The Collective Agreement sets out the rules for Hiring Priority, which determines the order in which teachers are assigned work (see clause 5-4.17).
HIRING PRIORITY
The College provides department coordinators with a list of all non-permanent teachers in their department ranked by their Hiring priority. Obtaining a workload in a discipline guarantees that you appear on the list for the following three years. The Hiring Priority determines the order in which teachers are assigned workloads. Workloads are distributed according to the priority list; a workload cannot be offered to someone with less priority unless the College has received refusals from those who have a higher priority for that workload.
Your position on the Hiring Priority list is firstly based on your priority (e.g. whether you have taught in the day sector or have only taught in the Continuing Education sector). If two teachers have the same priority, the ranking is determined based on who has the highest seniority. For teachers with the same seniority, the order is based on who has the highest experience, and finally the highest level of schooling. The Collective Agreement contains more details on the specific rules for Hiring Priority (see clause 5-4.17).
Note that if you are employed full-time elsewhere, you are considered to be in a position of Double Employment and so you will only be offered work if there is no one else available to teach the courses. For more information about Double Employment, see below.
If you have questions or concerns about whether Hiring Priority has been respected, please contact the DTU. When work for which you have priority becomes available, your department coordinator will send an email with an offer of a workload; depending on when the offer is received, there are different deadlines to respect in terms of responding:
- 48 hours, excluding weekends, during the two weeks before the start of classes in the Fall and Winter semester;
- 5 working days during the semester;
- 10 days outside the periods mentioned above.
Note: a teacher who does not respond within these deadlines is deemed to have refused the workload being offered.
It is important to check your Dawson email regularly, especially near the beginning of semester, to ensure that you do not miss a workload offer. You should respond to the coordinator to indicate whether you accept or refuse the workload; note that you either have to accept the whole workload or refuse the whole workload. The workload can only be split (i.e. to allow you to accept part of the workload) if you have a part-time workload at another Cegep.
The procedures and deadlines for offering and accepting/declining workloads are communicated by HR in an email to all faculty prior to the start of the semester; it is important to keep an eye on your Dawson email at this time, which may fall during the vacation period. A copy of this information is included in the Welcome Email you received from Dawson Teachers’ Union.
You retain your hiring priority for the three years following the end of your last contract. Note that being offered work in a given semester does not automatically mean you will be offered work in a subsequent semester. If you do not obtain a contract for three consecutive years, whether because there was no work available or because you turned down work you were offered, then you lose your hiring priority at the College. This means that you will not have any priority for future work and would need to be rehired to be able to teach in the future; you would lose the seniority you had previously accumulated.
DOUBLE-EMPLOYMENT
Anyone applying to a workload who already has full-time work is considered to be in “double employment” and so does not have priority on a teaching workload at any of the public Cegeps in Quebec (Article 5-1.12 of the Collective Agreement). The purpose of the double employment clause is to ensure that public sector funds are utilized to provide access to full-time work for as many people as possible. Below is a brief explanation of “double employment”; however, we encourage you to contact the DTU with any questions about your specific situation.
What counts as double employment?
Any teacher who has a full-time contract, either at Dawson or elsewhere, or who has a reasonable expectation of full-time employment for the duration of the semester for which they are being offered a teaching workload at Dawson is considered to be double-employed. [see ANNEXE II-6 of the Collective Agreement for more details]
Teachers with either a full-time annual contract or full-time contracts for both fall and winter semester, whether at a Cegep or a University, are usually considered to be full-time for the year, which includes the summer months. Consequently, even if you are not “actively” teaching during the summer, you would still be considered double employed for summer courses if you had a full-time contract in the academic year.
You have an obligation to declare your Double Employment status when responding to an official offer of a workload. If you are fully employed elsewhere, or have a reasonable expectation of being in such a situation, and are applying to a workload you must inform Dawson’s Human Resources immediately.
Moreover, if you are no longer in a situation of double-employment, you should update Human Resources immediately otherwise you may not receive workload offers (based on your previous Double Employment status).
Note that double employment only applies to someone who has full-time work. A teacher who has a part-time contract, even if it is for the whole semester, or who has several part-time jobs elsewhere, is not considered to be double employed.