By Jeff Brown, OPSEU Local 556, George Brown College
We’re hearing a familiar refrain from the colleges and CEC (College Employer Council) in this round of bargaining: faculty demands—particularly those revolving around workload—are too costly. The Ontario college system, so runs this take, is experiencing a period of instability and just can’t afford to make the changes needed to ensure that faculty work is equitably and fairly compensated. This is an old scare tactic that we know to be based on a false characterization. The college system had a surplus of almost a billion dollars last year alone, with accumulated cash on hand of 2.7 billion. Yes, there are always uncertainties and disruptions in play, but it’s shameful to argue that currently uncompensated labour must continue to go uncompensated because acknowledging it would cost the system too much. Such an argument is morally bankrupt, but when it comes to actual money, the colleges do indeed have the funds to invest in a better system.
George Brown College as an example
This same dynamic plays out here at George Brown. We are constantly told that money is scarce at the College. The College has effectively paused new full-time faculty hiring; apparently, we can’t even afford to fill retirement vacancies. There was no NFA (New Faculty Academy) this year because no cohort of new full-time faculty was hired. Faculty are consistently refused any funding for professional development activities. In departmental and divisional meetings, we are told that money is tight and that the College needs to clamp down on spending. The general message is that this is a period of fiscal uncertainty (post-pandemic recovery, international student disruption, etc.) and that we have to tighten our belts.
Strangely, though, this belt-tightening only seems to apply to faculty and to the education side of our educational institution. There is plenty of money to spend on management and various initiatives, but for some reason there’s no money to invest in front line education and the learning conditions of our students.
The fact is, this is about priorities: the College has money—last year, George Brown had a surplus of nearly $20 million, with cash on hand of well over $40 million—but it has decided to prioritize swelling management ranks and glitzy big-ticket purchases over focussing on what should be the foundation of a college: learning conditions in classrooms.
George Brown's Misplaced Priorities
Two-thirds to three-quarters of faculty at our College (73.5%, according to the most recent numbers provided by the College) are precariously employed, stringing together a living semester to semester, contract to contract. But while the College allegedly can’t afford to hire a significant contingent of new full-time faculty, it can afford to pay salaries to two Presidents. In addition to the salary of President Dr. Gervan Fearon ($382,679 in 2023, up 10.8% from the previous year), for the past three years the College has also paid previous George Brown President Anne Sado a hefty salary as ‘President Emeritus’, with the following earnings:
- 2021: $358,700
- 2022: $454,202 (higher than President Fearon)
- 2023: $358,700
The College can also afford to provide big pay bumps to middle and senior management. For example, the College’s Senior VP of People Enablement and Experience has seen a 30.5% salary hike over the past 3 years. The VP of People and Culture saw a 23.2 % increase in 2023 and 25.9% in 2022. Previously-titled ‘Chairs’ received significant salary bumps (after the College expressly said they would not) when re-christened ‘Associate Deans’ in 2023. These raises ranged between 15-20%, with the highest a 29.7% raise for the Associate Dean of the Culinary School.*
In the wake of Chairs being promoted to Associate Deans, there has been a proliferation across the College of ‘Managers of Academic Operations’, further swelling the management ranks. And the College continues to hire senior management positions. It’s not just filling vacant positions (which of course it can’t afford to do with full-time faculty vacancies) but even creating new ones, with two recent examples being postings for a ‘Director, Change Management’ and ‘Director, Scholarship of Teaching & Learning’. These Directors are at the same pay band as Associate Deans.
Meanwhile, the Senior Leadership Team (senior management above Dean level) has doubled in size in the past 5 years, from 9 individuals in 2019 to 18 in 2024. In 2019, there were only ‘VicePresidents’ on the leadership team. Now it’s sub-divided into: Senior Vice-Presidents, VicePresidents, and Associate Vice-Presidents. And remember that all these VPs have their own offices and administrative teams. Additionally, there are at least 2 other Associate VicePresidents who, for some reason, are not included on the Senior Leadership Team web page.
And, of course, it doesn’t include the other President, Anne Sado.
This is just the tip of the iceberg and the continuation of a long-term trend. And expenditures aren’t only increasing management bloat. The College could also afford the $230 million acquisition of the Corus waterfront building in late 2023, presumably so that it can pursue the venerable educational mission of going into the landlord business. The College claims that this acquisition will help “support our students” and “expand our academic offerings,” which is simply false. The building is in no way being used to do either of these things. It is simply a rental income property.
The Bigger Picture and Bargaining
The point isn’t to vilify individuals in administrative roles or to make you angry with your manager. Rather, the point is that there is clearly a systemic problem here. Regardless of the College’s stated ‘visions’ or ‘strategies’, they have not been directing their resources to best support faculty and the student learning experience. A failure to invest in faculty is a failure to support students.
This brings us back to bargaining and the bigger picture form a sector-wide perspective. Faculty awareness of what is happening at the ground level is what informs our demands. These demands are also backed by the Workload Taskforce Report. Don’t be gaslighted into thinking that faculty demands for an improved college system are unreasonable and would cause a fiscal collapse. We see it sector-wide and we see it at our institution: the money is there. This is about priorities. When it comes to prioritizing frontline education and the student learning experience, George Brown has clearly lost its way.
This is why it’s essential that faculty back our demands with a strong strike mandate in the upcoming vote. Every few years we have a chance to make a difference in our working
conditions and our students’ learning conditions. This is our opportunity to exercise our collective power and remind the colleges that the priority needs to be providing a sustainable, high quality educational experience for our students. An overwhelming strike mandate will send a message to the colleges and give our Bargaining Team the leverage it needs to reach a negotiated settlement that will allow all of us to focus on what we want to be doing: training Ontario’s future.
*Salary details as per Ontario Sunshine List