To support OSBCU members in their fight for a fair contract and to resist the anti-democratic suppression of strike action by the Ford government, CUPE 3903 members will be participating at the rally at Queen’s Park on Friday, November 4th. If you’re interested in joining, a contingent of members will be leaving York University for the rally at 12:30pm after meeting near the entrance of Vari Hall on the first floor. You can also meet us at 1pm at Queen’s Park. We’ll be meeting at the King Edward VII Equestrian Statue.

If you don’t live in Toronto, you can use OSBCU’s picket line finder by punching in your postal code at www.cupe.on.ca/dontbeabully.

If you plan to attend a picket line, please consider printing out a sign to bring with you. Click here for the link to CUPE 3903’s solidarity sign. 

If you take any pictures of yourself on a picket line with a sign, please consider sharing it on social media and tag us in your post (@cupe3903comms).

CUPE 3903 stands in solidarity with CUPE’s Ontario School Board Council of Unions (OSBCU), whose 55,000 members include educational assistants, early childhood educators, custodians and other staff. They are fighting for a collective agreement that would provide a fair wage for workers, especially for underpaid educational workers, 70% of whom are women, 60% of whom are laid off every year, and many of whom earn just $39,000 a year. Workers are also fighting for a collective agreement that will produce safer and healthier learning environments for students by requiring the government to hire more educational workers to meet student needs, keeping all school libraries open, guaranteeing healthier cleaning standards, and tackling maintenance backlogs.

To back these demands, OSBCU members voted 96.5% in favour of strike action.

CUPE education workers have been bargaining for over 120 days with very little engagement from the government. Instead of bargaining in good faith, Ford’s provincial government has invoked the “Notwithstanding Clause” to override workers’ Charter-protected right to strike so that they can impose an unfair four-year collective agreement on OSBCU workers. This contract would enforce a 1.5% wage increase on many workers, despite these workers’ wages having been suppressed for a decade and even as inflation rises above 11%.

By trampling over workers’ constitutional rights to collectively bargain, Ford’s government is revealing its willingness to engage in undemocratic tactics to try and silence and subdue the demands of workers who made countless sacrifices during the pandemic to keep schools open and students safe.

This legislation is not just an assault on the rights of OSBCU members, but on every single worker in the province whose ability to bargain freely is now at risk.

In solidarity,

The CUPE 3903 Executive Committee

Dear members of the YUFA Executive Committee, 

It is with great concern that the Executive Committee of CUPE Local 3903 writes you this letter. It should be  inconceivable that a labour organization, especially one with which we are allied in the fight for better working conditions on this campus, would find itself facing the possibility of a strike from its own staff. 

There is no justification for asking your staff,  who undertake the day-to-day operations of your Association and vigorously defend your members’ rights, to accept concessions. The push for greater collegiality and fairness at York is purportedly at the heart of YUFA’s mandate and work plans, but this mandate acts as a mere facade if YUFA remains committed to eroding the wages and working conditions of its staff.

As allies in the fight against academic precarity and mounting income inequality within the sector, it is indefensible to deny your staff real wage increases knowing that YUFA staff have not had a wage increase beyond the rate of inflation since 2016. As inflation has risen to the highest levels in more than forty years, YUFA is also threatening even the basic protection, demanding staff even concede wage adjustments for inflation .? Workers  cannot afford such steep concessions as the cost of living increases, and nor should they be asked to do so .As members and Officers of a unionized Faculty Association, you have a responsibility to use the privilege and power you have gained through your collective voice to fight for your staff, rather than against them..  

The concessions contained in the latest passes from YUFA’s bargaining team are even more baffling as they relate to non-monetary proposals. For example, YUFA Staff’s pension proposal would replace RRSP payments with guaranteed minimum pension payments at no added cost or risk to YUFA management. We can only understand YUFA’s rebuff of this reasonable request by staff as a dogmatic commitment to concessionism as a bargaining strategy. After spending their careers amplifying and fighting for the needs of YUFA members, YUFA staffers deserve a dignified retirement.

We urge you to bargain a fair agreement that is free of concessions before a strike is unavoidable. YUFA staffers have been at the forefront of protecting academic freedom, tenure, collegiality,  and academic integrity when they are threatened by the university administration.Fair compensation and better working conditions will ensure that YUFA staffers can remain committed to their roles and their servicing of YUFA members without fear of financial precarity or burnout. 

In remaining committed to imposing concessions on YUFA staffers, YUFA has also ceded the moral high ground it needs to retain against York University during bargaining negotiations. Extracting needless and inappropriate concessions from YUFA staff now will justify the precedent long-established by York University that concessions are always necessary when negotiating with YUFA and other campus unions. The administration also benefits when campus unions do not stand in solidarity with one another, fracturing our ability to present a united front against austerity in the post-secondary education sector.

Our solidarity with your employees represented by CUPE Local 1281 is unwavering. Should they strike,  your staff will have the support of not merely our Local, but from workers throughout the sector, including over 680,000 members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, and the wider labour movement. It is time to remove all concessions. 

Sincerely,  

The CUPE 3903 Executive Committee

Although the job stability program is not finalized, a lot of positive movement was made over the weekend of October 22 and 23. We believe it may yet be possible to achieve an agreement that significantly stabilizes work for Unit 2 while addressing inequity in meaningful ways.

The JSJC met during two full days this past weekend to finalize a job stability program that could be recommended to the membership. While we were not able to arrive at a finalized agreement, we believe that a lot of positive movement was made. The weekend was structured primarily as a working through of the details of a proposal drafted by mediator Christopher Albertyn. The following were the main discussion points:

• We are moving towards the development of a job security program that would grant eligible members appointments of 2 or 3 FCEs per year over a period of five years, plus a set number of renewals. The goal is to give more members longer periods of predictable work than we have had with existing job security programs.
• Details of eligibility are still under discussion, as is the process of how eligible members enter the program.
• Close to being finalized is a stream of the program tailored to members who are low seniority and who are either racialized or belong to two or more employment equity groups.
• Albertyn’s draft would also create a designated and permanent joint committee to receive and review data about the program, and make revisions to its functioning.

The following points remain in contention:

• How APE should factor into the appointment process
• The number of guaranteed FCEs per year for each of 5 years
• Eligibility details (including whether type 2 FCEs would be counted towards eligibility)
• How to measure and how to achieve equity
• Professional development supports, including access to a study leave
• End-of-career or retirement supports
• The powers of the joint committee

While we had been counting on finishing the process this weekend, we feel we are so close to a deal and that the outstanding issues are so important that it is worthwhile to continue negotiations. We will continue exchanging language over the next couple of weeks, and there may be one final meeting in the next few weeks to finalize it. Because there are still a number of elements in flux, we are postponing the previously announced October 28 Unit 2 Town Hall.

We are planning for a complete ratification process, as we would conduct in bargaining – the membership will be able to vote for or against the final proposal.

Look out for more information about forthcoming Town Halls where you can learn more about the details of the program.

All Unit 2 members are encouraged to download their own copy of the new Contract Faculty Handbook (PDF)!

We have prepared what you need to know about your rights, hiring, benefits, retirement, and more in one accessible document. Please share this Handbook with your colleagues and help everyone get up to speed on their rights as a Unit 2 member!

We take accessibility seriously: if you come across any problems with the accessibility features of the document (links, screen reader compatibility, etc.) please let us know at cupe3903asr@gmail.com so that we can fix any issues.

We are hosting a General Membership Meeting via Zoom on October 31st from 11:00 am to 2:00pm! All members are encouraged to attend.

Please register in advance for this meeting here.

In order to register, you will need to provide your employee number, which will be kept confidential. Your employee number is on your monthly pay stub. If you don’t know your employee number, please click here for instructions.

Keep reading for the tentative agenda, accessibility information and more. Continue reading →

With the critical job stability weekend approaching, the clock is ticking on a historic opportunity for the employer to lead the way on one of the biggest labour issues facing universities, as well as promoting ongoing labour peace at York University.

Critiques of precariously employed post-secondary educators have come under increasing fire. One example of this is the coverage that the Precarious Historical Instructor’s Manifesto got in the University Affairs article, “Enough talk, it is time to take action to help precarious faculty”. As author Andrea Eidinger states:

I was speaking to someone I know about this, and she asked me a question that provided a great deal of insight. She said, “If you could imagine academia as a glass of water, what colour would it be?” I responded by saying it was black sludge. She then looked me in the eye and said: “Well, then why are you drinking it?” I thought for a moment and said: “The people are awesome, but the system is awful.” And she asked me: “What is this system? Who decides how things are going to be?” The answer, of course, is us.

Continue reading →

As we look forward to the upcoming weekend negotiations of the Job Stability Joint Committee, it is the perfect time to revisit why addressing precarity is a sizable concern for equity and fairness.

Universities relying on large amounts of precarious labour to meet their employment needs is not new. Nonetheless, there has been a growing awareness of the human impacts of these choices. One of many examples of ongoing discussions about precarity is this Academic Aunties podcast, hosted by a York University faculty member. The episode, “Say No to Precarious Employment,” discusses the very real human costs of university administrators refusing to recognize the value of the labour of precariously employed academic staff. As they say in the podcast, we need to recognize that this is a labour issue. Precarity and inequity are the result of decisions taken by university administrations to create budgets that entrench the need for so-called “flexibility” over dignity, fairness, and equity.

Continue reading →

As was previously announced, the work of the Job Stability Joint Committee has been extended into the Fall. The results of the work of the committee – and accordingly, whether there will be significant improvements in job stability for Unit 2 members – will come down to this weekend of meetings on October 22 and 23. Below is what you need to know as we count down to this crucial moment.

Continue reading →

Location: CUPE 3903, York University (Keele Campus), Toronto

CUPE 3903 is a local of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), representing Teaching Assistants, Contract Faculty, Graduate Assistants, and Research Assistants. For more information about CUPE 3903, please visit https://3903.cupe.ca/.

We require the assistance of a coordinator who can oversee the safe reopening of our Union office, which has been closed since the onset of COVID-19 in March 2020. The coordinator will be responsible for planning and executing the reopening of the office over a period of one month.

We are immediately hiring one coordinator for up to 80 hours of work during the month of November. We will rank all applications and offer the position to the most qualified candidate. The position will be supervised by the Chairperson in conjunction with the Executive Committee.

Abilities and qualifications include: 

• Ability to coordinate all aspects of reopening a suite of offices on a large university campus
• Strong organizational and time management skills
• Ability to work professionally and efficiently with minimal supervision
• Ability to work in fast-paced environment
• Preference will be given to applicants who are members of a union

Responsibilities include: 

• Understanding the workplace stipulations of union staff, executive officers, and members
• Adhering to a project budget and maintaining financial records
• Liaising with various departments of York University for replacement/removal/installation of furniture, cleaning and other maintenance services
• Coordinating transfer of bookkeeping and other confidential records from remote work locations back to main union office
• Purchasing and coordinating moving of furniture, office supplies, etc.
• Researching various tech solutions to support flexibility between remote and in-person work

This is a non-unionized short-term position in a unionized workplace in which staff are members of CUPE 1281.

The total length of all contracts associated with this project will not exceed 450 hours.

Remuneration: $30/hr.

There shall be no contracting out/sub-contracting for any of the work described in the job posting.

Please submit your resume and cover letter by October 25th, 2022, via email to: cupe3903chairperson@gmail.com 

Subject: Office Reopening Coordinator Application

Interested applicants may direct any queries to cupe3903chairperson@gmail.com 

CUPE 3903 is strongly committed to employment equity within our workplace, work environment, and broader community. We particularly encourage applications from persons with one or more disabilities, LGBTQ persons, persons from racialized groups, Indigenous persons and women.

Join us for the CUPE 3903 Welcome Back BBQ October 6th between 11-3, outside Atkinson building!

Come meet or reconnect with other members, talk about what’s going on in the union, and — of course — have some food!

There will be Halal, Kosher, and vegan options. Accessible washrooms are available both in Atkinson and Second Student Centre buildings, and there will be seating available.