Ontario professor fired for missing make-up hours despite agreeing to more class time after strike

An Ontario college had just cause to dismiss a professor who failed to teach extra course hours to make up for missed classes, an arbitration board has ruled.

The professor at Canadore College, a college of applied arts and technology in North Bay, Ont., had a disciplinary record with a 2.5-day suspension in  2016 for falsely claiming he was off sick and a 2015 written warning for missing several scheduled classes without providing notice.

The 2017 fall semester was interrupted by an academic staff strike that ran from Oct. 16 to Nov. 21. After it ended, the professor expressed concern that his Monday marketing course (MKT-100) wouldn’t be able to make up the lost time because statutory holidays had left the course with less class time than most before the strike had started.

The professor reached an agreement with the college in which he would provide additional teaching time over the course of the semester. The semester was extended an extra month to Jan. 16, 2018, and the professor also agreed that he would teach six extra hours in that final week.

On Jan. 11, the dean met with three students about an unrelated matter. The dean asked the students how their other courses had gone and they mentioned that the MKT-100 course had been “light.” The dean asked if they had made up hours and they replied, “not really.” Additional questioning revealed that a half-hour had been added to the beginning of some classes, but it had been inconsistent.

The dean learned that the professor had told the students that he would be adding 30 minutes to their classes but that only lasted for a few weeks. He also didn’t communicate the plan for the extra hours in January. The communications were confusing to some students, leading to some showing up at different times.

The college interviewed the professor on April 12 and he said that he thought he had told the students to stay in class later than the scheduled end time. He acknowledged that he didn’t share his plan with the college and decided unilaterally to extend the class times.

The professor also said that he “delivered the lectures that I felt I could fit in” and followed the revised course outline. However, he also said that he didn’t think that he had the full week at the end of the semester to deliver the extra hours.

The college determined that the professor didn’t teach all of the additional hours that he was assigned — including some for which he was paid overtime — and that he was misleading about it. It also felt that his denial of wrongdoing broke the trust necessary to do his job. It considered the previous discipline on his record and terminated him for cause. The union filed an unjust dismissal grievance.

The arbitration board found that the professor had an obligation to inform his students about the extra hours but he didn’t properly communicate it. The board concluded that the professor had “no intention of delivering six extra hours of class time” during the last week.

The board also found that his account of how he communicated with the students and carried out the plan was inconsistent. In addition, he was evasive in the interview and he didn’t provide any documentation of adjustments for the additional teaching hours he had agreed to.

The board determined that the professor betrayed the college’s trust, as it expected that he would perform his job in compliance with the plan to which he agreed. That trust was further damaged when he failed to acknowledge any wrongdoing. With the “high degree of professional integrity” expected of college professors, the board found that the college had just cause to terminate the professor’s employment.