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MARCH 14, 2024 • VOL. 57 NO. 06 • VANCOUVER, B.C.
A luxury BMW SUV parked in a Langara Students' Union parking stall on March 1, 2024. PHOTO YASHVIKA GROVER
Big bucks for supersized LSU
Langara Students' Union has a larger staff than SFU and pays them way more By YASHVIKA GROVER
L
angara Students’ Union staff members make on average $112,292, significantly more than SFU student union employees — despite servicing less than half the number of students. The SFU Student Society has four staffers managing its 37,000 members. Meanwhile, the LSU pays six staff members to oversee its much smaller 15,917 membership. Additionally, SFU’s union staffers make an annual average of just $95,576. According to Spencer Dane, one of Langara College’s top business management instructors, the justifications for the LSU’s large salaries are “opaque.” “What were those people doing for the remuneration?” said Dane, who is also the college’s creative arts division chair. “How did it get approved? It seems fairly opaque, you know, through, behind closed doors.” According to its latest financial statement, the LSU paid out $673,753 to six full-time staff members. Like all non-profits, the LSU falls under the Societies Act, which does not limit staff pay but requires societies to disclose the total remuneration paid to all staff making over $75,000.
Potentially, this could mean that “shocking” and “dreadful.” five LSU staffers make $75,000 while “I think there should be a full executive director Gurbax Leelh public consultation process about makes almost $300,000, Dane said. the future of student unions and how “It’s really hard to know what’s they should operate,” Tromp said. going on because they’re not telling In addition to LSU staff salaries, you,” he said. “They’re not reveal- student union fees also pay stipends ing enough to say, ‘Oh, the executive for elected board members. director makes half of it.’” Each fall, the student body elects Sheldon Falk, a lawyer at the a board meant to oversee LSU operMacushla Law Corporation who ations. Six full-time staff members specializes in non-profits, said operate the day-to-day affairs. student unions are able Elected representatives get to set their own wages stipends, often paid in a and stipends. single lump sum. See video of However, they After reviewing the student reaction latest financial statements, are expected to do it in a transparent Dane also questioned at manner. “very large stipends” Falk said if this langaravoice.ca paid to LSU elected board isn’t done, the student members that vary with no body needs to take explanation, which he called action by holding the coun“irregular.” cil accountable. Dane said the stipends of some “The recourse would be to go back student board members looked more to the bylaws and say, ‘Well, I think like salaries, with amounts ranging we need to bake into these bylaws from $7,546 for the international a little bit more accountability,’” he students rep to a whopping $21,384 said. for the VP internal. While the average LSU staff He said the lack of transparsalary is more than $112,000, top- ency around the high stipends and tier instructors at Langara are paid the actual work done by the board $104,708. members gave him pause. Stanley Tromp, an FOI journal“Why were there specific people ist and a Langara journalism gradu- who were paid more, like, it looked ate of 1993, described the amount more like a salary?” Dane said. “It’s paid to LSU staffers and the lack of very odd to me that for … what I transparency around their salaries as think is a not-for-profit organization
is paying people on the board, when we don’t know what they’re actually doing.” The LSU financial statement showed that the 2023 stipend for the VP internal also rose sharply to $21,884, from $8,200 the year prior. Meanwhile, the VP of finance and administration made $21,304 — almost 10 times more than the stipend from 2022. In an email to the Voice, the LSU said, “The executive of the board and the reps of the board have different roles and have a different workload that changes every year.” The LSU also said that the amount paid to the board members “was decided by the previous councils.” Former council member Kunwar Vikrant Devgan, who was the LSU VP of finance and administration in 2019, told the Voice in an earlier interview that he never saw any financial figures and the staff made all the decisions. “I will tell you that I did not sign any of the financial decisions taken during my period, not even a single decision,” said Devgan. “All decisions were made by the full-time staff.” Devgan said he was made to sign an NDA or non-disclosure agreement, which surprised him. “I was expecting transparency because it’s called the students’ union,” Devgan said. “If students
cannot know what happens . . . then what the hell are you doing here?” Devgan said he was disillusioned once he joined the council, quickly realizing his role was not going to be what he expected. “After you start the role, they basically explain to you that . . . it’s completely different.” In addition to the elected students, the board also includes two senior managers, who under the B.C. Societies Act, can be a student or an LSU staff member. According to the act, if the senior board members are on the staff, the stipends are included as an addition to their regular salary. The audited 2022-2023 financial statement and report obtained by the Voice showed that the two senior managers received stipends of $54,216 and $30,238. The Voice asked the LSU to provide the names of the senior managers last November. The LSU responded that they were “Sukh Kaur and Keshav,” but did not include Keshav’s last name nor provide it when the Voice followed up. The LSU said the senior managers share in all tasks but do not have the authority to exercise powers. “They are contracted by the board and manage the various roles,” the LSU said in an email. Please see LSU PAY, page 2