Brandon University Faculty Association
270 18th Street
Brandon, Manitoba R7A 6A9

******FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE*****

OCTOBER 7, 2008

The Employer has very carefully chosen a small number of universities to do their comparisons.

BUFA could easily choose a different group and give an entirely opposite impression.

They have very nice coloured graphs, but they're not very meaningful.

What the Employer must remember is that faculty must be attracted not just from Winnipeg, but from other provinces, and even other countries.

Brandon University must, for example, compete with universities in Ontario. A good comparison could be made with the salaries at Nipissing. It is a small, primarily undergraduate institution in the small city of North Bay. Its salary scales are considerably higher than Brandon University's.

In addition, Brandon University routinely ends the fiscal year with very large unallocated surpluses. This year it was about 2million dollars. Instead of drawing pretty graphs with misleading, selective data, it is BUFA's opinion that the Employer would be better off reallocating some resources so that faculty salaries are increased and unallocated surpluses are decreased.

It's BUFA's opinion that if the Employer had done so already, this strike would not have been necessary.