Rally: Stop the Cuts to NSCAD Support Staff – Thursday, June 25, noon – 1p.m. Fountain Campus, 5163 Duke St., Halifax

Come out during your lunch hour! Support your fellow NSGEU members!

Tell NSCAD University that you do not support their cuts to Administrative and Custodial staff.

On June 17, NSGEU learned that 16 Administrative and Custodial workers (nine custodial workers, six Administrative Assistants, and one clerk) at NSCAD were losing their jobs.

The employer plans to contract out the work of the Custodial staff and altogether eliminate the Administrative Assistant and Clerk positions. These job losses will lead to a less supportive environment for students, who will now have fewer supporting staff to help them when needed.

Through Bill 100, the McNeil government has clearly signaled to university administrations that they must put their budget and bottom line before anything else. Eliminating and contracting out staff positions that come with decent wages and benefits isn’t good for the workers, local economy, the students, or the overall quality of education NSCAD will be able to offer in the future.

In both the government-commissioned university consultations last fall and polling done by the Nova Scotia Post-Secondary Education Coalition, it was found that the public actually wants more support for students. Cutting support staff at NSCAD will do the opposite.

Administrative staff at NSCAD support the students and faculty each day by arranging studio bookings, organizing purchase orders, managing the Departmental budget, booking models for drawing classes, and coordinating room bookings. They must be on-hand to help solve a variety of administrative/studio problems that students encounter throughout the day. The support students and faculty receive from Administrative staff is vital to their success and is essential to a positive experience teaching or studying at NSCAD.

The affected custodial staff members have worked at the university for up to 24 years. They know the complex campus well, and understand how to work with and around the students and the art they create. An arts, craft, and design university is not an environment conducive to contract custodial work with its characteristic high turnover rates. We need your support to help step up the pressure.

President Jessome has called for the NSCAD administration to reverse these detrimental funding cuts.

Please come out to the rally and raise your voice against these cuts to NSCAD.