A controversy is brewing between the CSU Executive and the CSU Staff Union (CUPE 4512) together with some CSU counselors.
On Monday, CSU Staff Union President Christina Xydous held a press conference with CSU counselor Tom Price to announce they had found a $21,000 discrepancy in the amount of orientation salaries the Executive declared to the Union. They also claimed that the Executive had been breaking many rules in their hiring practices.
The first and most significant point made in the press release is that the Executive “established a $21,000 secret fund to hire whomever they want outside of the normal hiring process.”
CSU President Brent Farrington said that the figure is false. “The claim of $21,000 is not true at all,” said Farrington. “The total budget for employee salaries was $17,654, and that figure includes everyone paid during orientation. $10,350 of that amount has already been accounted for. A lot of the remainder comes from emergency employees who were hired at the last minute to do distribution of flyers, agendas, and so on. Also, during the Imaginus poster sale, we pay their employees up front and they pay us back afterwards. Even though we’ve received the money from them, we can’t deduct the revenues from expenses because that’s not how our accounting works.”
Xydous is focused on the Executive’s hiring practices, which she says go against the Union rules. “The issue is that when the CSU hires, they’re supposed to inform the union,” said Xydous. “They only informed us of some of those hirings.”
“When it comes to supplementary employees, we’re supposed to hear about it five days in advance. In emergency situations, they can give us 24 hours notice, but there was not even an attempt to tell us about these hirings,” said Xydous. “We only found out because some counselors asked pointed questions to the Executive.”
She also said that once hired, the emergency employees weren’t paid the proper amount. “In the collective agreement, it states that supplementary employees should be paid a minimum of $11.68 per hour. From the feedback that we’ve been getting from employees, some got $8, some got $10, and we haven’t heard of anyone getting the minimum,” said Xydous.
Farrington disagrees with the claim that counselors were hired in violation of Union regulations. “One was hired by Reggie’s’ manager as a bartender, which has nothing to do with the employees union,” he said. “The other person never received a salary, but was paid a small honorarium for building plexiglass covers for some of the lights in Reggie’s.”
The press release also contains the assertion that “a lucrative contract was given to a company owned by a former EVOLUTION Executive with no bidding process”, which Farrington denies.
“Tyler Wordsworth was hired as Handbook Advertising Coordinator, and was paid on commission, which has been the standard practice for 10 years. There were actually two bids, Tyler’s and the person who did it for the previous three years. Tyler’s was about four per cent less than the previous year’s bid”, said Farrington.
Among other allegations listed in the press release was that “a new position was created to facilitate the hiring of a political ally to the EVOLUTION Executive outside of the normal hiring process.” Farrington claims that the position is an important one, and that the hiring was done transparently.
“The position is Internal Communications Coordinator. This person’s job is to communicate with all the faculty associations, to tell them what we’re up to, and to help promote what they’re doing. The hiring process was finalized and they appealed it to Council, which backed the position and the hiring by a two-thirds majority,” said Farrington. “If they’re unhappy with the decision, they should complain to the council.”
The final charge in the Union’s and counselors’ press release is that “EVOLUTION Executives gave themselves a $28,000 pay-hike”.
There was a raise of $2780 per executive, which brought us up to the poverty line, and was approved by the CSU council,” said Farrington. “It brought Executive’s salaries to between $6.34 and $9.32 per hour, depending on how much they work. The Union’s minimum wage is $11.68 per hour,” he said.
The CSU Executive is preparing their own press release to counter the allegations made against them.
Comments are closed.