ACC likely to spend extra $2M on labour costs

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This article was published 18/05/2024 (568 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

An additional $2 million in funding to Assiniboine Community College, announced by Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew on Thursday, will likely be directed toward collective bargaining costs, according to ACC president Mark Frison.

“If the money is coming unencumbered, I would think that that’s certainly one of the things that (money) will help us cover,” Frison told the Sun Friday. “Interestingly enough, you know, that seemed to be part of the remarks of the premier. He understood that we had done that, and perhaps some of the institutions of Winnipeg have already been compensated in that way.”

Earlier this year, following a nearly two-year bargaining process, staff at ACC, along with Winnipeg-based Red River College Polytechnic, ratified a new four-year contract, which included general salary increase of two per cent each year for all employees, an extra pay step for every job classification, a health spending account increase and a signing bonus.

On Thursday during his state of the province address, Kinew told the more than 500 Brandon Chamber of Commerce luncheon attendees that his government would top up funding that did not materialize last year as part of the Progressive Conservative government’s 2023-24 provincial budget.

All told, Kinew announced $7.4 million in new funding for Brandon University and $2 million for ACC, beyond the two per cent operating budget increase that Frison said was already promised by the NDP in the 2024-25 budget.

While larger schools like the University of Winnipeg and the University of Manitoba received a 20.2 per cent and 10.8 per cent increase in base funding for 2023-24, respectively, regional institutions like Brandon University and ACC had to make do with a 3.9 per cent and slightly less than two per cent boost, respectively.

In ACC’s case, a major bureaucratic mixup from the province last year left ACC short on additional funding for its new Neepawa nursing program, resulting in a roughly $300,000 increase to the institution’s projected deficit for the 2023-24 academic year.

As the Sun previously reported, the province announced in February 2023 that it would provide ACC with $2.1 million over several years to bankroll a one-time, 25-student cohort for its practical nursing diploma program in Neepawa. Frison believed this was still true up until the morning of March 1 that year, having received a letter from then-deputy minister of Advanced Education and Training Eric Charron confirming that ACC would get an additional $837,060 in operating funding and $509,726 in capital to support the Neepawa cohort in 2023-24.

Charron’s office retracted that funding notice later that same day, with the province ultimately telling him that additional funding for the Neepawa nursing site was included in the school’s total funding grant of $32 million for the 2023-24 budget year.

“In the end, when you subtract out the other pieces, (the funding increase) was less than two per cent,” Frison said yesterday. “And so there was quite a discrepancy.”

Thus far, Frison said he is not aware of any official correspondence from the province regarding the additional $2 million, and was unaware of the premier’s pending announcement until Thursday. However, Frison praised Kinew for showing interest in educational issues in Brandon, particularly ACC, both before and after the election.

“There’s been lots of good things that they’ve indicated for us,” Frison said, “so yeah, I have to admit that we’re fairly happy with the relationship we’ve enjoyed with him thus far.”

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