A member carries a sign saying “protect international students” at the January 20th rally.
On the same day that the employer expressed a desire to “repair the relationship” with CUPE 3903, we discovered a hike in the tuition of international graduate students of roughly $800-900 for the year. When we ended our strike in March 2015, point 10 of the memorandum of settlement read:
From the date of ratification onward, for the term of the collective agreement, the university commits that there will be no increases in tuition fees for domestic or international graduate students (except MBA, IMBA, MPA, part-time LLM students, MHRM, and MDes).
The employer has since confirmed the increase, claiming that it was done “in error”, and will be reversed immediately. They also offered us their “sincerest apologies”.
These continued “errors”, like the one that saw hundreds of members underpaid or not paid at all over the summer, mean that York either obtains or keeps funds that it can invest into its roughly $1B budget, while our members scramble to make ends meet. We can’t help but notice that York benefits massively from these “mistakes” and has never found and corrected one without getting caught first.
York has taken great offense to our #YorkLies campaign, claiming their good intentions. The employer does not seem to understand that their supposedly good intentions won’t put food on our plates, or pay our rent. We’ve had enough of York’s apologies.