On Mar. 26, McGill Principal Heather Munroe-Blum released an email to the McGill community detailing the first measures that the university will take to address the Quebec government’s recent cuts to its operating budget. Among the measures were salary and hiring freezes, a reduction in the operating budgets of senior administrators’ portfolios, and a voluntary retirement program.

According to the MRO, McGill is seeking to cut back approximately $43 million—in response to the Parti Québécois’ (PQ) cancellation of the former Liberal government’s tuition increase, as well as to the budget cuts—and is initially targeting salaries.

The email lists six cost-saving initiatives, three of which affect administrative and support staff: a hiring freeze, a temporary freeze on “special salary requests,” and a voluntary retirement program for staff aged 60 and over.

Both freezes went into effect on Apr. 2. The details of the voluntary retirement program were announced the same day.

Three other measures announced in the email will take effect on May 1, including a three per cent salary cut and salary freeze for all senior administrators, a seven to nine per cent cut to “the operating budgets of the Vice-Principals’ portfolios and the Offices of the Principal and Provost,” and a one-year salary freeze for members of the McGill Association of University Teachers (MAUT).

In her email, Munroe-Blum explained that the administration also asked all of the other campus employee groups to accept a one-year salary freeze. MAUT is the only group that has agreed to this request so far.

In a memorandum released to its members on Mar. 25, representatives of the McGill University Non-Academic Certified Association (MUNACA)—a union which represents 1,700 non-academic employees across campus—wrote that they had discussed the proposed one-year salary freeze at a Board of Representatives meeting, and that the Board voted to reject the McGill administration’s request.

“[MUNACA’s] collective agreement remains intact and increases will be paid as scheduled in June 2013,” the memo reads.

MUNACA Vice-President Finance David Kalant told the Tribune that accepting a salary freeze would undermine MUNACA’s recent progress with regard to its agreement with the university.

“In our latest collective agreement, MUNACA finally won the type of payroll scheme—the wage grid—that other Quebec universities have had for many, many years,” he said. “I would like to point out that taking a salary freeze when the cost of living always increases amounts to a de facto salary cut.”

Justin Marleau, vice-president of teaching assistants at the Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill (AGSEM), also said that the teaching assistants’ unit of AGSEM “voted overwhelmingly” against a salary freeze.

Jaime MacLean, president of the Association of McGill University Support Employees (AMUSE), said that AMUSE’s Board of Representatives is still reviewing the administration’s request, and will announce its decision by the end of this week. However, MacLean expressed concerns about the effects of such a freeze on AMUSE’s members.

“Our members … are the lowest wage earners at the university,” she said. “A wage freeze … would be especially difficult for [those] who are students—approximately 65 per cent of our membership—as tuition is scheduled to increase by 3 per cent this fall.”

Overall, the three unions’ representatives did not express much support for the administration’s current measures to address the budget cuts. In particular, Marleau expressed concerns about the impact of the cuts on the quality of teaching at McGill.

“Spending on teaching assistants has not kept pace with increasing enrollment, exam invigilators are barely paid minimum wage, and cuts to course lecturers cannot help but impoverish course offerings,” he said.

Marleau expressed the opinion that McGill should adopt a similar system to that of Université Laval. The Quebec government had originally asked Laval to cut $36 million from its operating budget. However, the school has negotiated a plan in which it will make $3 million in cuts in 2013 and $6 million in 2014, with additional reductions to come from the government’s promised reinvestment into the university system.

Marleau said that AGSEM has been asked to meet with the administration again in April, however, the union has not yet confirmed its attendance.

Last Tuesday’s MRO notes that the university has also planned to implement “$7.5 million of suggested non-salary related cost-savings initiatives.”

McGill will implement its budget cuts in two phases, the first of which is comprised of the finalized measures detailed in the email. A second phase to the cuts, which the MRO says will likely include layoffs, will follow the first one detailed in last week’s MRO.

Kalant explained that although MUNACA members are protected by their collective agreement, those who are in the lowest 10 per cent of the seniority list do not have job security, and are therefore vulnerable to potential layoffs. MacLean and Marleau have expressed similar concerns over their members’ job security.

McGill was unavailable for comment.

Early last week, Dean of the Faculty of Arts Christopher Manfredi announced changes to the plan known as People, Processes, and Partnerships (PPP). While the project was initially slated to restructure how space is used in the Leacock Building, followed by similar reconfiguration in 688 Sherbrooke and the Ferrier Building, Manfredi stated that the PPP project team will now focus its attention first on 688 Sherbrooke and Ferrier, “where solutions are likely to be less disruptive.”

In an email to ARTSMIN—a listserv that includes all faculty and staff in Arts—and an announcement on the PPP section of the McGill website, Manfredi wrote that the project team of over 75 people “will take a few steps back to review [the] issues, risks, constraints, and alternatives with respect to the Leacock Building—and the project overall—with a view toward presenting revised organizational and space scenarios while it continues its work on process mapping.”

Manfredi’s announcement follows a feedback process within the Faculty of Arts that included a Town Hall with faculty members.

At the Town Hall,  held Monday Mar. 18, the project team presented two potential scenarios for a re-organized Leacock Building. Both scenarios involved rearranging upwards of 50 offices within Leacock or to the McTavish row houses, as well as moving all departmental administrative officers (AOs) onto one floor, and converting the third floor of Leacock into a general administrative ‘welcome centre’ for students.

Criticisms of the plan expressed at the Arts Town Hall and the Mar. 20 Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) Council meeting included the potential disruption to “soft knowledge” that could occur as a product of moving AOs out of their departments and cross-training them to handle students from a variety of departments.

Manfredi has explained that restructuring is necessary as a result of new university policies that were implemented in response to provincial laws, such as the Quebec government’s Bill 100, which requires that universities cut down on money spent on administrative staff. Additionally, the new government-imposed budget cuts prompted the university to offer a voluntary retirement program to those aged 60 and above—a category under which several AOs in the Faculty of Arts fall.

In his email to ARTSMIN, Manfredi emphasized that the Faculty is taking action out of necessity.

“The project is aimed at meeting real challenges that we currently face and may face in the future, even if there is disagreement with solutions currently proposed,” he wrote.

AUS Vice-President (VP) Internal Justin Fletcher agreed that the Faculty needs to proactively address new realities, but expressed hope that the administration will continue to consult all those who will be affected by changes made to Arts space.

“I think the overall mission of the project People, Processes, and Partnerships is justified,” he said, citing Bill 100 and budget cuts as valid reasons for the project. “Should an [AO] leave a department, they may not have back-up, which can put much strain on a department, which could thus affect the student experience.”

“While I think the intentions of the project are good, I think more consultation needs to be done concerning the floor plan scenarios before proceeding with further aspects of the project,” Fletcher continued.

The AUS also hosted a Town Hall last night, at which Manfredi and two associate deans addressed students’ continued concerns over the project’s consulation process and  how the division of labour among different  advisors will now exist.

VP Internal and Events of the History Students’ Association (HSA) Laure Spake, who was among those who spoke out against the initial plan to restructure Leacock at both the Arts Town Hall and AUS Council, expressed concerns that the new plan to first focus on 688 Sherbrooke and Ferrier may be just a semblance of compromise.

“We hope that the [PPP] project is announcing its step back and re-evaluation in good faith, but so far we are not comfortable backing off and letting this issue slip under the radar,” Spake said.

Spake also noted that she was informed of the change through an email from fellow student Fletcher and not the Faculty.

Associate Professor of Political Science Jacob Levy, whose office is currently located in the Ferrier building, expressed optimism over the new direction the PPP is taking.

“It’s true that Arts/Ferrier is a lot easier to handle than Leacock—the complicated pieces of the Leacock puzzle are much less present here,” Levy said. “I’m expecting little disruption and the possibility of some improvement in our access to administrative support over here.”

Manfredi said he personally received two direct responses to the changes, and that both were positive.  He also noted that two Faculty-wide listservs were notified right away of the changes following the initial announcement made at the Faculty Council on Mar. 26.

“We rely on these recipients to cascade the information out to those they represent, as the department of political science did,” Manfredi said.  “I do not know if student members of Faculty Council who received the message forwarded it to their constituents, which is their responsibility.”

Scenarios for 688 Sherbrooke and the Ferrier building have not been completed and will be released as they become available, according to Manfredi. He also noted that the scenarios will incorporate long-standing plans unconnected to PPP, citing “the necessity of moving the language labs out of McLennan Library and into Ferrier, moving the French Language Centre to Ferrier to put it next to the language labs, moving [the] East Asian studies [department] to 688 Sherbrooke.”

Manfredi anticipates that 688 Sherbrooke will be re-arranged fully this summer and that the whole PPP will be completed by early 2014.

15 people attended an open conversation about McGill’s budget cuts and Quebec tuition indexation in the Lev Bukhman Room in the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) building on Mar. 26. The event was hosted by SSMU Vice-President External Robin Reid-Fraser, and many of those in attendance were elected student representatives to SSMU.

SSMU President-Elect Katie Larson read an email from McGill Principal Heather Munroe-Blum, describing McGill’s “measures to address budget challenges,” which was sent moments before last Tuesday’s event began.

Jaime MacLean, president of the Association of McGill University Support Employees (AMUSE)—a labour union that represents half of McGill’s non-academic employees—expressed several concerns about the voluntary retirement package announced in Munroe-Blum’s email, which will be available to “administrative support staff aged 60 and over.”

“It’s really restrictive, because people need to give their answer [soon] and leave work by the end of August,” MacLean said. “From what I’ve heard, there are four to five hundred people who are eligible for that … [and the administration is] planning for around 40 per cent of those staff to take it.”

Last Tuesday’s MRO also announced that the McGill Association of University Teachers (MAUT) agreed to a year-long salary freeze. According to MacLean, professors have no real control over their own salary freezes.

“[MAUT is not a union], so there’s nothing they can do to stop that,” MacLean said. “McGill professors are one of the last faculty groups in Canada to not have a union.”

Reid-Fraser suggested that the relationship between campus unions and the McGill administration has been strained for some time.

“We just had the MUNACA strike [in Fall 2011], which I think raised the tension between [the] McGill administration and the unions,” she said. “There’s always been tension … because of the way [the administration] treats unions in general, and their attempts to unionize.”

Reid-Fraser’s statement referred to the administration’s response to a move by the Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill (AGSEM) to unionize course lecturers in Fall 2010, which included ordering pro-unionization posters to be removed from campus notice boards.

Another topic of discussion at the event was the fate of student jobs on campus.

A part-time McGill student and full-time employee at the McGill Bookstore, who asked to remain anonymous, commented on the Bookstore’s plan to shorten opening hours.

“We got an email [today] that the bookstore … [which] used to be open nine to seven, Monday to Friday, now is going to be open nine to five,” the student said. “That really kills people’s availability …. Not being able to work three [o’clock] ‘til seven, or four ‘til seven, is going to really cut a lot of people. It’s a way of firing people without firing them.”

MacLean also expressed concern over the expected decrease in student employment opportunities on campus.

“[Students] depend on getting a campus job, [and] there already aren’t that many of them,” she said. “Not only are students losing jobs … it’s [also] reducing access to services for students who need them.”

Larson suggested that McGill’s method of handling these issues might be creating conflict, instead of uniting different members of the McGill community, such as students, administration, faculty, and part-time employees.

“The way the university is approaching the problem is very pro-student,” Larson said. “What they’re trying to do is [please] students by saying, ‘We’re not cutting your classes, we’re cutting our staff.’”

“By doing that, [the administration seem to be] setting students apart from the staff, which … isn’t [effective], because there are many students who are also staff here at McGill,” Larson continued.

Reid-Fraser said she supports the idea of a united approach to budget cuts and tuition indexation, and sees the current situation as a chance to restructure McGill’s employment systems.

“Maybe this is a time to [not] be … thinking about all of these staff as one group taking a pay cut, but thinking about this as an interesting opportunity to have workers and students looking at this bureaucratic environment that they work and live in, and [determining] where are the places where this bureaucracy is bigger than it need to be,” she said.