AUFA Condemns Employer Disruption and Mismanagement; Calls for Concrete Action

AUFA condemns the Board of Governors’ callous firing of Dr. Scott who lost his wife only weeks ago. The surprise announcement of the termination of former AU President Dr. Peter Scott and the appointment of Dr. Alex Clark to fill this role has left faculty and staff at Athabasca University reeling.  AUFA members have been experiencing callousness and disruption beyond the recent upheavals and actions of the BOG and are growing weary of the cycle of crises facing this institution – a cycle that is taking its toll on staff morale and student enrolment alike. Yet we also remain committed to the university’s open mission and hopeful for some stability and calm so we can focus on our work in service of this mission.  

This blog post will analyze how we got here and outline a path forward. Our core message to the university administration and the Board of Governors is that, to right this ship, faculty and staff need to lead the way.  

Problematic Process 

The sudden announcement of a change in presidents left many wondering, how did this happen? While the full story likely won’t ever be revealed, it is clear from multiple (and in some cases, conflicting) media reports that the process by which this decision was made was extremely problematic, including the callous way in which Dr. Scott was “released.” It is difficult not to see the roots of this decision in the heavy-handed approach to AU overhauling board membership and issuing institutional directives adopted by the Minister of Advanced Education Demetrios Nicolaides since last March.  

AUFA is aligned with the Confederation of Alberta Faculty Associations (CAFA) and the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) in calling for all presidential searches at post-secondary institutions to be as open and transparent as possible. Instead of being surprised by the announcement of a new leader selected through a completely closed and secretive process, faculty, staff, students, and the broader community should have meaningful exposure to potential candidates and an opportunity to provide input to the selection process.  

While we remain critical of the process that got us to this point, AUFA calls on Dr. Clark to provide very different leadership than what we’ve experienced over the last several years – one that is more responsive and prioritizes stability and employee well-being over unproductive disruption.  

“Disharmony”  

The Board Chair referenced “staff strife and disharmony” as a key factor motivating this decision. We might characterize the situation slightly differently, but it does point to the worsening of both morale and working conditions over the past several years. AUFA members have weathered blatant union-busting, aggressive bargaining, continuous and cumulative breaches of our rights under the collective agreement, and a generally callous disregard for our well-being. AUFA staff and volunteers can scarcely keep up with the onslaught of contract violations, disciplines, and other issues facing our colleagues.  

While AUFA as a union is occasionally vilified by university leaders or painted as the source of problems, the reality is that we simply would not have to fight so much if university leadership, particularly decision makers within Human Resources, demonstrated even the slightest bit more care and regard for employee well-being. Well-intentioned, good faith efforts to raise concerns about employee wellness are routinely ignored or rejected.  

AUFA is committed to doing its part to meet in good faith and attempt to resolve current, long-standing, and emergent issues directly with the employer and to reduce the number of cases that are escalated to arbitration at the labour board. We call on the university administration to come to the table with the same good faith.  

Words and Actions  

One of the most common complaints we have heard from AUFA members over several years of regular surveys and other engagement efforts is the disconnect between the rhetoric of university leadership and their concrete actions. This has been experienced most acutely in the university’s so-called commitment to Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI).  

Despite proclamations about intentions to champion EDI, including signing the Scarborough Charter, previous initiatives left much to be desired. We still are waiting for a university-wide plan and policy, supported by appropriate personnel and overseen by a body independent from HR, for fostering an equitable, diverse, and inclusive work environment and articulating institutional accountabilities. While we wait, faculty, staff, and students who are experiencing systematic forms of gender, sex, racial, anti-Indigenous, and anti-Black harassment are left with little recourse.  

AU’s actions and rhetoric on EDI need to come into closer alignment – urgently, not pushed to some distant future. AUFA calls on the university administration to prioritize the establishment of an independent Equity Office that has both an appropriate mandate and sufficient resources to be effective.  

Mismanagement 

Over at least the past year AUFA members and our colleagues have been grappling with increasingly unsustainable workloads and worsening working conditions, making it more and more difficult to maintain the services and quality of courses that students deserve and expect.  

There are many contributing factors, but topping the list are the many ways in which IT functions have been extremely poorly managed by top leaders while also being increasingly severed from academic oversight and governance. From the poorly handled reorganization of the IT department to the incessant pushing forward with ill-fitting and costly technological changes, staff within IT have been working within an increasingly corrosive working environment, and negative impacts are being felt across nearly all university departments.  

We want a chance to be excited about change, to exercise our professional judgment, and to actually use the skills for which we were hired in the service of the university’s open mission. We want to break out of unproductive siloes and to understand how our individual work contributes to achievable, shared goals. AUFA calls on the university administration to pause the implementation of the Integrated Learning Environment and prioritize staff agency and input in an honest and transparent reassessment of technological change initiatives.  

Time to Start Listening 

Of course, there are forces at play that are larger than AU alone. The post-secondary sector across the province and beyond is strained by many of the same issues, and the current provincial government has contributed to many crises and challenges across institutions. But AU is not simply a victim of circumstances. There are many things that are fully within the university’s power to change.  

The top-down, managerial, corporate-style leadership adopted over the past several years is not working, nor is the increased reliance on external vendors. Our strength as a university comes from within – the dedication and commitment of those who do the real work in the service of students is the reason AU has survived despite abysmal failures of leadership.  

As a faculty association, we have frequently engaged our membership in order to gather meaningful feedback and input on both internal union decisions and broader university questions. Our understanding of the current situation is grounded in countless hours of respectful listening, reading, writing, and discussions with colleagues. Yet we have been consistently ignored, sidelined, or belittled by successive university leaders. We expect that our colleagues in our sibling unions have had a similar experience.  

We believe that, for the university to achieve stability and grow in its mandate as an open public institution, senior administrators and the board of governors need to hear, respect, and meaningfully respond to the concerns and suggestions raised by faculty, staff, and students. Better yet, AU needs to move beyond listening and empower faculty and staff to actively and meaningfully participate in decision making processes, including those at the highest level.  

AUFA calls on the Board of Governors and the university administration to refocus on core, mission-driven work; to prioritize stability and faculty and staff well-being; to empower employees to exercise meaningful agency; and to strengthen collegial governance by increasing transparency and participation.  

Rhiannon Rutherford, AUFA President 

Your Turn 

The AUFA executive will be identifying more specific priorities to present to the new university leadership. Use this space to share your priorities or any other thoughts about the recent announcement and how AUFA should respond.  

AUFA Equity Audit Is Underway

Early in 2021, AUFA’s Executive prioritized making meaningful progress toward building a more inclusive union. As an initial step, AUFA President David Powell reported to the May 2021 General Membership Meeting in this way:

AUFA has begun an Indigenous Audit by hiring Dr. La Royce Batchelor who is examining AUFA’s documents and culture to create a series of recommendations towards a more inclusive and decolonized construct by shifts in language, inclusion, equity, diversity, and community. What that has meant is to look at what is written and what is said, and what that means. To question what power relationships are enforced through how our contract and other documents are written, and to whose advantage.

Since then, Dr. Batchelor has provided AUFA with several reports and recommendations. As an example, in a recent email to the AUFA Executive, Dr. Batchelor explained the link between union practices and the broader culture at AU:

It is a common misperception that it is the employer that determines corporate culture. However, repeated studies have demonstrated that it is the largest mass of participants that shapes corporate culture, or functional operations. If members of AUFA decide to function or operate in a different way the administration must shift.

In November, the Executive struck a committee to examine and respond to Dr. Batchelor’s observations. At present, the committee includes Myra Tait, Gail Leicht, Rhiannon Rutherford, and David Powell. Following both the letter and the spirit of Dr. Batchelor’s suggestion that the ‘largest mass of participants shapes corporate culture,’ however, many others will be needed in different capacities at different points throughout the process. The work is complex and requires us to examine biases, assumptions, structures, and long-standing practices. It’s also essential, especially if we, as a collective of over 400 individuals, are serious about addressing inequities and promoting inclusion both within our union and within the university.

To that end, while this project was initially conceived of as an Indigenous Audit, we think a better way to conceptualize it is as an Equity Audit. This more expansive and inclusive process title, we think, better reflects the audit’s broad scope and many different perspectives on power structures and relationships within AUFA and AU.

As an AUFA member, you are encouraged to review AUFA’s Equity Statement, and to consider adding your name as a signatory or offering feedback.

The Equity Committee appreciates all member feedback on the Equity Statement. We are an active committee, meeting on a monthly basis to consider a wide range of equity issues at AU. As we consider your comments, our hope is to revise the Statement on an annual basis, for presentation at the AUFA Annual General Meeting.

For the initial stages of the audit, Dr. Batchelor conducted detailed analyses of AUFA’s foundational documents, including our constitution, bylaws, and collective agreements, in addition to the Post-Secondary Learning Act, as well as the more dynamic content on the AUFA blog and website. Current and future stages will see Dr. Batchelor conduct a series of surveys designed to probe organizational culture.

Getting Started: Language Matters

Dr. Batchelor is especially attentive to how language is used – both in foundational documents as well as in our daily work and interactions. Language, of course, is powerful, and it can either reinforce inequitable power relations or promote an inclusive and welcoming organizational culture.

In the first report, Dr. Batchelor wrote,

It is difficult to focus on a dramatic organizational shift at the same time society is struggling with health and welfare as well as AUFA fighting for the jobs of its constituents. However, it is highly recommended that AUFA 1) establish a clear list of goals both current and aspirational, 2) examine definitions both connotative and denotative to ensure future clarity, and 3) question ALL language but especially language of an obvious power distance or punitive nature.

This emphasis on language is the focus of the first survey tool. The “Concepts and Definitions” survey invites participants to identify different definitions of key terms. For example, a particular term may have a different operational function than does its dictionary definition. It may also have other meanings and connotations within our organizational culture. These different definitions can sometimes stand in stark conflict with one another, and potentially contribute to inequitable power relations. Dr. Batchelor further explains:

The goal is to determine if the definitional and functional differences in words commonly used in AUFA foundational documents are also used in functional operations. If the words do not appear to have the same definitional drift in functional operations then the redress can be focused on the documents themselves. However, I am already finding that the definitions drift further in functional operations. This means that not only are there profound differences in the definitions across foundational documents, the definitions are also different in functional operations. We cannot conduct any meaningful shift in Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility if everyone is using a different functional definition.

The differences in definitions doesn't only exist in documents. Research reveals that less than 17% of employees actually read foundational documents. They rely instead on the functional operations definitions. Therefore it is necessary to understand not only the differences in document language, but also the understanding of those that rely on those documents for their livelihood. We can have amazing policies, but if the functional operation understanding does not match then we still have exclusion, homogeneity, favoritism, and inaccessible systems.

Next Steps

Some of the AUFA Executive piloted this first survey tool. For the next pilot group, we will draw from a representative sample of approximately 30 AUFA members. Responses are, of course, entirely voluntary, and will be sent to Dr. Batchelor directly, kept confidential, and analyzed for content only.

A request for participation will be sent to a random and representative sample of members, but any interested members are also welcome to submit responses. Download this file and send it to Dr. Batchelor.

In the coming months, Dr. Batchelor will use a series of additional survey tools to further compile member demographics, identify challenges or barriers members face, and propose solutions. We will share more details about these surveys as they are available.

We will also seek to increase ways members can engage in this process more directly as it unfolds. There will be a townhall meeting on Tuesday, February 1, at 1:00pm MST.

Dr. Batchelor has already provided some concrete recommendations, including a full bylaw review and changes to AUFA’s organizational structure. The committee and the AUFA Executive will be seeking to make progress on these tasks over the next several months. Our hope is to have language and structure changes ready to present to the full membership for discussion at the May 2022 General Membership Meeting.

We are grateful for Dr. Batchelor’s efforts and insights so far and look forward to learning and sharing more information with AUFA members in the coming months. This is an exciting opportunity for AUFA to re-invent itself to better meet the needs of all members towards inclusive solidarity.

Myra Tait and Rhiannon Rutherford

Bargaining Update

The AUFA bargaining team met with AU on December 8 for a round of negotiations. Bargaining had also been scheduled for November 30, but was cancelled at the last minute due to a family emergency for one of the AU team members.

Once again, AU refused to provide their monetary proposals. Instead, the parties discussed two employer counter-proposals and one new employer proposal, which took half a day. When AUFA suggested using the afternoon to discuss the employer’s monetary proposals, the employer refused. The employer offered no explanation for withholding its monetary proposal. The day ended early as a result.

The parties did sign off on one proposal. The employer presented a proposal on Article 16 (Other Leaves) to remove gender-based language regarding eligibility for maternity and parental leave. AUFA agrees this is a positive step and agreed to the new language. The parties had earlier agreed in principle to make the entire collective agreement gender neutral and to address that issue later in the process. Due to that prior agreement, this proposal was unnecessary and duplicative. AUFA’s bargaining team suspects this proposal was just a stalling tactic to further delay the employer providing its monetary offer.

AU presented a counteroffer to AUFA’s proposal on Article 25 (Occupational Health and Safety). Essentially, AU is offering to abide by the OHS Act (which it already must do by law). AU’s counter proposal falls far short of what AUFA is looking for. AUFA is seeking to ensure our members’ safety rights are codified in the collective agreement so they cannot be eroded by changes in legislation. (The UCP recently made changes to OHS legislation that has reduced members’ safety rights.)

AU also amended its original proposal on Article 4, which deals with appointment, probation, performance of duties, and promotion for professionals. The new proposal makes a few tweaks to their first offer, but leaves intact its core trade-off of reducing the probationary period to one year in exchange for a series of concessions, including removing the probation review process and the right to appeal position classification decisions through the collective agreement and giving the employer the right to dismiss anyone on probation at any time for any reason. A shorter probationary period benefits AUFA members but AU’s changes would make the probationary process unfair.

AUFA had offered 11 dates that it was available to bargain in January, but AU only agreed to January 21 and 31. In addition to growing frustration at the lack of AU’s full opening offer (after 8 months of bargaining), AUFA is concerned that the employer’s unwillingness to provide bargaining dates is a further effort by AU to avoid concluding bargaining in a timely manner.

If bargaining reaches impasse, the next step will be formal mediation. If mediation is unsuccessful, then AUFA will need to hold a strike vote by the membership. The exact timing of any strike vote is contingent upon too many factors to provide a firmer date than the spring, but the Job Action Committee has been instructed to be ready to strike as early as March 15.

Jason Foster

Chair, AUFA Bargaining Committee