Layoff Week?

Four working days remain before the July 1 restructuring deadline that people in FAS have been hearing about for months. Yet, heads and department managers are still prohibited from giving staff any indication about whether they will have a job come July 1. The same injunction applies to communicating with workers who will remain at Queen’s but whose jobs will be radically altered as they are asked to split their time between two or more units or take on tasks previously performed by someone else.

Even if heads and managers defy the ban on sharing information, as some have done, they and their staff remain in the dark about the process by which people will be laid off or redeployed. The suspicion is that staff will be walked off the job without notice, subject to the security theatre that big corporations often use when executing mass layoffs, especially in places with lax labour protections. This means that employees receive news about the termination of their employment at a meeting with HR and are then walked to their office, asked to clear their personal belongings, and accompanied out the door. At this point, they lose access to their email and any other means of communication linked to their employment. 

There is speculation that the layoffs will happen before the extra-long weekend, prior to the Principal’s staff and faculty appreciation BBQ on July 5. What cruel irony.

Whatever the date, QCAA is watching closely. Stay tuned for information about how you can show your support for laid-off workers.

And once again, it is important to remember that a) Queen’s has millions of dollars in non-restricted funds that could be used to support the maintenance of staff positions, and b) financial savings from layoffs will make barely a dent in the deficit that has been assigned to FAS. Indeed, if the current restructuring of FAS financial services is anything to go by, costs will actually increase as highly paid managers are hired to replace staff who do genuinely useful work—a move that comes straight from the Nous playbook.