Sunshine List not helpful when addressing dispute

By Lethbridge Herald on March 17, 2022.

Editor:

The Letter to the Editor by A.W. Shier (Lethbridge Herald, 2022-03-10) requires some context. Mr. Shier uses, as the basis of this letter, the University of Lethbridge (UofL) Public Compensation Disclosure List (Public Sector Body Compensation Disclosure | University of Lethbridge (ulethbridge.ca), accessed 2022-03-10), also known as the “Sunshine List.” 

Let’s look at the list, isolating for 2020 disclosure figures (the most recent and relevant available) with a specific focus on “compensation” (i.e., salaries (mostly) and taxable benefits) since this is what Mr. Shier focussed on. 

As noted on this website, the Sunshine List’s compensation threshold limit for 2020 is $135,317 meaning that salaries for any U of L employee earning less than this amount are not included. 

The other observation is that the list also includes administrators and non-academic staff, so by my analysis for 2020 data, only 144 ULFA members were compensated above the threshold in 2020. Within this ULFA subset, the maximum compensation reported is approximately $260,000, the average compensation of those included on the list is approximately $165,000, and the median compensation disclosed is approximately $156,000. 

Anyone who read the letter by Dr. Christopher Hopkinson providing details of his life as an academic (Lethbridge Herald, 2022-03-02) can decide if the average (disclosed) compensation is adequate or not given the education requirements and the workload expectations he described.

A more important observation is who does not appear on the Sunshine List. 

In fact, the majority of ULFA members are not represented on this list including: the continuing instructors and academic assistants, the sessional instructors (paid by the course, essentially doing academic “piece work”), those academic staff on limited term contracts, those academic staff just starting out in their careers and those in mid-career whose compensation hasn’t reached the threshold. 

Not everyone is a mature, accomplished, tenured, full professor credited with multiple decades of teaching and research who is finally earning enough to warrant disclosure of their compensation.

The Sunshine List obfuscates more than it elucidates and is not helpful when trying to understand the U of L labour dispute. Compensation is but one piece of the complicated puzzle being worked through at the UofL. It might be better for readers to look more deeply into the issues before passing judgement.

Leona Jacobs

Lethbridge