There were a number of developments this week regarding AU’s movement of jobs out of the Athabasca region as well as AU’s proposal to de-designate 67% of the faculty association. Here is a quick round up of the highlights.
Athabasca Location Issue
Athabasca’s town council held a special meeting with Athabasca-Barrhead-Westlock MLA Glenn van Dijken on Tuesday. The meeting was about the ongoing loss of university jobs in the Athabasca region and the limited communication from the university about major decisions.
Mayor Colleen Powell expressed deep concern with the job losses, likening it to the job losses in Vegreville when the federal government shut down an immigration and refugee processing centre, “but in slow motion”. Fassina was present for this meeting but did not speak.
The Athabasca Chamber of Commerce has recently launched an “AU in Athabasca” campaign which includes bumper stickers. Bumper stickers can be acquired from ATB Financial, Penny’s Headquarters, and Select Equipment in Athabasca.
Consultation on Designation
AU held consultation sessions with union representatives on Monday (in Athabasca) and Thursday (in Edmonton). In the Monday session, AUFA, AUPE and CUPE all asserted a preference for a designation policy that maintains the status quo.
The support of AUPE and CUPE representatives was much appreciated by AUFA representatives. Inter-union solidarity is important if it becomes necessary to appeal any de-designation decision before the Labour Board.
AU was unable to clearly explain why it was proposing a new designation policy that departed so significantly from a policy that has been in place since 1983. It remains unclear what institutional problem AU is trying to solve with this new policy.
The consultation in Athabasca was interrupted by 13 AUFA professional members. These members read a statement about the impact of de-designation on their working conditions, livelihoods, and morale. Their request was that AU maintain the current designation policy. This action was the first march on the boss by staff members in living memory.
The Thursday consultation saw further discussions, but no substantive progress was made. AU did not indicate whether or when a revised draft policy might be provided. Additional consultation dates in late February have been scheduled.
Conversations with the President
The four conversations with the president were well attended. For example, there were 40+ people in the room and 130+ online for the Peace Hills Trust sessions. Questions were dominated by staff concerns about AU’s de-designation policy.
Fassina’s response to questions about de-designation were, in short, “trust the process we have created”. This request for trust sits uneasily with the results of both AU’s engagement survey and AUFA’s MEC survey.
For example, last spring, AU’s engagement survey showed that only 39% of AU employees believed that AU’s senior leadership acts consistently and does as they say they will. This was 13% below the industry benchmark.
From 2019 AU engagement survey: http://intra.athabascau.ca/employee-engagement/index.php
In November, an AUFA survey found that only 30% of AUFA members agreed with the statement “I trust the senior leadership of the university” while 47% disagreed.
While acknowledging that he was hearing concerns about the policy, Fassina declined to withdraw the policy and start fresh as a show of good faith. He did suggest that he would be surprised if the next iteration of the policy was not substantially different.
Fassina disputed recent assertions that AU is engaged in union busting. He indicated that AU was over 90% unionized and unions would remain a part of AU. Framing union-busting as “getting rid of unions” ignores that the purpose of union busting is to reduce unions’ effectiveness, not necessarily to get rid of them. As a former associate professor of human resources, presumably Fassina knows this. Removing 67% of AUFA members from the union would, of course, reduce AUFA’s bargaining power.
Fassina’s assertion that de-designation has nothing to do with bargaining is obviously incorrect. Introducing a policy that proposes breaking up AUFA in the lead-up to (and during) bargaining is massively destabilizing. For one thing, any executive-driven exercise that substantively changes the nature of the union-employer relationship during bargaining can only lead to confusion and uncertainty. For another, the bargaining team can't know for sure who it's representing. And perhaps most damaging, current members cannot have any confidence that the AUFA team bargaining on their behalf will actually be their union representatives once the proposed new policy is implemented.
In the Athabasca-location meeting, Fassina indicates that he expected there would be redundancies as a result of restructuring caused by Imagine. At the Peace Hills Trust meeting, Fassina acknowledged that the (now) two-week delay in providing any meaningful details about the restructuring was causing significant staff distress. When questioned about low institutional morale, Fassina’s response was that he did not believe that morale was yet the lowest it had ever been.
Analysis
This week has clearly demonstrated that Fassina has mis-stepped with his draft de-designation policy. Discussions after each Conversation event suggest that staff find Fassina’s answers evasive and unsatisfactory. Many members were discussing actions they could take to further increase the cost to Fassina of pursuing the de-designation of AUFA members.
At this point, Fassina’ options for proceeding are basically two:
Double-down: Fassina could advance his draft proposal to the Board. This would result in a legal challenge as well as a significant escalation of member actions.
Walk-back: Fassina could amend his draft proposal in the hopes of de-escalating the situation.
A walk-back would most likely be a phased effort. For example, Fassina could drop the exclusion of academic coordinators and some professionals (e.g., library staff and instructional designers). The strategy here would be to undermine member solidarity and hope that AUFA would be satisfied with a reduction in the carve out. Such a walk-back would likely be framed as a response to consultation. Again, discussion after each Conversation event suggests only the maintenance of the status quo is an acceptable outcome to AUFA members.
Next Steps
Fassina has suggested that an amended version of the proposed policy is in the works. There is no clear timeline, although the Director of HR suggested that this process is likely to extend past the start of AUFA collective bargaining (which begins in early May). In the meantime, members are encouraged to continue to wear AUFA buttons, update their email profile pictures, amplify AUFA social media posts, and display “We choose AUFA” posters.
A number of members are having discussions within their work units about actions that they might take to apply pressure to Fassina to drop his de-designation plans. These include group emails and disrupting meetings with group statements. The membership engagement committee is available to consult on such actions.
Bob Barnetson, Member
AUFA Membership Engagement Committee