The St. Thomas University Students’ Union has decided to show the pay range for each of their employees in the 2019-20 budget.
This followed the Sept. 16 release of an article by The Aquinian which focused on employee salary censorship. That evening, the employee salaries became public. A day later on Tuesday night, the employee salaries were blacked out and a salary range for each individual salary on the bottom of the budget was added.
A salary range was available in the public Collective Agreement before, but it didn’t provide the salary ranges of individual employees.
This time, the STUSU budget is consistent with the standards of how other businesses and public bodies, like St. Thomas University, publish their employee salaries.
Husoni Raymond, president of STUSU, said the specific employee salaries were only disclosed on Monday evening because of a miscommunication between the STUSU and the workers’ union lawyer. They had changed lawyers from last year. On Tuesday, Sept. 17, the lawyer clarified individual students’ salaries shouldn’t be available to the public and was a violation of the employees’ privacy.
Raymond also said he had emailed the workers‘ union to ask for permission to disclose the salaries before they were released. He said he initially had the impression they were okay with the disclosure of their individual salaries, however after the release, the union expressed concern.
“We respect the workers’ right to have their information remain private.”
“We pride ourselves in being able to provide this information. But again, we have to balance that against the workers’ rights to their privacy.”
Raymond said it’s fair if someone doesn’t want the entire student body to know their salary.
He said when it comes to transparency, you have to sometimes balance that out with employees’ right to privacy. It was his decision to add the individual salary ranges in the budget last week.
“I always try to be the most transparent and aim for having a transparent union.”
With files from Jerry-Faye Flatt
