Professors’ union slams U of O for VP’s pay

The University of Ottawa professors’ union has taken the school’s administration to task for paying one of its top executives a $30,000 annual stipend at a time when the university projects a third consecutive financial deficit.

It started when members of the Association of Professors of the University of Ottawa noted an anomaly in Ontario’s public sector salary disclosures — the Sunshine List, as it’s known — regarding Mona Nemer, the university’s vicepresident of research.

Nemer’s salary was listed in the $259,000 range for several years up to and including 2012. The next year, she was paid $274,049, a 5.5 per cent increase from the previous year.

But in 2014, her earnings jumped to $392,059, an increase of $118,010.

The APUO and three other unions representing U of O employees published an open letter June 30 asking the board of governors’ executive committee to explain the sudden increase.

The university responded last week in a written statement explaining that, in addition to serving as the vice-president of research, Nemer is a tenured professor with the Faculty of Medicine, and thus receives a $30,000 yearly stipend to support her work, which was paid out as a four-year lump sum in 2014.

Nemer does not teach courses at the university but leads research projects as part of her professorship, which includes the supervision of student research.

The university said in 2015 Nemer will get her regular base salary plus the stipend for her professorship.

“It is standard practice at many universities to compensate senior researchers,” the university said in its statement, adding that the $30,000 annual payment is unrelated to her work as an executive.

Nemer was first appointed to the position in 2006, and her current contract began in 2011.

The APUO disagrees with the reason for Nemer’s additional pay. It deems the payment “redundant.”

“We don’t accept it as a valid argument,” said Jennifer Dekker, president of the APUO, which represents 1,250 employees at the university, including professors, counsellors and librarians. “When she was originally hired as vice-president of research, one would expect that her portfolio as a researcher would have been taken into account in her terms of offer. And so to say that she’s getting an extra stipend for doing things that would normally be expected of a (vice-president of research) doesn’t make sense to us.”

The university declined requests for interviews with Nemer and the board of governors’ chair.

The Association of Part-Time Professors of the University of Ottawa, the Support Staff University of Ottawa and the Canadian Union of Public Employees local 2626 also stand behind the APUO’s position.

In an open letter published July 16, the APUO alleged that Nemer’s annual stipend was paid out in a lump sum “retroactively during a period of wage and benefit freeze” for university vice-presidents, contrary to the Strong Action for Ontario Act (Budget Measures).

“I would characterize it as a shell game,” said Dekker. “The money obviously all comes from the same source and goes to the same source.”

She said what Nemer earned last year “far exceeds” what senior university executives ought to be paid per year. And she said the extra yearly payments are troubling amid the administration’s “rhetoric” about a structural financial challenge, claims the APUO disputes.

“They’re constantly barraging us with all these communications regarding a structural deficit, meanwhile you’re paying somebody this much extra money in a year,” she said.

The university’s 2015-16 budget totals about $1 billion and projects a deficit of $1.9 million. In the past 10 years, the school recorded a surplus in all but three annual budgets, two of them in the past two years.

“People are not paying attention to what we’re paying our senior executives,” Dekker said.