A group of U of T professors will likely be forced into retirement by the university’s senior administration unless Ontario acts soon to abolish mandatory retirement, The Varsity has learned.
The group of professors, who call themselves the “Class of 2005,” may have to retire against their will on June 31, 2005 because they will each be 65 years old this year, the age at which Ontario law currently mandates employees can be forced out of the workplace.
“I wasn’t prepared for the feeling of how discriminatory it was to have to retire at age 65,” said U of T professor Thomas McIntire, who just celebrated his 65th birthday on October 4. McIntire and the four other professors who share his predicament-L.S. Bourne, Victor Falkenheim, John Britton, and Richard E. Stren-have decided that they are not going to go gently into a retirement they don’t want, and are petitioning U of T to let them keep working.
“If I’m forced to retire, I lose my workplace, my colleagues, my respect,” said McIntire.
The Ontario Liberal government has already signaled that it will introduce legislation to end mandatory retirement, but it could be too late for McIntire and his compatriots. Unless the McGuinty government pushes the legislation through before next June, the five members of the Class of 2005-and numerous other professors across Ontario-will lose their jobs.
Despite general acknowledgement by governments, unions and human rights groups that mandatory retirement is simply age discrimination, the law remains on the books. Under the current law, the choice of whether to force 65 year-old employees to retire is left up to employers. U of T, like most Ontario universities, does not keep tenured faculty on staff once they turn 65. Some remain as part-time contract teachers, but turning 65 is, by and large, the end of their careers as U of T academics.
The Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA) has spoken out strongly against mandatory retirement laws and is now pressuring the Liberal government to fast-track their abolition. The association wrote in an October 6 press release: “Ending mandatory retirement is urgent for Ontario faculty and there is no case for delay or special treatment of universities.”
Supporters of mandatory retirement have questioned whether older workers are still able to be as productive as younger workers who could fill their place. McIntire isn’t buying it.
“My teaching, research and writing all go together,” said McIntire, who at a still-vigorous 65 had a book published just a few months ago. He is the only professor at U of T who teaches Modern World Christianity, and if he is forced out, the department of religious studies will be unable to replace him for another five years, leaving U of T students with a large academic gap in their study of Christianity.
At U of T, the decision of whether to keep the Class of 2005 employed rests with the current senior administration. The five professors recently wrote a letter to interim president Frank Iacobucci, which said: “We believe that the productive capacity of professors at 65 is not diminished with respect to their varied responsibilities as teachers, scholars, advisors, program-builders and administrators. We hope you will find some merit in our ideas.”
They have received no response. The Varsity also received no reply to requests for an interview with Iacobucci.
In a cruel irony, Iacobucci, who is now 67 years old, served on the Supreme Court during a controversial case over mandatory retirement in 1992, Olive Dickason v University of Alberta.
In that case, Dickason got tenure at the age of 55, giving her only ten years to amass a pension before she was forced to retire. She took the issue to court and the case eventually went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. The judges, Iacobucci included, ruled in favor of the University of Alberta and upheld the legality of mandatory retirement.
According to OCUFA president Michael Doucet, one of the main reasons faculty choose to work past 65 is to attain financial security. “[Mandatory retirement is] a horrible practice, discriminatory to women and recent immigrants in particular, not allowing them enough time to generate pensions in which they can live comfortably in retirement” said Doucet.
“Universities should make some special provisions for faculty who are forced to retire this year,” he added.
Professors generally start their careers later in life than in most professions due to the lengthy education required, giving them less time to amass a suitable pension. McIntire said that’s his situation.
“It’s going to be a challenge with two teenage children and only a 21 year tenure” he said.
With class sizes growing ever larger and the number of tenured professors shrinking, the Class of 2005 finds the policy of mandatory retirement baffling.
Universities forced professors to retire throughout the 1990s, contributing to 9 percent less tenure-track hiring even as enrolment increased by 14 percent. And enrolment in postsecondary institutions is expected to increase by another 60,000 students-a staggering 20 percent-between 2002 and 2012. According to The Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities, Ontario will require an additional 4000 professors by 2010. Meanwhile, experienced faculty are being shoved aside, or moving elsewhere by choice.
Mandatory retirement has already ended in Manitoba, Quebec, Alberta, PEI and the Yukon as well as countries such as New Zealand, the U.S. and Australia. Still, Ontario has been slow to act.
“Some of our best professors take jobs in the U.S. before age 65 to have the option of when to retire.” said George Luste, president of the Unversity Of Toronto Faculty Association.
But universities see short-term cost savings by turfing older faculty: it’s cheaper, after all, for universities to retire expensive older professors and hire fresh PhDs for half the price.
But with demand for teachers increasing, the starting salary for professors in Ontario is growing rapidly. Universites in Ontario have been forced to let go of staff throughout the 1990s because of budget cuts, said Doucet. The cuts were made during the Mike Harris/Ernie Eves reign, but the price is being paid by students as class sizes continue to soar.
And older faculty are not nearly as expensive as it would initially appear. The number of professors who actually decide to continue past age 65 is actually quite small. At Concordia University in Quebec, where mandatory retirement was abolished over a decade ago, there are only 13 professors older than 65. This means, say McIntire and the Class of 2005, that mandatory retirement is not really a financial issue, but a question of basic rights. The frustration, he said, is that while Ontario law may change soon, it may not be soon enough, and he and perhaps hundreds of others in his situation will be the last professors forced to retire in Ontario.
Eliminating mandatory retirement is not enough, of course, to alleviate the professor shortage or sufficiently reduce class sizes.
“What we really need to do is to put a lot more resources into graduate schools and double our capacity for PhD students” said Doucet. “But we need the older faculty so they can mentor the graduate students.”
