SIAST job cuts affecting Woodland Campus

“SIAST regularly reviews its operations and the goal, or the reason behind that, is to ensure that we are investing the resources that we do have with producing the maximum benefit,” Rosia said.

The majority of the cuts will happen at the Prince Albert Woodland Campus.

Cuts in Prince Albert include 6.75 full-time instructors and 1.99 professional/support staff.

The SIAST Faculty Association (SFA) is the union that represents the faculty across all four campuses.

President of SFA Warren White said the number of layoffs that are happening isn’t unusual.

“This is unfortunately a common occurrence. As programs are evaluated, based primarily on enrollment, and where we have decline in enrollment we often experience downsizing and that’s a part of the picture here,” White explained.

“Without saying, this is a very difficult time for those people that are affected. This is not something they were anticipating, it’s going to create hardships for the employees and their families, so that really needs to be acknowledge first of all.”

White said as the SFA they are assisting the employees through the process of seeking other opportunities within the organization.

“Some will choose to retire if they’re in a position to do so, that’s certainly a minority, many of these people are in a career that they’ve devoted to helping young people get started in the work force. Again this is going to be a significant event in their life in terms of recovering, finding employment, our thoughts are with them through that process,” White said.

Rosia said the layoffs are just a part of an operational review any normal business would do to make sure their resources are invested wisely.

“What will happen is the resources will be reallocated to growth areas to ensure that we maintain [them]. We’re responsive to industries needs and student demand. The timing of the layoffs and why they happened last week was driven by a provision of our collective agreements at SIAST. So, there’s a certain calendar date that we have to make those announcements,” Rosia said.

White said it needs to be understood that the organization always operates under financial constraints.

“There is never enough funding to accomplish all the things we want to accomplish and that’s a reality of life within SIAST, it’s a challenge that’s being addressed through seeking other sources of funding,” White said.

White explained SIAST hasn’t really perused corporate funding to support the institute, which is going on in other provinces. However he hopes over time SIAST will be in a better operating position through both secure funding from the government and with the co-operation of industry who hires their students, something like this could be avoided in the future.

The staffing cuts are happening across the board and there isn’t one particular field receiving the brunt of the layoffs, White explained.

Wherever there was soft enrollment or the staffing in an area was higher than it needed to be, those areas would have been of concern and impacted.

White said, “The students will not really notice an impact at all. We’re working with management to minimize the effect at the point of delivery so it will not really have a negative impact on students.”

SFA is now looking for ways they can achieve efficiencies within the organization in terms of management.

“We are always concerned about dollars that really need to be allocated to the point of delivery—that means into the classroom, into the shops and into the labs. From our point of view that’s what really counts, we want to be assured the resources are allocated properly,” White said.

Rosia said they’re still putting the finishing touches on plans for new initiatives for new program expansions which could eventually mean hiring new staff.

SIAST will soon be offering a fourth-year electrician apprenticeship program, which would allow them to be able to add in more staff and faculty at the Woodland Campus.

“There’s a process we still have to go through for that, it’s a matter of prioritizing them and then identifying and get going through the approvals to do that. Those details will come out at a later date,” he continued.

Rosia said “unfortunately, and it’s never a nice thing, but we did have 16 layoff notices go out last week but we also are planning to hire some positions as well that will be required for the new initiatives that we’re planning for right now.”

Rosia said with anything they do they take into account the impact it would have on students in the affected programs, and that they will give those students a chance to finish that course.

“We all have to live within our means. As the 2013-2014 year unfolds we’re going to remain efficient in the use of the way we invest the dollars that we do have. But we’re also going to take steps to becoming more entrepreneurial and through revenue generation opportunities, we’re looking for ways to generate revenues so we can take those revenues and reinvest them back into areas where we see a lot of growth,” Rosia said.

SIAST currently has 26,000 students that they provide education and training opportunities to and have about 1,650 employees.

Rosia said it is unfortunate they had to make cuts, but it’s just a matter of resources being allocated to areas where it would have the most impact.

swallace@panow.com

On Twitter: @sarahthesquid

by Sarah Wallace

SIAST job cuts affecting Woodland Campus

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