There has been a ton of responses to the news I shared yesterday about the U of A’s initial proposal to non-academic staff. As such, I thought I’d share screen caps of the proposal summary. #UAlberta #abpse

The big takeaway is asking support staff to accept a 3% cut across the board effective March 31, 2021 (with some specific positions being cut anywhere from 0.3% to 25.9%), and to repay any "overpayment" that staff member may have earned by the time a new agreement is implemented.

So if both parties agreed to a deal tomorrow, current staff would be expected to pay back 3+% for work they've done in the past month. If an agreement is finalized at the end of September, staff would be required to pay back the "overpayment" from six months of work.

Lots of people have asked me if this is legal. I’m no lawyer, and have no answer. Others have asked why they would do this, and for that I have some ideas.

1) A directive for rollbacks came directly from the GoA, and the Board and President are following through. This would be a real violation of the Board and university’s institutional autonomy, but with this government, it wouldn’t be a surprise.

2) It’s the opening proposal, and including something like this gives them something easy to give up in negotiations. If that’s the case, it was a stupid choice. They could have chosen a lot of other things to sacrifice besides “overpayment.”

3) They think it's a way to force NASA to come to a deal sooner, because every month it goes on staff would have to pay more.

4) It’s a poison pill meant to sabotage negotiations, perhaps push NASA to strike, and allow the GoA to go after the union.

5) They are just assholes who don’t think support staff have any value, and therefore don’t give a damn about diminishing them even further.

It could be any one of these, or a bit of all of them. My own guess is that it’s being driven by the Ministry and the Kenney Government, along with a toxic culture at the U of A that really devalues support staff.