Guest post: Stop the PSE Cuts

This month, AUFA has joined a larger campaign against the cuts, layoffs, concessions and restructuring of our universities and colleges.  This campaign includes faculty from across Alberta’s diverse post-secondary institutions, as well as support staff and students: it is a coalition of organizations representing over 154,000 undergraduate and graduate students, over 11,000 faculty and instructors, and over 13,000 support staff in Alberta’s post-secondary education system. The campaign is focused around the slogan “Working conditions are learning conditions” in order to highlight that students, staff, faculty and the general public are all interconnected in the fight against the UCP government’s attempts to corporatize and diminish the world class system of universities and colleges that all Albertans value.

Maybe you have seen one of our social media or rural newspaper (including Athabasca Town and County) advertisements?  If not keep your eyes peeled, since we are running ads on transit systems, on billboards, in rural newspapers, on Facebook, and across different internet platforms.  While this is a good first step to get our message out to the general public, a single advertising campaign won’t beat back the concessions from our administrations or the drastic cuts from the UCP government.  That is going to take working together with each other, our sectoral allies and the students to provide a united front to these dramatic plans.

All across the province, local organizing committees are popping up, with active committees in Athabasca, Edmonton, Calgary, and Lethbridge. These committees are planning a series of virtual and, hopefully, in-person events to put pressure on decision makers to reverse the devastating cuts to our post-secondary education system.  If you want to get involved, please contact the Membership Engagement Committee, and we can put you in touch with the committee in your region.

We need the UCP government to stop the cuts and invest in post-secondary education.  For that to happen, we need all of us to organize together because as our slogan says: working conditions are learning conditions and we need all of Alberta to get this message.

We’re asking students, faculty, and staff to this survey here on the PSE cuts.

Brendan Bruce

Executive Director, Confederation of Alberta Faculty Associations