Editor's note: This is one in a series of four articles in the May 25 print edition, covering different perspectives regarding the ongoing relationship between Athabasca University and the Athabasca community. Please see below for links to the other three stories - cZ
ATHABASCA – Athabasca University's strategic plan to move to a near-virtual model is only increasing the number of jobs leaving the community says the president of the union that represents professional and academic staff.
Athabasca University Faculty Association (AUFA) president David Powell provided a short presentation to Athabasca town council at its May 18 regular meeting to provide some of the observations and statistics he has compiled there regarding what he called “an alarming and unending trend of moving jobs out of town.”
Powell noted it would go a long way if the university started once again posting jobs ads with location requirements instead of allowing employees to reside where ever they wish while working for AU. Powell is a longtime employee of the university in the IT department and is the son of Athabasca mayor Colleen Powell, who is also a former employee of the university.
“The key thing here is because nobody is required to move to the town. If you don't tie a job to the town, well, why would you move?” he said, adding that professors have worked from their chosen location since the mid-2000s, and tutors have always worked from home, but of the 222 academics employed by AU right now, there are just five active academics in the Athabasca area.
Additionally, he said, of the 265 support positions at the university, 166 of them are based in Athabasca.
“We started to notice job losses in 2015 when interim president Peter McKinnon started to speak about the location as a liability. There was a big public document that sort of caused the backlash, and this was also was the first time that I started to look at the data about location,” said Powell. “We see a clear downward trend in professional hires. Very few professionals are now hired to the location.”
That trend continued when recently-departed Neil Fassina came on as president, and will likely continue, said Powell.
“When he came in as president and was the first president to not live in the Town of Athabasca, we suddenly saw a sudden drop in the number of excluded managers in in the area, and what happened is that office spaces were set up specifically for the executive, and there was also mass turnover.”
Despite the local job losses, Powell also told council he isn’t convinced the university will be shutting down its operations in the community at any point in the near future.
“I do believe this is the case that they are not going to close the Athabasca campus anytime soon, because they can't. There are tens of millions of dollars worth of infrastructure there, and there's a large facilities staff, and they also have a large number of support staff who have to work there, because they are tied to physical papers there.
Powell also took some time to try to refute some of the reasoning that has come up over the years as to why it is necessary not to tie jobs to the community. He said he doesn’t buy the argument that it is difficult to recruit qualified people to come to Athabasca.
“I've never seen evidence of this, and I've seen several competitions show up, particularly in IT for example, where they'll post a job that pays extremely well, with excellent benefits, when there's an economic crisis, people will move for those tenure track academic jobs. Those are hard to find. So, the notion that people won't move for the jobs, I've never seen it, there might have been a couple of competitions on directors where that happened, but that certainly isn't the rule,” said Powell.
He has also heard from university management that Athabasca needs to make itself a more attractive place to live — again, something he doesn’t believe is the case.
“This town is an asset and not a liability to this university, and it's been treated like a liability,” said Powell. “We are a northern university, we are well in the boreal forest, we are surrounded by First Nations, there are opportunities here to do very interesting things, and to invest in this area, rather than try to divest yourself in this area.”
Powell also clarified that AUFA was not in favour of relocating AU employees in positions that are already filled in locations other than Athabasca. The union would not support such a policy and would fight against it in court if necessary, he said.
Councillors commended Powell for his presentation.
“I want to thank you for the wonderful presentation,” said Coun. Tannia Cherniwchan. “I appreciate your passion and your honest personal comments. It's a difficult time for all of us and I want to encourage you to keep up with the work that you are doing, it's absolutely amazing, and thank you so much for this.
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