Staff morale down after MUN slashes budget, jobs: faculty association

Major budget cuts announced Thursday at Memorial University are tanking staff morale, according to the school's faculty association, and members anticipate more cuts are on the way.

The Memorial University of Newfoundland Faculty Association suspected as early as December that austerity measures were on the horizon, with vice-president Russell Williams telling CBC at the time that "bad things are coming."

Those "bad things" came to fruition Thursday, when interim president Dr. Jennifer Lokash announced major budget cuts that included 20 staff layoffs.

The cuts will also close the Office of Public Engagement in St. John's, eliminate the Harris Centre's operating budget, and merge the Writing Centre with the Centre for Innovation in Teaching and Learning. 

"We have a $20 million problem that we have to deal with," Lokash told CBC on Friday morning.

The goal of the cuts, Lokash said, is to minimize impacts on student experience — but MUNFA secretary Dr. Erika Merschrod doesn't buy it.

She said the cuts announced are only a fraction of the university's losses, and they'll inevitably impact students. 

"There's more that they've already done that they haven't mentioned," Merschrod said.

"There's been a lot of talk about how we aren't cutting back on teaching positions, but the fact is, they have. They have ended positions, they have fired people."

Term appointments reversed

In a press release on July 18, MUNFA said some instructors in the English and education departments had received written indications that their contracts would be renewed. Then, the indications of their teaching term appointments were rescinded. 

Merschrod said that some instructors would have started preparing their coursework because term contracts were often delayed until just before or sometimes after the semester had started.

"To not only find out that you're losing your job, but after having invested time and energy into planning for the fall semester and then finding out now that you're going to have to look for a job elsewhere is really discouraging," she said.

Lokash said there will be a reduction in contract teaching in the coming years. Rather than conduct mass layoffs, she said the university is allocating a one-time funding of $3.9 million to fund up to 363 additional course sections as they transition to a smaller staff.

"We think humane ways of approaching that is to let contracts come to an end and not renew them," Lokash said. "Not to fire people but to allow their contracts to play out."

The cuts come months after the school's administration warned of a major budget shortfall. Late last year, former MUN president Neil Bose announced the school was facing a multi-million dollar deficit. Bose enacted an immediate hiring freeze following a 5.4 per cent drop in enrollment.

Senior leadership expansion

Despite the cuts, Merschrod said, MUN is adding to its senior leadership with maximum salaries.

"They're adding a new VP position," she said. "Each of those people also has a set of staff that supports their office, and so it's a huge expense."

Lokash said MUN's new president, Dr. Janet Morrison, will review Memorial's senior leadership structure during the first six months of her tenure. 

Meanwhile, Merschrod said morale is tanking. 

"Morale is very low," she said. "We are pushing back, but the administration is not supporting us in that."

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