Two Trent University professors have been involuntarily tossed from their department and offices. Capricious and egregious treatment of unionized (and tenured) professors will lead, as any reasonable academic manager should foresee, to the costly grievance procedure. In this case the Trent University Faculty Association (TUFA) has filed numerous grievances alleging that Trent, among other things, has breached academic freedom and practiced discrimination, including breach of the duty to accommodate which would be a violation of the Ontario Human Rights Code. These are certainly serious allegations which are even more disturbing as they are consistent with a trend of dysfunctional and problematic human resources management practices under the auspices of the board and President Bonnie Patterson and as administered by Associate Vice President Human Resources David Mahy.

The two professors involved are Andreas Pickel and Mark Neufeld. Formerly of the Political Studies department and founding members of the Trent International Political Economy Centre, both Pickel and Neufeld have contributed significantly to the Trent community over the course of their positive and productive employment at Trent. Effective July 2004, Pickel was promoted to full professor and both Pickel and Neufeld received merit awards from the very Dean (Colin Taylor) who precipitated the need to resort to grievance by removing them from their department and offices. Both professors have received praise and recognition from Trent's administrators and their accomplishments touted in various official Trent publications and promotional material.

Trent has been the subject of a CAUT inquiry into alleged breach of academic freedom involving another long-term and dedicated professor, George Nader. The Nader Inquiry has yet to release its findings.

In a letter received by OurTrent Pickel briefly clarifies the situation. However, much remains in need of clarification and explanation, raising a host of issues, many of which potentially have negative monetary consequences of some significance for Trent.

If the manner and nature of management's treatment of these professors they are deemed to have been defamed, might the professors seek millions of dollars in damages from Trent in an action similar to the $10-million in damages York is facing for allegedly having defamed one of their own? And given that merit awards are determined around November/December and awarded retroactively to the previous July, one wonders exactly what transpired in the few months between the last days of 2004 and April 11, 2005 when the Dean ordered the professors be involuntarily removed from their departments (and at which time Neufeld was on sick leave!). That's a remarkably short time for any form of progressive discipline or problem resolution to occur, if indeed such did occur. What, one has to wonder, was in the administration's "directing mind" to prompt the Dean to act so definitively and to, figuratively speaking, summarily execute two professors whose accomplishments Trent uses in its promotional material?

And what does this mean for human resources policies and practices? The 1997 Arthurs-Lorimer Report (The External Review of the Administration of Trent University) stressed the need for Trent to re-establish trust and civility, improve labour relations and to conduct the concomitant review of human resources management and policies, and these needs persist today;

If trust is to be re-established then civility is essential. If the University is to conduct its business successfully, administrators, faculty, governors, staff and students must be able to interact with each other in a reasonable manner. They must be able to raise concerns, discuss them, and work together to resolve points at issue before they become major confrontations.
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The administration should review the management and policies of Human Resources with a view to improving employee relations and reducing unnecessary resort to grievance.
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With respect to non-unionized employees, we would recommend that good Human Resources policy at any university would require the establishment of some form of employee manual, setting out common terms and conditions of employment.

Add to the context of poor and poorly managed employee relations the apparent "mind set" of David Mahy. As evidenced by his actions managing employees resulting his previous employer being sued as noted in Prinzo v. Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care, one wonders if another judge might in future observe of Trent's human resources practices that they "persisted such harassment with almost sadistic resolve". We'd like to assure proper policies and procedures are in place to assure this does not happen and that no employee suffers mistreatment by Trent.

What, exactly, is the board doing to improve the management of Trent's Human Resources? Unfortunately we see no evidence of what was done regarding these or any of the recommendations contained in the Arthurs-Lorimer Report. Rather, we see incidents such as two professors being turfed from their department and offices, employees being subjected to workplace bullying, the removal of vocal and active members of the board, and the firing of competent and dedicated employees.

Trent's response to the Arthurs-Lorimer recommendations appears to be limited to encouraging it to be forgotten by removing the report from its website. We have made the Report available here. As always, OurTrent encourages the board to make readily available a report detailing which of the recommendations contained the Arthurs-Lorimer External Review of the Administration of Trent University were accepted, and why, and what was done to implement them, as well as to detail which recommendations were rejected and why?