Something Stinks at RRC
Dec 10, 2012
anderson, andy, contract, food, rollback, rrc
This past June, the administration at Red River College (RRC) notified the MGEU of concerns they had regarding salaries of its food service workers. Simply put, the College believed its workers were overpaid and wanted to open up the contract to make changes.The Union told the College that it was a collective bargaining issue and that the college could try to address their concern when negotiations on the next contract begin sometime in 2013. The College explained that financially, they couldn’t wait that long. At their behest, the union met with senior management several times over the summer to examine the operations and see if an agreement could be reached on how to address the College’s concerns.
The MGEU was told that the purpose of a meeting in October was to continue discussions on ways to resolve the employer’s concerns. Surprisingly, College Administration instead gave notice they would be contracting out the service, and laying off all of its food services workers, some which had worked for the College for more than 15 years. The Union immediately fought for its members’ jobs and negotiations began in an effort to prevent the College from contracting out food services.
Bargaining between the union and the employer continued into late November, at which time the College provided a ‘final offer’ which was presented to food service workers. Members were forced to choose between having a job or having their pay frozen, and then cut (some by as much as 30%). Obviously, this offer was a difficult choice for long-term, loyal employees, but they ultimately voted to keep their jobs and reluctantly accepted the offer.
Increases for RRC’s 1%
What made this situation even more difficult for the union and its members to grasp was that this all happened while compensation increased for senior College Administrators. In the last two years, six College Administrators saw generous increases to their annual compensation package and a new Vice-President position (Human Resources and Sustainability) was created. In fact, compensation for the President increased by more than 30% and compensation for Vice Presidents increased by approximately 20%.
When you factor in the addition of a new VP, these increases add up to more than $300,000 from years 2010/11 to 2011/12 – a number which dwarves the savings RRC will see this year by rolling back Food Services salaries. From the average workers’ perspective, it’s very difficult to see how College Administration could rationalize their decision to take money away from some of their lowest paid staff, while making substantial increases to their own compensation package.
Something stinks at RRC.
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