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University table talk

Athabasca University is facing difficult decisions, with a tight budget and stiff competition in the distance learning marketplace.

Athabasca University is facing difficult decisions, with a tight budget and stiff competition in the distance learning marketplace.

The university employeesí unions work for their members, and their job is to negotiate better salaries and benefits for the people they represent, no matter the economic climate of the day.

Add to that a layer of complicated institutional history and another of massive changeover in the political sphere, and you have a difficult environment for negotiations.

Some unions at the university are asking for increases that look big when compared to what is happening around the region; AUFA is looking for pay increases over three years, as well as a $500 increase for professional development, a $125 increase to the discretionary benefit fund and an additional vacation day.

But that is why unions exist. A good union will always negotiate for better pay for their members, where an individual worker would or could not push for that themselves.

Much of the critique from the unions is directed at the administration. This week, there are points about what university president Peter MacKinnon should not speak about with respect to ìpersonnel changes,î without which he said it would be ìvery, very difficult to imagine achieving the necessary savings.î

It is important to hold people in positions of power accountable for what they say, which is what the unions do in criticizing his mention of layoffs.

Perhaps they could go a step further.

Where could the university prevent a deficit, other than through cutting jobs or pay?

A shadow budget might be a useful tool in helping assess this, or if not possible at least a deeper analysis into the 2015-16 numbers and expectations for 2016-17 to show that there are other routes to fiscal balance other than through lost jobs in Athabasca.

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