Saskatchewan Polytechnic is laying off 19 people and some of those cuts will come at their Moose Jaw campus.
Sask. Polytech announced Wednesday that they would be laying off 19 full-time and part-time employees including seven academic employees and 12 professional services employees. The cuts will affect each of their campuses across the province.
Both the Moose Jaw Campus and Saskatchewan Polytechnic would not share which positions, departments or programs were affected by the layoffs.
Sask. Polytech has an enrolment of 14,176 students, including 3,192 in Moose Jaw.
They have a staff of 1,005 academic employees at the start of the year, plus 517 professional services employees and 152 out-of-scope employees. The 19 job cuts represent 15.85 full-time employees which is just less than one per cent (0.94) of Sask. Polytech’s workforce.
In a release Sask. Polytech said that the school “regularly conducts an operational review to ensure program alignment with current market demand, operating efficiencies and budget accountability.”
This is the third straight year that the trade school has laid off employees shortly after the release of the provincial budget. Saskatchewan Finance Minister Donna Harpauer pledged $673 million in operating and capital grants to post-secondary schools in the 2019-20 budget, the same amount that was in the 18-19 budget. Sask. Polytech’s share of that, $148 million, also remains unchanged.
In addition to laying off 22 people last year – including 17 academic staff – a further 20 faculty members also accepted voluntary severances. In 2017, Sask. Polytech laid off 23 staff members following the budget’s release and a further 43 employees accepted severance packages.
