Athabasca U staff engagement results are predictably terrible

This morning, Athabasca University released some of the results from its Autumn 2022 staff survey. The survey was about staff engagement, engagement means how willing staff are to put in discretionary effort to benefit the organization. AU framing its interest in workers as entirely instrumental was unexpected honest and went over poorly.

The basic talking points of the presenters were

• The data is four months old (i.e., things may not be as bad as the results suggest!).
• There is high trust among co-workers.
• All staff need to work hard and take responsibility for reversing these poor results.

This framing elides that staff fundamentally do not trust AU senior leaders (see below), who play a pretty important role in creating the circumstances in which staff might (or might not) be able to work effectively. Anyhow, onto the results (apologies for the poor resolution; you can click on them for larger images). There was a 70% response rate, which is higher than sector norms.



Overall, about half of staff appear engaged. The biggest thing to note are the ~20% drop in that numbers since 2020. There was no explanation offered for this change but key events during that time include COVID (massive workload increases), forced relocation to home offices, efforts to bust the faculty association and deprive people of pensions, terrible wage settlements after a near strike, and using staff as hostages in a fight with the government. Given this, it is not surprising that many staff are just throwing up their hands and checking out.

Scores were broken out by different dimensions of engagement. Basically, people have good feelings about their coworkers and immediate managers. They have bad feelings about the senior leadership and how well the organization lives its values, focuses on learners, and innovates. Again, the drops really tell the tale of the deterioration since 2020.



Only about half of staff believe the institution lives its i-CARE values. There have been 11- to 18-point drops since 2020. Honestly, I’m surprised the drops have not been larger.

These results show pretty clearly that the staff see the gaps between values and actions as occurring primarily at the leadership levels.

In terms of organizational culture, these are some worrying results about caring, safety, and consultation. Again, it’s the leadership of the organization that primarily controls these aspects of the organization. The idea that staff can change the culture through some sort of personal-responsibility magic is just gaslight.



The innovation results are also quite negative. Again, look at the drops over time. I would say this manifests itself organizational in a sense that people are just giving up trying to solve problems and improve processes because it is just hopeless. Instead, some people are giving up and others are working themselves sick trying to protect students from the impact (which is not a sustainable option).

This is probably the most important slide. The assessment of senior leadership is terrible. Naturally, these results got less than a minute of discussion. On almost every dimension, the ratings are net negative (positive < negative) and, where there is historical data, it again shows profound drops over time. In many cases, AU’s executive is scoring at close to half of the sector average.

This is pretty clear evidence that staff see profound leadership failure. Only 29% agree that senior leaders inspire employees, and only 32% think senior leaders effectively establish priorities, do what they say they will do, and are adequately visible. This is a clear call for a housecleaning in the executive suite.

Only 30% think senior leadership will act on the issues identified in this survey. This was almost immediately shown to be true when, after the results were presented, the president, the VPA and the acting chief human resources officer all leaned hard on the message that the issue was a communications problem and the staff need to pull up our socks and work harder to help stem the bleeding of enrollments. While there was some lip service to the results as “sobering”and "removing barriers" to staff increasing discretionary effort, there was no real plan to address the problems or any sense that the executive was owning the results.

This is pretty consistent with AU’s past engagement surveys (2020 and 2019). The time between surveys was increased to two years to allow for a meaningful consideration and response by the executive. There was, predictably, none. And today’s presentation suggests AU’s executive are going to continue just try to “talk away” bad news instead of changing their behaviours.

That doesn’t sound like a very effective strategy to me. The staff reactions I've heard so far include anger at the victim blaming, disappointment at the vapid sloganeering, and regret for the hour of time we all wasted listening to the results.

-- Bob Barnetson

AU sacks its president, but problems continue

Yesterday, Athabasca University terminated the employment of its president, Peter Scott, and appointed the dean of health disciplines as its fourth president in three years (cough, cough). The university has declined to explain why it chose to pay Scott half a year’s salary to go way. According to the Board chair’s content-free and nearly incoherent statement:

Dr. Scott did his part in the puzzle and we're moving forward with Dr. Clark just to continue to grow the university.

Internally, this is seen as political payback (likely orchestrated by the UCP government) for Scott’s opposition to the UCP’s demands that the university locate jobs in the university’s home town of Athabasca. Among the people I have talked to, there are several themes emerging.

First, the timing of the announcement (weeks after Scott’s wife died) is rightly seen as cruel and heartless, which is pretty much on brand for the UCP. The Board chair attempted to explain the timing to the CBC:

Scott's firing by the board comes nearly three weeks after his wife died of cancer. She had just been diagnosed in early December.

"It's terrible," Nelson said. "We have given him some time to deal with that before today."

"Unfortunately, the business of the world, including the business of Athabasca University, goes forward," he said.

"This was a step we had to make. I will continue to treat Dr. Scott with all the respect that he deserves and he does deserve respect in this time."

This reads like "we had a plan to sack him awhile ago, but when his wife died, so we had to wait until the heat was off." This is grossly indecent behaviour and is a real "mask-off" moment.

Second, none of the workers seem particularly upset by Scott getting the boot. The “highlights” of Scott’s time at AU include signing a lockout notice to help the government drive rollbacks during a sham round of collective bargaining and then turning around and stupidly fighting a stupid fight with the same government over the jobs in Athabasca issue. There is, indeed, a palpable level of glee watching a boss get treated as badly as he treated the staff and calls for more bosses to get the boot.

Drawing on (I presume) beauty-pageant conventions, the Board then appointed a runner-up from the last competition as the new president. The latest president faces a lot of big problems.

Enrollment is falling which means the university, after implementing every saving and revenue-generation strategy it could come up with, is still $5m short going into the next fiscal year. There appears to be no coherent explanation for this decline and, consequently, no real plan.

Last week, program directors were told that they would need to review hundreds of invalid and unreliable student evaluations and then use this garbage data to make changes to their courses. Presumably, the logic was that enrollment declines are, at least in part, the fault of faculty course design choices.

Then the next day that plan was scrubbed. That example is part of a consistent pattern of spastic and ill-thought out management decision-making, where staff are basically treated like rental cars (i.e., pin the gas, hammer the brakes, slam it into the curb, who cares about the damage). Years of this kind of shoddy leadership plus the demands of COVID have result is catastrophically low morale, deep cynicism, and burnout.

The university has not yet released the results of its staff survey in the fall (gee, I wonder why…?) but evidence of how bad the results are all around us. Some staff are burning themselves out trying to keep pace with the relentless demand. Some staff are outright quitting. I would say the largest number are just quiet quitting and doing the minimum. I don't know how you turn that kind of deep disengagement around. 

The university’s biggest initiative is the Integrated Learning Environment (ILE). This is basically a software system (called Brightspace), which is supposed to replace our current teaching platform (called Moodle) and other IT systems. AU runs 800+ courses and all were supposed to be migrated to Brightspace by the end of March.

As of last week, about 20 courses had been successfully migrated. From what I can tell, these are all very simple, low-enrollment courses (like one or two students). Another 250 are underway, but about 50 of these are “on hold”, which seems to be code for “oh shit, Brightspace can’t do what we need it to and we don’t know how to fix it.”

This failure to launch seems to reflect that the bosses didn’t do a good job of selecting the new software or grasping the difficulty the migration entails (because they don’t really know how the place works and they don’t trust the staff who do). I am hearing talk that it may take up to two more years to complete this transition.

The new president could make some major gains in credibility by just admitting the ILE project failed and firing the execs in charge of the mess. This might also save the university enough money that it could avoid what is increasingly looking like layoffs. I don’t hold much hope of that because the sunk-cost fallacy is basically AU’s operational mantra.

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: More Brooklyn 99

It looks like Brooklyn 99 will be using the Policeman’s Benevolent Association as a recurring antagonist in its final season. In Episode 3 (The Blue Flu), the uniformed officers fake an attack on an officer (mouse in a burrito) in order to pressure the NYPD to support the officers and buy them new tactical equipment. (These are likely reasonable demands from the perspective of the workers, but they are not explored and simply dismissed as self-interested.) When the NYPD won’t play along, the officers call in sick (i.e., strike illegally) and the main characters have to investigate and foil this job action.

Again, recognizing that writing a police comedy is tricky these days, there was a lot of interesting stuff packed into this show. First up, we don’t often see workers engaging in direct action on television. While the direct action is eventually contained by the employer, that the workers forced the employer to respond highlights how effective direct action can be. I’m not sure that was the intent of the writers, but it was an interesting facet of the show.

The sick out is basically treated as illegitimate. But one of the workers' demands was for new tactical gear (i.e., personal protective equipment), which you’d think the main characters might have some sympathy for. This suggests that there may be more to this work stoppage than worker laziness and manipulation (which is how it is presented).

The speed at which the main characters (who are generally written as moral, upstanding, and sometimes politically aware) jump to bust the patrol officers’ job action is quite striking. This again highlights how police officers sit in a conflicted position as workers. The main characters are workers but their job is to act against other workers on behalf of the powerful. That none of them (particularly Rosa, who left her job as a cop because of racist policing practices) were in any way discomforted by this was a missed opportunity.

To fill out the ranks while the patrol officers are out sick, detectives are dragooned from other precincts. The other precinct captains use this demand as an opportunity to take out the trash, dumping their least productive detectives on the 99th Precinct (my wife and I laughed aloud, having witnessed this exact play in government). This requires Amy to figure out how to covert these detectives’ capacity to work into actual work. She does this by offering an incentive program linked to pedometer metrics. The workers immediately subvert this effort, which is played for laughs and further amplifies the lazy worker trope.

The sick out is eventually brought to an end when the Captain tells the union rep that the strike has revealed that fewer patrol officers actually resulted in better policing. The threat here is that, if the patrol officers stay off, they won’t have jobs to return to when they come back. This is a classic management power move (threatening jobs to gain worker compliance). It has echoes of employers threatening to dump a product line, close a business, or automate a process if the workers don’t do management’s bidding.

While the police union has only appeared in two episodes, it seems that Brooklyn 99 is drawing upon the corrupt union (or union boss) trope to create a recurring antagonist for its final season. This makes sense given that the show is trying to highlight racist and violent policing, to which police unions have contributed, while also trying to be a comedy. To the degree that viewers don’t distinguish between this particular example and the behaviour of the broader labour movement, Brooklyn 99 is likely doing workers a disservice.

-- Bob Barnetson

Boss makes a dollar, we make a dime...

Everyone's friend, Bonhomme (not a boss).

One of the challenges of organizing workers to resist an aggressive employer is the tendency of workers to disbelieve (at least, at first) that their employer could actually mean to treat them so badly. 

This initial denial often reflects underlying anxiety (because the boss is powerful) and manifests itself in several ways. For example, workers may:

• question whether the union is mis-informed about what is happening or mis-understands it,
• suggest the employer has made an innocent error and can be talked around or shown the error of their ways, or
• try to make excuses for the employer (“they have no choice”).

Workers can eventually move past these initial responses, especially when the employer repeatedly misbehaves (which eventually creates a “the boss who cried wolf” dynamic). A sly employer can draw out the period of denial with a good “bonhomie” routine or by creative gaslighting. 

One strategy unions can use to get past this is to help workers understand that bosses really aren’t like them. Sure, they wear a skin suit and have kids and like to wakeboard and go on Disney cruises. But their world is fundamentally different.

But how to show this? Well, money talks. So a peak inside the boss's house is a great way to illustrate—in an immediate and material way—that the boss isn’t worried about where their next paycheque comes from. And, when the boss takes a wage freeze or tiny rollback, it doesn't have the same effect as when they try to push that on workers.

My most recently previous boss's house is up on the market and, through the miracle of virtual tours, we can see how the 1% really lives. The address in the posting isn’t exactly correct, based on my pre-picket scouting during our last round of bargaining. I’m not sure how long this posting will be live (the virtual tour is something) so I screen capped a few of the photos.



I’ve been to a lot of members' homes—usually for good reasons, sometimes for sad ones. None of them have come close to this size (3800 sq ft on 3/4 of an acre backing onto a pond) or level of luxury.



The main floor boosts a huge living room (with piano), dining room, kitchen, and master suite. The quality of the finishes put my house (which is pretty nice) to shame.



The master suite includes a soaker tub with its own fireplace, which is important when you need to relax after the difficult days of grinding workers’ wages.



And satin sheets will help you sleep away your guilt at pretending to care about keeping jobs in the Athabasca region, while actually moving them away.



The upstairs has an enormous bedroom (not shown), while the basement features a wet bar area that connects a massive family room with a rec room. What better place to gather your minions and hatch plans to bust your workers’ union!



The point here is that bosses superficially look like workers. But they don’t share our circumstances or our interests. And revealing that difference to workers—in material terms—can go a long way towards undercutting the boss’s messaging.

-- Bob Barnetson

Some thoughts on work and COVID

So we’re a month in to COVID-19 here in Alberta. I have some preliminary thoughts on work during an extended period of crisis. Some are general, others are more specific to Athabasca University.

Planning matters

As far as I can tell, most of the public sector had no effective plan for a pandemic. This is weird because pandemic planning was all the rage in 2004/05 (post SARS). The most public example of this has been the federal government’s bumbling rollout of enhanced income support. To the fed’s credit, they have at least tried and appear to be succeeding (likely because of their hard-working staff).

By contrast, Alberta’s response was completely inadequate, probably by design (to drive costs to the feds). A question for labour market policy wonks going forward is whether some form of basic income might be much more functional (and fairer and more efficient) than the collection of income support programs currently on offer.

Workers matter

My own institution had zero plan and its response (despite bumps) has largely been successful due to hard work, mostly by the lowest paid employees. The importance of poorly compensated workers in managing the crisis is evident everywhere (e.g., hospital cleaners, grocery store clerks, delivery people). Whether these workers can convert this momentary glimpse into their importance into meaningful improvements in their working conditions and job security going forward is an open question.

Certainly they have stored up some social capital that they may be able to use to demand things like a living wage and job security. Employers get this potential source of power and some have tried to undercut it with hazard pay. Galen Weston Jr. giving grocery workers an extra $16 a day to risk their lives won’t turn him into a folk hero. But this hazard pay will be used as a "good corporate citizen" fig leaf the next time exploitative working conditions or price fixing hits the media.

Workers don’t actually matter to employers

My employer has focused on ensuring staff can be productive at home and quickly rolled out laptops and spiffy new software. But it has done little to find out about and resolve broader issues associated with home work. People don’t have adequate workspaces so are becoming injured. Workloads have risen. A paltry payment of $50/month (before tax!) to cover extra costs was rolled out a month in, even though that is less than what regular home workers get.

Last week, the president announced that anyone who can’t work full-time from home (presumably due to conflicting demands, such as childcare) will soon have to choose between their job and their other commitments. So basically, “Ladies, thanks for helping us out during the crisis; tough luck about having kids.” (But, remember, we’re OneAU folks!). I didn’t think morale could sink lower or people could be angrier at the boss, but there you go.

Managers add little value

What I’ve seen among my colleagues is basically people are working hard and using their initiative to solve problems, even while working at home and able to play hooky. For the most part, they are doing fine and right by the people they serve.

Managers have added little value to this effort. Indeed, most of the managing that is happening is actually counter-productive, performative management with unnecessary surveillance and meetings, mostly to give managers something to do (since most seem unable or unwilling to make decisions).

Conservatives suck

Yeah, I know, profs are supposed to be even-handed and this just feeds into the narrative that we’re all lefties. But looking at the evidence (specifically at Jason Kenney and Alberta’s UCP), its clear that conservatives are just out to benefit the wealthy (specifically oil and gas companies via tax cuts for, loan guarantees to, and direct investing in a dying industry) while destroying the public services people rely on.

The government’s attack on the doctors continues DURING A FUCKING PANDEMIC and doctors are publicly making plans to reduce services and leave the province. Educational assistants have been laid off, just when they are most necessary to help students adjust to home schooling. Other public servants have been given a reprieve during the pandemic but layoffs and wage rollbacks will continue thereafter. 

My own institution has been told to reduce expenditures by 20% in this budget year (which could mean 300 layoffs from a full-time staff of 750, basically causing the university to collapse) at the same time as enrollments are surging (because we’re uniquely able to educate during a pandemic). 

I imagine this all makes ideological sense to conservatives, but the practical impact of their shitty public policy (backed by constant lying, corruption, and childish behaviour) clearly tells the rest of us that they and their war-time posturing need to go. Probably forever.

Labour is becoming bolder

The inadequacies of neoliberal policies (and the modest skills and bad instincts of conservative politicians) are emboldening workers and union leaders. I expect a wave of strikes (probably wildcats) will hit Alberta as COVID-19 recedes and conservatives push forward with more cuts. Greater class consciousness is a huge gain from COVID-19. An interesting question will be whether this class consciousness will extend to white-collar workers.

So, with that off my chest (and I feel WAY better for it), I’ll go back to trying to sort out myriad student woes while trying not to lose my sanity.

-- Bob Barnetson

Athabasca U survey reveals lack of trust in senior executive

Earlier this spring, Athabasca University undertook an external survey of staff engagement. The results are below the industry average and entail significant skepticism about the trustworthiness of AU’s senior leadership. For those who didn’t attend the presentations in mid-July and don’t have an hour to spend watching the video, here is a quick summary.

The consultant making the presentation took pains to note that engagement differs from satisfaction. Engagement is intended to heightened workers’ emotional and intellectual connection with the employer in order to increase employees’ discretionary effort. I’m not sure openly seeking to manipulate workers’ behaviour is super motivating, but, hey, at least the consultant was honest about the intent.

The response rate was 55% (610 responses), which missed the goal of 80% and was lower than the 2014 response rate of 68%. The response rate does match the industry benchmark (public and private colleges and universities) of 54%. The consultant asserted that 45% non-response was likely not significant because the non-respondents’ answers likely mirror the respondents’ answers.

I suspect there is likely a systematic difference between those who filled out the survey and those who didn’t. And it probably centres on the respondents’ level of engagement. Surely such a difference that would be surely germane to the results of… an engagement survey. I suspect that a complete picture would add to the negative side of the ledger.

Overall, AU scored consistently below industry benchmarks on all dimensions of engagement. The bottom half of the figure below shows significant problems with communication, student focus, teamwork, and senior leadership. (Orange is bad throughout the figures.)

The consultant largely dismissed these negative scores as common issues (despite the deviation from the benchmarks) and not particularly relevant to driving engagement (key dimensions being professional growth, organizational vision and senior leadership). Setting aside the issue of whether engagement is a valid concept, from a common-sense perspective, these scores are bad news.

Questions specific to AU’s I-CARE values were asked. (Apologies for the murkiness of the screen grab.) The most interesting finding is that only 46% of respondents believe that AU executive behave in way that is consistent with the values that the executive created as part of its Imagine-ary strategic plan.

When asked about senior leadership (basically the university’s executive), only 39% of respondents believe that senior leaders act consistently (i.e., do as they say). This is 13% below the benchmark. And only 43% of staff have trust and confidence in the exec’s ability to achieve the goals of Athabasca University, 15% below benchmark.

Only half of respondents agreed the executive clearly communicates their goals, 5% below benchmark. Only 48% believed executive set ambitious but realistic goals, 10% below benchmark. The open-ended comments provided by respondents will not be shared with staff (even though historically such comments were shared). The consultant did note that a key demand expressed in the comments was for communication that was not so highly torqued by spin.

An example of this is the president’s bi-weekly email (“Neil’s Notes”), which is clichéd, saccharine, studiously avoids commenting on contentious (i.e., internally important) issues at the university, and sometimes borders on incomprehensible. After a year of trying to see value in it, Neil's Notes now goes directly to my junk folder.

Despite the endless communication from the university, there remain communication problems. For example, only 43% of respondents understand what needs to be done for AU to succeed in the long term. This is 10% below benchmark. 

There also appear to be issues around innovation. Only 40% of respondents agreed that there was a culture of innovation at AU, 16% below benchmark. Only 43% agreed that AU systematically adopts new and improved ways to work (17% below benchmark). 

Respondents also flagged concerns about limited professional growth opportunities. According to the consultant, low scores here often indicate disengagement (but not a 45% non-response rate?).

There are apparently significant differences between groups at AU but these differences will also not be provided to all staff. The results for the IT unit were presented to IT staff last Wednesday and were notably worse than the institutional average. This is surprising given that 20% of the unit comprises new hires who should not be jaded so soon.

The consultant confirmed that the recent and unpleasant round of faculty collective bargaining was on the minds of some respondents and likely contributed to the poor results.

Only the president and HR director get to see the written comments. The irony of telling staff to trust the senior exec to correctly interpret and act on comments collected on a survey where staff indicated they demonstrably don't trust the senior exec has not been lost on the staff I’ve spoken to about this. The father-knows-best vibe is playing poorly among workers, who are used to drawing their own conclusions about what information means.

This survey does help quantify the morale problem that is clearly evident to anyone who works inside AU. Given the effort made to improve AU’s culture by the current executive (which at this point seem to have degenerated to sloganeering about some imaginary “oneAU” and calling staff “AU team members”), this survey demonstrates the executive’s approach is not effective. 

A question that was not asked in the presentations was why the Board re-appointed the president before the Board received these results (or, indeed, even had the survey conducted)? When this was asked last fall, the answer was the president’s review had to be done quickly to meet government mandate for a new contract. Whether or not it is true, that explanation is being greeted with eye rolls and disbelief. This level of cynicism is the organizational equivalent of cancer.

Perhaps a rethink by the executive of their approach is in order over the summer? With all three unions likely in collective bargaining in the next 18 months and the slow drain of jobs from the Athabasca area continuing, morale and organizational effectiveness are unlikely to improve with a status quo approach.

-- Bob Barnetson

Bargaining retrospective: AU Xmas Eve Massacre

Neil Fassina. Photo courtesy David Climenhaga

One of the more interesting episodes in the last round of bargaining between the Athabasca University Faculty Association (AUFA) and Athabasca University (AU) was a blow-up over AU giving its staff an extra half-day off on Christmas Eve.

This gift (putatively in recognition of staff’s hard work) violated the statutory freeze period on employers altering the terms and conditions of work that were in effect for AUFA members during collective bargaining. AU could have gotten around this bar by asking AUFA’s permission, but didn’t. (I can’t imagine AUFA rejecting a half day off, if asked.)

AUFA objected to the employer offering this sort of inducement during bargaining because this behaviour is against the law and because AUFA didn’t want to face estoppel arguments (i.e., you didn’t object last time) if the employer decided in the future to make other, less desirable amendments to the days of work. An exchange of letters followed.

In this exchange, AU threatened to withhold future time off because AUFA had complained:

Your letter has accordingly caused us to revisit the University’s practice in relation to providing this half-day to AUFA staff. We will be reconsidering whether we will be providing this time off in the future, or if we will require AUFA staff to work all of December 24th. We hope to avoid any future issues in relation to this or any similar practices.

The university’s president then sent an email to all staff (including workers represented by CUPE and AUPE) and included most (but not all) of the correspondence.

Because workers aren’t stupid, they immediately saw the president’s implicit threat of retaliation that I would summarize as “if you exercise your rights under the Labour Relations Code, we’ll make you work to the bitter end on Christmas Eve” (which has always been the practice anyhow).

This caused a small shit storm within (and between) the various unions. This was not unexpected. The reason for AUFA demanding AU not offer AUFA members inducements during bargaining without AUFA’s permission (i.e., it undercuts AUFA’s position as bargaining agent) is hard to see. By contrast, the threat of not receiving a half day off has an immediate and tangible effect on non-AUFA employees.

An explanation by AUFA partly calmed the waters. Interestingly, it also triggered a backlash against AU. The president’s email attempted to frame the issue as one of AUFA being unreasonable and uncivil:

AU is simply taken aback and disappointed by AUFA’s objection to the University closing early and enabling employees to leave work early on Christmas Eve to be with their loved ones. I am without words to describe the disappointment of being falsely accused of a union-rejection or anti-union strategy because the University closed early and sent employees home with full pay, on Christmas Eve.

In line with the University’s commitment to being open and transparent, I have attached copies of both AUFA’s formal complaint against AU and our response to that complaint.

That the president’s framing ignored the actual issue raised (i.e., AU violated the Labour Code and undermined AUFA) undercut the president’s credibility. His rather obvious misdirection also undercut his claim of being respectful and transparent.

Respect and transparency are party of the i-CARE values that the president has hung his hat on but keeps allowing his staff to violate. These values are now being openly referred to as the i-don't-CARE values (more on this in the coming weeks).

The divisive effect of his framing, the lack of an apology, and the timing of his missive (the day before bargaining and as it was about to reach impasse) was also noted.

There are a number of conclusions we can draw here:

1. Workers’ aren’t stupid. When provided with fulsome information, they draw reasonable conclusions. Half-assed attempts by an employer to “spin” problems away backfired. They helped solidify support for the bargaining team and further undermined the credibility of the employer. An earnest and fulsome apology would have been a far more effective way to resolve this issue. Maybe next time AU will follow the law?

2. Public-sector employers are touchy about negative press. A single, largely ignored blog post (referred to in the president’s email as “accusations raised in public forums”) triggered an ill-conceived over-reaction. This did nothing but confirm that bad press was a very effective lever for the union. The president has since complained he’s be subjected to cyber bullying. Given the actual bullying faced by staff on his watch, this claim has been greeted with eye rolls and faux sympathy.

3. The employer was also struggling to negotiate within the then-new rules of bargaining (such as being subject to the Labour Code). That the labour-relations staff in HR did not identify the half-day off as a prohibited practice is disappointing. That they responded to a complaint with a threat of retaliation is even more so. Neither of these things is surprising, however.

It will be interesting to see if AU has learned any of these lessons in the next round of collective bargaining, which will start (likely) in April).

-- Bob Barnetson

Why might Co-ops treat workers poorly?

One of the most consistently interesting blogs about work is Organizing Work. Over the past few months, they have posted a couple of related articles about co-ops and unions. Co-operatives (i.e., member-owned operations) often have a lot of street cred with progressives.

Historically, co-ops featured prominently in the Antigonish Movement and on the prairies, where workers sought to break the monopolies they faced as producers and consumers. Modern versions (e.g., Mountain Equipment Co-op, various credit unions) keep this model alive.

Yet not everything is peachy-keen in the co-op movement. For example, UFCW 1400 members engaged in a protracted strike with the Saskatoon Co-op over the winter to push back against two-tier wage scales (i.e., lower wages for new workers). After six months, UFCW members narrowly accepted a deal that includes a two-tier wage system.

Organizing Work undertook some analysis of the track record of grocery co-ops in the US and Canada to see if the Saskatoon dispute was an aberration or was symptomatic of a broader pattern of union busting and worker exploitation.

The article is a worth a read but the upshot is that coops often treat workers poorly and engage in union busting. In part, this reflects that co-ops are intended to benefit their consumer members, not their workers.

Grinding workers wages is one strategy to keep prices down. There is also some interesting analysis in the article of how three inter-related entities seem to be pushing a more corporate form of co-op management.

-- Bob Barnetson

Jobs losses in Athabasca continue

This week brings us another example of Athabasca University (AU) saying one thing to its employees and doing another. This time, the topic is AU’s mixed messages about keeping jobs in the town of Athabasca.

AU is the largest employer in the town of Athabasca. AU also operates campuses in Edmonton (2) and Calgary (1) and about half of its 1100 employees (mostly the instructional staff) work from home offices.

A long-standing issue is the degree to which AU is shifting operations out of Athabasca. This issue came to a head after a 2015 report mooted AU leaving town, a 2016 report that AU was planning on a new campus in St. Albert, and another 2016 report that IT jobs would shift there.

In 2016, political backlash saw Minister of Advanced Education Marlin Schmidt direct AU to develop a plan to keep AU in Athabasca. Not surprisingly, a 2017 report on AU’s future suggested maintaining (and perhaps expanding) the size of its operations in Athabasca. Then-new AU President Neil Fassina told the Edmonton Journal that

…the university was “100 per cent committed to our presence in Athabasca” and that it needed to “take advantage of the immense opportunity that is inherent in the town.”

Yet, AU’s behaviour since then has not really lived up to the hype. None of AU’s senior executives live in Athabasca anymore. Most live in Edmonton or Calgary and visit Athabasca one day per week or less. AU’s new strategic plan, spearheaded by Fassina, says essentially nothing about the town of Athabasca and planning for a new Edmonton-area campus is underway.

This approach to the location issue sits uncomfortably with continued messaging by the government that “Athabasca University… is an important part of the Town of Athabasca.”

There is data to support continued concerns about jobs slowly leaving the town of Athabasca. Analysis of AU staffing suggests that there has been a steady loss of jobs over the past five years, with jobs shifting to Edmonton and Calgary. Here are some examples.

Professional staff (e.g., IT workers, editors, other unionized professional staff) saw an overall reduction in numbers (from 247 in 2013 to 201 in late 2018). The biggest losses have been in Athabasca (net loss of 29) and the majority of professionals now work elsewhere.

There is a similar story among excluded management jobs. The overall decline (from 23 in 2014 to 17 in 2018 ) includes a large shift in positions away from Athabasca. This data also masks a very high level of turnover among directors and executives.

On February 6, a staff member asked Fassina why job postings no longer say nice things about living in Athabasca. Fassina responded that all job postings state, “all else being equal, preference will be given to the individual who is willing to live or relocate to Athabasca. All of our job postings have got that now.”

Staff fact-checked him as he was speaking and found that wasn’t true. Fassina said he would take that away. A month later, this language is still missing from all job postings (including those where no location is specified).

The job postings do, once again, say nice things about living in Athabasca:

The vibrant town of Athabasca is located in the heart of Alberta's boreal forest on the banks of the Athabasca River. The community offers modern services, affordable housing, excellent public schools, and a variety of recreational activities to suit everyone's lifestyle. 

Athabasca University offers an interest-free loan for new employees who relocate within Athabasca County or the Town of Athabasca.

When queried, HR’s explanation for the re-introduction of Athabasca-booster statements was that they have to be included after the last connect with the President session.

That makes little sense because (1) that isn't what the president said would be in the job ads, (2) saying nice things about Athabasca is way less effective at bringing workers to town than would giving preference to Athabasca candidates, and (3) the Athabasca booster statements occur in jobs posted as Edmonton-only!

Further, that AU continues to insist jobs be located in Edmonton (when those jobs can clearly be done at any location) reveals the underlying problem: despite its purported commitment to keeping operations in Athabasca, AU doesn't make hiring to Athabasca a priority.

Further, requiring jobs be located in Edmonton (when there is no operational reason for the requirement) blocks Athabasca residents from acquiring these good jobs unless they leave town.

Saying one thing and doing another on the Athabasca job is issue does not help an administration beset by credibility problems due to its other labour relations practices. And the evidence clearly shows ongoing job losses in Athabasca.

I wonder what the government thinks about AU’s lack of compliance with Minister Schmidt’s direction about keeping AU in Athabasca?

-- Bob Barnetson

Athabasca president weighs in on bargaining

Photo of Neil Fassina by David Climenhaga

Last week, Athabasca University (AU) President Neil Fassina sent an email to all AU staff about bargaining between AU and the Athabasca University Faculty Association (AUFA).

This email is an attempt to normalize the breakdown in bargaining caused by AU’s unwillingness to accept a pattern settlement of a two-year wage freeze, language improvements, and a wage re-opener. Instead, AU has been demanding two zeros and substantial language rollbacks.

This breakdown isn’t in any way normal. Normal would be a pattern settlement, such as those recently achieved by workers at Bow Valley, Medicine Hat College, NorQuest and Red Deer Colleges (in addition to tens of thousands of other public-sector workers).

Fassina also takes the opportunity to characterize AUFA’s communications as “inaccurate and incomplete”. He then attached a letter that purports to clarify numerous matters about AU’s offer.

AUFA responded almost immediately, refuting AU's mischaracterization of AU’s bargaining proposals. If you enjoy seeing an argument get comprehensively taken apart, read the AUFA blog post.

(As an aside, it is interesting to consider whether the employer’s letter was intentionally misleading or whether the employer simply doesn’t understand what it is proposing. Cause it kinda has to be one or the other, right?)

The post-letter comments from staff have ranged from annoyed (“I thought he was supposed to know something about HR?”) to derisive (“So is bargaining now some kind of long-form flame war between AUFA and a well coiffed millionaire?”).

I imagine this was not the reaction Fassina was hoping for. To give him his due, Fassina is doing more to radicalize faculty members than AUFA ever could. In that sense, his letter was a boon to the union.

The all-staff email and letter also represent a shift in Fassina’s strategy. As recently as late January, he was categorically refusing to discuss bargaining with staff. This change suggests his earlier strategy was not working.

Yet, by directly engaging staff about bargaining, Fassina has now tied his reputation to the outcome of this round of bargaining. That is a high-risk move, given that he has applied for an early re-appointment by the Board of Governors.

While AUFA awaits the conclusion of an Essential Services Agreement and the outcome of an employer proposal vote, its bargaining team will return to the table to allegedly hear a new proposal from AU today.

Perhaps Fassina will take the opportunity to be the hero, put a pattern deal on the table, and solve a problem of his own making. Or perhaps he will double down and force the faculty closer to a strike. The latter would be a shame for AU’s students.

-- Bob Barnetson

Research: Why do workers take safety risks?

One of the more vexing aspects of workplace injury is when workers appear to disregard safety hazards and protocols and expose themselves to occupational hazards. Employer apologists often weaponize such events by blaming the victim of injuries.

I recently ran across an article entitled “Why Do Workers Take Safety Risks?—A Conceptual Model for the Motivation Underpinning Perverse Agency” that proposes a model by which we might understand worker decision making when faced with dangerous routine and novel tasks. The full text of the article appears to be available online if you want to read it.

The crux of the article is:

This Risk, Agency, and Safety & Health (RASH) model proposes that people willingly expose themselves to chronic injuries via a series of risk-taking processes.

This causal chain starts with personal motivation and over-alignment with organisational purpose (including impression management).

Ideally, that motivation would be moderated by an ability to predict future harm consequences from the task at hand, but that mechanism is weak because it is difficult to predict cause and effect, the consequences are too far in the future, and the opportunities for vicarious learning are few.

The motivation then causes misdirected creativity, hence the development of personally novel ways of solving the problem, albeit with greater risk of harm. Perverse agency then sustains actions that exposure the person to harm.

The paper does focus a lot on workers’ decision making and the underlying motives. But there is acknowledgement that worker decisions do not occur in a vacuum. Instead, workers’ approaches to tasks and safety may be negatively influenced by “over-alignment with organizational purpose” and the reward and cultural structure of the workplace (which are management creations).

Further, the nature of many occupational injuries may retard workers’ ability to grasp the consequences of the behaviour and adjust accordingly. Overall, a thought-provoking analysis of decision-making around safety.

-- Bob Barnetson