University. He has recently co-authored an article, with Jordan House, on labour organizing in higher education, published in the journal, Work in the Global Economy. His recent research on labour organizing in the gig economy has been published in the journal Labour/La Travail, and in a chapter, co-authored with Larry Savage and Stephanie Ross, in the edited volume, Power and Resistance: Critical Thinking about Canadian Social Issues, 7th Ed.(Fernwood Publishing).
Jordan House teaches in the Department of Labour Studies at Brock University. His research interests include prison labour, labour movement renewal, and new forms of worker organization.
Josh Lepawsky (he/him; settler) is Professor of Geography at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador. He researches the environmental geographies of the tech sector.
Madeleine Pastinelli est ethnologue et professeure au Département de sociologie de l’Université Laval. Activement engagée dans la défense de la gouvernance collégiale des universités, de la liberté académique et plus largement des conditions qui fondent la mission universitaire, elle a eu l’occasion au fil des ans d’occuper plusieurs postes et de siéger dans différents comités du Syndicat des professeures et professeurs de l’Université Laval. Elle a notamment joué le rôle de porte-parole du syndicat et négocié la convention collective du SPUL lors de la grève des professeur.es de l’U. Laval en 2023. Depuis deux ans, elle préside la Fédération québécoise des professeures et professeurs d’université, qui regroupe les principaux syndicats et associations de professeurs d’université au Québec. Comme chercheuse, elle s’intéresse aux identités en lien avec les usages des médias sociaux et le pluralisme normatif.
Rhiannon Rutherford works in course production at Athabasca University. As a long-time member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), she gets involved in shopfloor organizing and mobilizing wherever she works — from the post office to academia, workers need to build power and fight back. Rhiannon has held multiple roles in the Athabasca University Faculty Association (AUFA), including president and job action committee chair.
Larry Savage teaches in the Department of Labour Studies at Brock University. His research is focused on collective bargaining, union strategy, and labour politics. He is a long-time academic union activist and a former member of the Executive Council of the Ontario Federation of Labour. Most recently, he served as the chair of the Collective Bargaining and Organizing Committee of the Canadian Association of University Teachers from 2022-2024. He has published extensively on academic staff associations and has co-authored several books on the Canadian labour movement including his latest book with Stephanie Ross, Shifting Gears: Canadian Autoworkers and the Changing Landscape of Labour Politics, published the University of British Columbia Press.
Susan Spronk teaches international development and global studies at the University of Ottawa. She has been active in the academic labour movement since serving as Chief Steward Unit 3 of CUPE 3903 while a graduate student of Political Studies at York University in the early 2000s. More recently, she has served in various positions on the Association of Professors of the University of Ottawa since 2013, including President, Past President and Mobilization Officer. She has served as the co-chair of the Equity Committee of the Canadian Association of University Teachers from 2021-2025. Her academic research has focused on the role of social movements in pushing for equity in public service delivery, including the labour movement. She currently serves on the editorial board of Studies in Political Economy. Her most recent publication is a co-edited book (with Thomas Marois and David A. McDonald) on Public Banks and Public Water: Financing Options for Sustainable Development (Routledge 2025).