With the deadline for Summer registration just a few days away (April 26, 2016), some international students continue to see their accounts blocked by York. This is in spite of the fact that many such students are owed money for tuition offset amounts won in arbitration April 4.

“Members who are owed over $10,000 by the university continue to be blocked and are scrambling to find money in the complete absence of information from the university,” says 3903 Grievance officer Sonja Killoran-McKibbin.

The employer maintains that  affected individuals who are anticipated to receive tuition offset payments such that any remaining outstanding fees are at or below $1000 will have the block lifted. Students whose anticipated settlement amount will leave outstanding fees of up to $3500 will be invited to speak with FGS about repayment of fees in order to lift the registration block.  There are a handful of students whose anticipated settlement amount will leave higher outstanding fees.  This group will also be sent a communication indicating that they will need to discuss with FGS their plans for payment of the fees in order for the registration block to be lifted.

CUPE 3903 reps, however, find this unacceptable. As Killoran-McKibbin put it “after waiting two weeks, it’s completely inadequate to tell us that members may or may not have their block lifted (at some point) based on unfinished calculations that neither the member nor the union have access to. We’re now a couple days before the deadline with no plan to communicate to members, no concrete figures to justify your categorizations, and no way to address errors.”

If you are an international student affected by such blocks, please contact Killoran-McKibbin or 3903 staff representatives for more information or updates on this developing issue.

The April GMM will be held in the Harry Crowe Room, 109 Atkinson. The meeting will run from 12:30 pm – 3:30. A tentative agenda can be found in at the following link: April GMM.

Come have lunch with the union as we make crucial decisions for our local. There will be food.

Please contact Sheila Wilmot at CUPE3903.equity.officer@gmail.com or at 416-736-5154 ext. 3 if you require any of the following: ASL interpretation, reimbursement for childcare/caregiver/attendant care, and/or transportation costs for members who are unable to secure Wheel-Trans, or other requests for accommodation.

On April 13, 2016, CUPE 3903 attended a meeting requested by the employer to discuss the new “fellowship” funding model. Despite our considerable disagreements, we are disappointed and disturbed that the employer, led by Provost Rhonda Lenton, felt it was appropriate to walk out of the meeting after little more than 20 minutes when members got upset that she was unable to answer hard questions about this fellowship plan.

The crux of the issue is the gutting of Unit 3. Under the new model, funding requirements would be met through a fellowship, and the vast majority of Graduate Assistantships (GAs) would be eliminated. This means that hundreds of graduate students, especially Masters students, would be forcibly removed from the bargaining unit and unable to access our health benefits, funds for emergencies, conferences, and childcare, program extensions for students with disabilities, and much more. It is difficult to understand how the employer thinks that this would “enhance the graduate experience”, their stated goal.

This union-busting is cause enough to be unhappy with the employer. To add insult to injury, the employer arrived late to the meeting and were not at all prepared to discuss the details of how the plan will be implemented in just four months. It became clear very quickly that Lenton, who was leading the meeting, does not understand how the CUPE 3903 and YUGSA health care plans work, despite the fact that we have been demanding answers regarding alternate health care since January. York appears so confident that Graduate Assistants will be effectively eliminated that they did not provide a single scenario to show how their new model will fit with these positions. The Provost proceeded to insult the work that our members do for this university by calling them “make work” projects (and yet they still claim that this work is onerous enough to impede academic progress) and yell at our Chairperson to “control” rank-and-file members.

Due to the employer’s attempt to avoid answering the hard questions, we are raising some of our key questions and concerns publicly:

1. Who will perform the work that over 800 Graduate Assistants currently provide?
2. Will Faculty members be solely responsible for funding GAs in the future? Why are such positions being subject to an additional 80% surcharge on top of any wages?
3. How will the fellowship model provide students with adequate healthcare coverage?
4. Our minimum guarantee exists to ensure that U1 members in the priority pool receive income throughout the year. The fellowship model would leave members with no income in the summer months. How will York meet its collective agreement obligation to provide a minimum guaranteed income for the summer months?
5. What provisions will be made for students with disabilities who would be entitled to a funded extension of program time limits under our collective agreements?

We impatiently wait for the employer to answer our questions and take responsibility for the consequences of their funding model without fleeing the scene once more.

It looks like there’s still plenty of ways to get involved with CUPE 3903 this year, and maybe even earn a bit of extra funding along the way. Below are some open committee positions that we hope to fill at the April 28th General Membership Meeting. Please send along a statement of interest to either the CUPE 3903 VPs, or our recording secretary. Elections for contested positions will be held during the GMM April 28th.

Mark your calendars for the April GMM! Location TBA

Come have lunch with the union as we make crucial decisions for our local. There will be food.

Please contact Sheila Wilmot at CUPE3903.equity.officer@gmail.com or at 416-736-5154 ext. 3 if you require any of the following: ASL interpretation, reimbursement for childcare/caregiver/attendant care, and/or transportation costs for members who are unable to secure Wheel-Trans, or other requests for accommodation.

A little professional development never hurt anyone’s job prospects. The Teaching Commons is inviting CUPE members to this years free Teaching in Focus conference (lunch provided) running May 19 – 20. The schedule this year can be seen here.

Day 1 (May 19h) focuses on bringing research into teaching and teaching into research, as well as engaging students as partners. Two visiting scholars will also provide a keynote. By the end of the day attendees will have the opportunity to become engaged in some teaching related research projects.

Day 2 (May 20th) marks a celebration of teaching innovation and excellence, and will include a series of parallel sessions, with York colleagues presenting on a range of topics including Experiential Education and eLearning, as well as a wide range of teaching related approaches.

Please note, that some 3903 members will also be presenting at this conference, so come out and support your colleagues! 

Registration is free, and is available through this link. 

If we want to change our working conditions, we’re going to need data on said conditions. To this end, OISE’s Dr. Cynthia Field and Dr. Glen Jones are currently collecting anonymous data on working conditions for contract faculty via an online survey.

As the researchers note, remarkably little research has been conducted to reveal academic workers’ experience of part-time or sessional instruction in Canada. Please take a few moments then to take the survey. For more information and background on the survey please see the letter of invitation and information linked to below.

Survey link: fluidsurveys.com/surveys/0220/our-faculty/

Letter of Invitation and Information

Two upcoming town hall meetings are taking place, please take note of dates, times and venues under the “upcoming events” listings to the right.

On April 7th and April 9th, there will be Town Hall meetings concerning the new “fellowship” model York is proposing, and how it will affect Unit 3 members. All are welcome, and Unit 3 members are particularly encouraged to attend.

After an 11-month battle, on April 4, 2016, CUPE 3903 signed a settlement with York University which resolves the matter of tuition offset in the union’s favour. During the April 4 SGMM, the membership voted to accept the settlement offer. The settlement modifies the language of Letters of Intent 1 an 6 (in the Unit 3 and Unit 1 collective agreements, respectively) to reflect the union’s demands, guarantees that this language will apply to all incoming members, and sets out the means by which international members paying the increased tuition fees will be reimbursed. The text of the full settlement is available here: Memorandum of Settlement on Tuition Offset.

In March 2015, CUPE 3903 went on strike to secure — among other provisions — new language that would protect tuition indexation, which we have had in our collective agreements (CAs) since 2001. The intent of this language was to prevent tuition hikes from eroding our salaries by demanding that York increases our funding whenever they increase tuition. Mere months after returning back to work, York revealed that it was counting several different sources (scholarships, RAships, etc) towards the offset, resulting in a marked decrease in income for international members. The union has always maintained that if the offset is paid out through scholarships, for example, it should be through an increase in scholarships.

When the employer reached out about a settlement, they wanted to pay the offset through a fellowship, while the union wanted it paid through the GFA. The resulting compromise is that the offset will be paid through as a “dedicated amount” (i.e. not from other sources like scholarships or research assistantships) that will be treated as if it were the GFA (i.e. calculated and added to student account every semester). This resolves the conflict over which we applied for arbitration, namely that the employer would count non-salary funding towards the offset. Additionally, the settlement excludes increases in Graduate Financial Assistance (GFA) from counting towards the offset.

While this was a hard-fought win, we need to keep in mind that it took 11 months to secure a provision that had been in our collective agreements for years. In addition, the fight isn’t over; York’s next move is to decimate Unit 3, something we must oppose with all of our energy and creativity, just like we did to protect tuition indexation.

For more information on the settlement and the timeline of negotiations, check out the Tuition Offset Arbitration FAQ.

On Friday, April 1st 2016, CUPE 3903’s executive committee voted to recommend the latest settlement offer from the employer. This offer will be discussed and voted on by the membership at the April 4 SGMM. The full text of the settlement offer can be found here.

This settlement would alter the existing language of Letters of Intent 1 and 6 (in the U3 and U1 collective agreements, respectively). This language right now reads as follows:

Effective September 1, 2014, in the event that graduate tuition fees (except MBA, IMBA, MPA, part-time LLM students, MHRM and MDes and other professional programs as may be approved) and/or administrative or ancillary fees are increased above the Board of Governors approved rates for domestic and visa students as of September 1, 2012, any employees in the bargaining unit who are registered full time and pay the higher fees will receive funding in an amount equivalent to the tuition increase in order that their net income from salary, including negotiated salary increases, is not offset by the tuition and/or administrative/ancillary fee increase. Such funding may include increases in Graduate Financial Assistance or other sources that do not require the performance of work in exchange for the additional funding. Such funding will not include any needs-based bursaries.

The employer, within months of ratifying our new collective agreements, interpreted this clause to mean that they could count almost any non-salary income towards the offset, for example scholarships, research assistantships, and the Graduate Financial Assistance (GFA). The union has always maintained that this clause effectively acts as tuition indexation, which is to say that an increase in tuition must be met with a corresponding increase in total funding.

After the union prepared its brief for arbitration in late February, the employer approached the union about a potential settlement, and the first proposal was made on March 3. This first proposal suggested that the offset be paid through a fellowship, and specified that scholarships and research assistantships would not count towards the offset, but increases in Graduate Financial Assistance (GFA) could. The union countered with a proposal that suggested that the offset be paid through the GFA mechanism (that is, directly into student accounts each semester), but that the negotiated increases in GFA would not count towards the offset. The union was also clear that we would not bargain fellowships into our collective agreements before they expire, especially since the university’s fellowship plan would gut Unit 3. Over several weeks, many changes were made before arriving at the current settlement.

The settlement would propose to amend the language of Letters of Intent 1 and 6. The main difference with this language is that it specifies that the additional funding must be “a dedicated amount of additional funding” (i.e. not taken from other sources), which cannot be offset by other forms of funding or require that members do additional work for this funding. It also confirms the understanding that this will apply to all incoming members. Offset payments will be made like GFA payments, that is to say directly into student accounts each semester.

While specific amounts will vary by member, current members affected by the tuition increases since 2012 will be paid out the difference between the tuition increase and any offset funding they have already received.