Laurentian University Faculty Association President Fabrice Colin says the union is keeping up its fight to learn details of the deal Dominic Giroux signed with LU when he left to become CEO of Health Sciences North in 2017.
Colin said Wednesday the agreement raises all sorts of long-term questions and violates the collective agreement between LUFA and the university.
As reported by Sudbury.com on Wednesday, when Giroux resigned as LU president in 2017, the Laurentian University Board of Governors agreed to make him a full professor, made him a member of the faculty union and put him on unpaid leave for an undetermined period of time. In addition, should Giroux decide to return to Laurentian, he would be immediately entitled to a full year's paid leave.
In a statement Thursday, Laurentian University said it could not comment on any specifcs on Giroux's exit agreement. But Josée Campeau-Rousselle, a communications office with Laurentian, said in an email that there was nothing unusual about such agreements.
"Contractually, allocated leaves, such as the ability to request an unpaid leave of absence or being afforded an administrative leave at the completion of a five-year term, are not uncommon for senior academic appointments in the university sector, a sector which is highly regulated by compensation restraint regimes with which Laurentian is, and has been, compliant," Campeau-Rousselle said in the email.
Colin said the union heard rumours that Giroux didn't actually quit as a Laurentian employee, but was put on some form of long-term unpaid leave. That raised eyebrows among faculty, since under the collective agreement, professors are only entitled to a maximum of two years of unpaid leave.
“So we then made three requests to Laurentian University to know the truth about it,” he said. “And so then we ended up having to file a grievance by December 2017.
“They asked us to go through Freedom of Information because they were telling us that Dominic Giroux was the third party and that he was entitled to representation and to appeal.”
In a decision dated Jan. 11, an arbitrator ruled the union had been given the basic details of the agreement and so the grievance was “moot.” But Colin says the union wants to make the point that since the Giroux deal affects the collective agreement, the school should have been up front with them, rather than making them file and FOI request.
“It's a matter of transparency because we had to fight for a year and and a half to get that information,” he said. “And it's a matter of equity, because no faculty member is entitled to more than two years of unpaid leave ... They gave Dominic Giroux terms that are outside the collective agreement.”
Allowing the long-term absence affects staffing and workload, Colin said, since Giroux is taking up a staff position while he works full time at Health Sciences North.
“If somebody could suddenly come back 10 years from now as a full professor, it has a huge impact,” Colin said. “And we still have to continue the fight because we were not given the detailed correspondence that outlines the terms and condition of this unlimited leave.
For example, say Giroux decided to return in 20 years, would he receive a full pension from Laurentian?
“That's the kind of information we are still seeking,” Colin said. “We are going to use any legal tools at our disposal to find out all the details of the agreement.”
Longer term, he hopes this will lead to more transparency from Laurentian when it comes to signing agreements with senior administrators.
