When will I get paid?

We get paid on the last day of the month. The “6 hours per day” used in payroll does not mean that we work 6 hours per day, but is a Workday artifice for accounting purposes.

How was my initial placement on the salary scale determined?

Your department chair and/or division chair used the information in your curriculum vitae to compute your initial placement, which was then approved by the Dean. Components such as your education, previous work experience, job requirements were considered. A copy of that worksheet is in your personnel file and another copy is in the LFA office. Your personnel file (located in the Deans’ office) also contains a copy of each of your contracts and a copy of each of your evaluations. To see a blank New Faculty Step Placement Worksheet, log onto the College's myLangara site and look under College Forms.

How can I have my initial placement reviewed?

You have TWO CALENDAR YEARS to appeal your initial placement. Only work done prior to starting at Langara is considered.

From the LFA office or from the Deans’ office, get a copy of the Step Placement Worksheet that your Dean approved for you. Meet with department chair or division chair to review the information they considered when completing the form. Sometimes they will simply have not noticed something, or perhaps you did not include everything, in your CV. There is no disadvantage to meeting with the Division Chair to understand the process and to make sure that all your pertinent background was considered.

If you have worked at another BC college and been placed on the “provincial” salary scale there, you will not be placed lower than that at Langara.

I worked part time at another college this semester; can I use that work to progress more quickly up the salary scale?

Once you are on the Langara salary scale, only work done at Langara counts towards increments. So even if you are part time here and simultaneously working elsewhere, you can only advance up the scale using the full-time-equivalent (FTE) work that you do at Langara.

You will increment one salary step for each one FTE year of work that you do at Langara. No one can advance more than one salary step in a twelve-month period.

How is seniority calculated?

If you work full time for three semesters in a row, your seniority earned will depend on which semester you started in, because seniority is calculated from May 1 – April 30. So if you started January 1 and worked full time for 3 semesters, then by Dec 31 you will have 1.5 years of seniority. But if you started May 1 and worked full time for 3 semesters, then by the following April 30 you will have just 1 year of seniority.

How can I check my seniority?

Find the list online by logging on to the Langara College People and Culture site – select the Collective Agreements page, click on the LFA link and then scroll down to seniority lists. The list is not necessarily accurate – keep an eye on it.

The seniority list is posted online but password protected, so you will need to contact either an LFA steward, People and Culture, or  the LFA Office for the password. Please note that the posted list is an Excel spreadsheet updated by HR once a year, usually in May. The list is a single sheet that can be sorted by department (the default setting), alphabetically by personal (first) name, or by seniority.

Why is my name on the seniority list twice?

If you taught in two different departments, then your name appears twice in the list. However at Langara, seniority is earned college-wide, not by department.  So if you taught 4 sections in Fine Arts, and 2 sections in Art History, then your total seniority is 6/8 of a year, or 0.75, and you carry that seniority in both departments and that amount will appear in the list both times.