Crisis and Opportunity: Faculty Associations and the Challenge of Pandemic Bargaining

This article explores the effects of COVID-19 on collective bargaining in Canadian universities. Specifically, the research considers how the pandemic created both crises and opportunities for faculty associations, primarily through a case study of the Brock University Faculty Association’s 2020 round of bargaining. More broadly, the article examines how COVID-19 has brought into sharper focus debates within faculty associations about the need to transition from a traditional to an organizing model of collective bargaining in order to better defend and advance the interest of academic labour within the neoliberal university.