Employment Systems Review - Queen's and QUFA jointly hire Dr. Helen Breslauer

Dr. Helen Breslauer was hired in spring 2007 as the external consultant to the Joint QUFA-Queen's Committee on the Employment Systems Review (ESR), a task mandated by a Memorandum of Agreement between the two parties concerning Employment Equity. Its goal is to ensure that the policies and practices which guide employment systems are free of systemic discrimination, that they do not contain barriers which impact adversely on QUFA members with particular characteristics.

The Joint Committee defined the scope of the project to deal with seven employment systems: recruitment, selection/hiring; performance evaluation; promotion; retention; workload; and compensation and benefits, and seven grounds of non-discrimination: membership in the four "designated groups" under the Federal Contractors Program, i.e., visible minorities, aboriginal peoples, people with disabilities, and women, and three others: sexual orientation; age; and family status.

Dr. Breslauer is in the process of compiling and working with a large number of documents relating to the employment systems and the grounds for non-discrimination. She has also been on campus a number of times meeting with individuals and with groups from QUFA and from the Administration in order to better understand the policies and practices in operation at Queen's. She is working on a progress report for December.

Dr. Breslauer comes to this task with more than 35 years experience working in, with, and for, Canadian universities. Trained as a sociologist, she taught at the University of Toronto, was Senior Research Officer for the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA), and has been a full-time consultant, largely to universities: faculty associations; administrations; and joint committees of the two; for the past twelve years. She has consulted on equity matters at Queen's, Toronto, York, Ryerson, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, among others.

If you wish to get in touch with Dr. Breslauer, please contact Elaine Berman