As employees navigate job uncertainty and increased workloads, the University is encouraging staff to smile more and do push-ups.
The Faculty of Arts and Science (FAS) offered in-person and virtual workshops on “transitioning through change,” to staff and faculty over the summer, the University confirmed in a statement to The Journal.
A virtual workshop, presented by a representative from TELUS One Health on Aug. 8, faced criticism from Queens Coalition Against Austerity (QCAA), a group of staff, faculty, and students opposed to the University’s budget cuts.
According to a QCAA media release, the workshop failed to acknowledge the challenges FAS staff and faculty face and ignored the structural causes of their stress. The media release explained the strain experienced by FAS staff is largely due to increased workloads caused by layoffs, which the University has linked to its $28.2 million operating budget deficit.
READ MORE: Queen’s lays off 16 employees ahead of September
“Resilience discourse is a strategy for ensuring compliance. In other words, making individuals responsible for managing their suffering and discouraging them from questioning austerity measures or other systemic forces at the root of their hardship,” QCAA stated.
Smiling more, doing pushups, and keeping a rubber band on your wrist to snap when upset, as suggested by the workshop, doesn’t effectively help staff, the media release added.
Courtney Szto, an associate professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies, who was at the workshop, echoes QCAA’s sentiments and described the session as a “complete waste of time and money.”
“It was very much putting the onus on the individual staff members to navigate distress and dysfunction of these austerity measures,” Szto said in an interview with The Journal. “Staff brought up very genuine fears and experiences of anxiety and having a lack of control over their work [in the workshops comment section], but none of those concerns were actually addressed in meaningful ways.”
To say shouldering the work of two to three other people is “normal job stress,” is problematic, Szto explained. Requiring FAS staff to take on additional work raises concerns about labour exploitation aimed at alleviating the University’s financial woes, Szto added.
Staff want to take up their concerns with senior administration directly, Szto said. That channel remains closed, so the FAS community has leaned on each other for support and is sharing important information with each other, she explained.
The controversial workshop comes as a petition by the United Steelworkers local 2010 and Unity Council urging the Queen’s community to support steelworkers as they face layoffs, low wages, and high workloads was circulated online.
“The Employer’s claim of a budget crisis, current hiring freeze, the numerous cuts to core academic programs, increased workloads, the outscoring of our bargaining unit jobs to casual employees or for-profit corporations, the use of staff layoffs to correct the budget deficit, and the prolonged periods of understaffing have contributed to low morale and the low quality of service in offices, labs, service units, and residence across the University community,” the petition said.
Tags
budget cuts, budget deficit, layoffs, USW
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John
I really don’t have much sympathy for a group of overpaid intellectuals who couldn’t make it in the private sector and whine incessantly about how hard done by they are
August
A lot of these people are living pay cheque to pay cheque with families to support, like anyone else.
Lyla
The staff? Cause the cleaners at queens all but let’s talk residence for now as an example: have no support, they are excepted to come in to work clean up vomit, shit, and anything else that happened when the students party, and they are excepted to do so in 8 hrs the work load of 3-4 people. They have cleaners having to do a whole building by themselves on many occasions, and they are excepted to finish everything without complaint. And heaven forbid you get sick, they still expect you to come in and clean, not telling the workers if there is a serious illness in their area where they might get sick. They aren’t paid as much as they should be and are treated like shit by management, and even those that are suppose to help them are dismissive to everything they say. Unless you have done this job you can’t say shit.