On February 28, AUFA received a letter of disclosure from the university outlining a number of changes AU is presently undertaking (or plans to undertake) that may impact on bargaining. Although details remain light, I thought it would be appropriate to share this letter with the membership in the interest of transparency.
This sort of pre-bargaining disclosure is commonplace and is intended to avoid any claim by the union that it was not informed of a change prior to bargaining. That said, this is the first letter of this sort AUFA has received.
Course Production
All AU staff who are involved in the development of course materials will be centralized in a single unit, to be lead by Deputy Provost Anne-Marie Scott. No details are available.
Registrar’s Office
All registrarial activity will be centralized and processes will be reviewed. No details are available. This centralization and review may include redundancies.
Faculty Workloads
There will be a review of faculty workloads “to ensure that there is a reasonably allocation of research and scholarship, teaching and learning, and service activities.” No details are available.
Information Technology
All IT staff will be centralized, beginning in April. This centralization may include redundancies. There will also be the development of a digital learning production group that will have some relationship to the centralized course production group.
University Relations
Marketing, communications, and recruitment will be centralized under university relations, beginning in April. This centralization may include redundancies
Finance
There will be some sort of re-alignment of finance and administrative services, beginning in May. This may include redundancies.
Policies
AU plans to review its 286 policies and related procedures between January 2019 and December 2021. Regarding designation, AU states:
“As you are aware, the University is currently consulting with our union partners to finalize language in the draft ‘Designation as Academic’ policy. Once the policy is finalized, the University may seek to apply the policy to assess the designation of employees or groups of employees. There are no specific plans to do so at this time. To the extent this proceeds, it will involve consultation with AUFA and any other affected union partners, and will involve a consideration of any potential impacts to AU Team Members. The University will advise as required.”
There is little new or concrete in this statement. The short seems to be, consultation continues (although no new dates have been set). Once the BoG passes a new policy, it may or may not be applied.
HR
HR may be contracting out the adjudication of general illness leave. No details are available.
HR will be revamping performance assessment, with this project starting no earlier than August. No details are available.
The university will be closed December 24-January 4 this year.
Miscellaneous
AU is considering creating a single academic support model. No details are available and this initiative is in the concept stage only. This may entail redundancies.
Thoughts
Overall, this letter suggests there will be a significant organizational change (particularly for professionals currently embedded in faculties) as well as some risk of redundancies in some areas. The lack of details also suggests that AU does not yet have a very well developed plan for the restructuring that was announced at the end of January.
AUFA will continue to monitor the situation as we head towards serving notice to bargain in late April.
Jolene Armstrong, President