We are hosting a General Membership Meeting via Zoom on May 24th from 1:00pm to 4:00pm! 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
In the last post from the Job Stability Committee, we discussed how job stability is an equity issue. While this is true for all Unit 2 members, social location also plays a role in how members experience job stability – or lack thereof. Below, we discuss the challenges in assessing whether our workplace is equitable, given a lack of data.
Nomination that remain open on various committees are as follows:
1. Advisory Committee on Race/Ethnic relations (2 vacancies_
2. Communications Committee (1 Vacancy)
3. CUPE Toronto District Council (5 Vacancies)
4. CSEU Committee (1 Vacancy)
5. Distribution Committee (6 Vacancies)
6. Joint Health and Safety Committee Reps (11 Vacancies)
7. Labour Management Committee, Unit 4 (3 Vacancies, unit 4 only)
8. Research Grants Fund and Travel Costs Fund Committee (1 Vacancy)
9. Toronto York Region Labour Council Representatives (2 Vacancies)
The deadline to apply for this round of nominations is Friday, May 20.
Interested members should email Ali Gholami, VP Unit 1, cupe3903vpu1@gmail.com to nominate themselves or for more information.
Any committees with more nominees than positions open will be voted on at the upcoming General Membership Meeting (GMM). Otherwise, nominees will be acclaimed to their position.
Nominees will be notified if their candidacy will be voted on at the GMM and are then welcome to send a short written candidate statement (max. 150 words) for inclusion in the AGM package.
For further details on the work of each committee and honorarium payment attached to their work, please see here.
Voting for the Unit 4 Ratification closed on Friday, May 6th at 5pm. The bargaining team had recommended an offer for ratification. There was a Special General Members’ Meeting on Zoom to discuss the offer on Monday, May 2 at 12pm. The ratification vote took place online via SimplyVoting and began on Monday, May 2. The following are the results of that vote:
YES 9 Votes (100.0 %)
NO 0 Votes (0.0%)
Total Votes 10 Votes
Abstain 1 vote (10%)
In this second post in our series about the work of the Job Stability Joint Committee (JSJC), we address why job stability is an equity issue, and the next steps the union is taking to integrate an equity framework into the work of the committee.
On April 25th, 2022, the Employer presented the Job Stability Committee (JSC) with a proposal that, at best, was prepared with no consideration for equity goals or inequitable effects. This was despite the JSC identifying equity as the foremost pillar of job stability. The Employer’s reaction to well-founded critique of their proposal casts serious doubt on their stated commitment to both equity and concluding this process by the joint committee’s fast approaching deadline of June 30th.
As we listened to the Employer’s presentation, several Union members of the committee raised concerns about highly subjective language in the proposal, and its potential to create eligibility barriers for members who belong to employment equity groups. The Employer then very abruptly called for their team to go to a breakout room. We hoped that this move reflected a recognition that there were significant problems with the Employer’s proposal, and that they would be taking the document away to consider our comments. We learned, however, that the Employer was instead reacting to us naming the inequitable effects that might arise from their proposal. Rather than being upset about the significant problems with their proposal and potential or actual erosion of equity, they were upset by criticism of inequity.
In effect, the Employer was unwilling to listen to our comments on problematic language that appears in their proposal not once, but six times in a three-page document; these subjective terms of eligibility appear to be a cornerstone of their proposal. And although Union members had stated at the outset of the April 25 meeting that we wished to present an equity proposal-–and then after the move to breakout rooms we called to resume the meeting with our presentation—the Employer ended the meeting without returning to face us.
We are concerned that what we are seeing in the JSC is a pattern of the Employer stating a commitment to equity, but bringing little to the table to enact it. We are concerned about a pattern of the Employer shutting down discussion when inequity is named. Is there any substance to the Employer’s commitment to equity?
For the Union’s committee members, equity and job stability are inseparable. We refuse a conception of job stability that fails to address the massive inequities in our workplace. We urge the Employer to put their feelings aside and join us in this commitment.
We will begin the May 3 meeting of the JSC with a discussion of equity data and our proposals. We ask members to please stay tuned for news about that meeting, as well as for forthcoming posts about equity and job stability.
As the position of Chief Steward Unit 3 (CSU3) was not filled during the exec election, it is now reopen and needs to be filled. All members of unit 3 in good standing are eligible to nominate themselves.
The link to the nomination form can be found at: https://form.jotform.com/cupe3903/election-nomination-form
If there is more than one member running, the nomination period will be followed by a two-week campaign period and a five-day election (via Simply Voting).
The Unit 4 bargaining team has recommended this offer for ratification. There will be a Special General Members’ Meeting on Zoom to discuss the offer on Monday, May 2 at 12pm. You can join the meeting here. The ratification vote will then take place online via SimplyVoting between Monday, May 2 and Friday, May 6.
If you have any questions about the offer, the meeting, or the vote, please don’t hesitate to contact Peter Gorman, Chief Steward Unit 4: cupe3903csu4@gmail.com
You can read the full offer here. Below is a summary of what is included in the offer
1. Wages:
2. Conditions of Work
3. Benefits
4. Equity
Additional incumbency for certain equity-seeking groups. In keeping with the Libraries’ current Affirmative Action Plan, an additional six months of incumbency is extended to Indigenous or disabled members.
As we approach the part of the process that includes negotiating specific language of a new program, your 3903 representatives on the JSJC want to hear from you. We ask you to please fill out this Job Stability Survey in order to orient the work of the JSJC.
Please read the following update on the upcoming COVID Table Meeting by Matt Lomas, Chief Steward (Unit 1) and Co-Chair, COVID table. For any further points of clarification, feel free to contact cupe3903csu1@gmail.com :
The CUPE 3903 Executive Committee has decided that we will not attend the final COVID Table meeting, scheduled for Tuesday, 26 April 2022. We made this difficult decision as the result of months of these meetings yielding no results, and out of disappointment that the employer has not been transparent with us regarding their COVID response plans. These meetings were agreed to in bargaining, yet we do not feel the employer ever took them seriously.
The purpose of these meetings was for the employer and the union to share information with regards to a shared goal: COVID safety on campus. And yet, we could not rely on the information we received during these COVID Table meetings. More than once, we were given information that was either incorrect or was later changed without our input. Most egregiously, it was at the COVID Table that the union was told that members impacted by the employer’s vaccine mandate would be put on unpaid leave; later, the employer went back on its word and terminated the contracts of some of these members, in an inconsistent and often arbitrary way. We were relying on the information we were given to formulate our position on the application of the vaccine mandate, and receiving incorrect information in this situation was a serious breach of the good faith that needs to exist between unions and employers.
At the most recent COVID Table meetings, York has consistently refused to take any concrete stance on what policies will or won’t continue into the Spring/Summer and Fall 2022 academic terms. Responsibility for decision-making has continuously been deferred to the municipal and provincial governments or to the Council of Ontario Universities. The York administration has consistently refused to take responsibility for the health and safety of the York community. Without York acknowledging and using their power to make sound policy decisions, it is impossible to properly discuss what steps need to be taken to keep people safe.
In addition to refusing to declare policy positions at these meetings, the employer’s representatives have consistently been unable to answer simple and direct questions. For example, over the last several months, CUPE 3903 has been trying to access ventilation data for Keele and Glendon campuses. At first, York said there was no ventilation data; later, they said they had not received proper paperwork from the union; then, they said we couldn’t have what ventilation information existed because we wouldn’t understand it. To this day, we have not received any concrete information about the state of ventilation on campus. The employer relied on the audit for which they have contracted an outside expert, failing to acknowledge that this audit is late, and the audit is required as a result of a grievance settlement with the York University Faculty Association (details of this settlement can be found here, in Article 19).
Due to York’s COVID measures, many CUPE 3903 members required workplace accommodations. However, the process to get these accommodations was overly difficult and many members’ accommodations were denied or decisions were not made in a timely manner. When we attempted to talk about COVID-19 related workplace accommodations, we were rebuffed at every turn. In order for these COVID Table meetings to achieve their intended purpose, they needed to rely on clear communication and good faith engagement. It has become clear to CUPE 3903 that if one side is coming to the table unwilling to provide full transparency, it is a waste of time and resources to engage in these meetings.
Right now, the COVID-19 pandemic is entering a new wave and shows no sign of abating. What the York community needs from the administration is a proactive stance that provides clear, useful information to all students, instructors, and staff. York’s pandemic response has been lacking throughout the entirety of the pandemic, and it is disappointing to see such a clear refusal to work with the union on what should have been a clear shared goal. We are informing you about our refusal to participate in the meeting on 26 April. This refusal to participate is not a withdrawal from our responsibility to help ensure safety on campus, but rather an expression of our dissatisfaction with the nature of the COVID table meetings thus far and because we feel our efforts would be better spent working directly on behalf of our members.
Signed,
Matthew Lomas (Chief Steward Unit 1; COVID Table Co-Chair)
CUPE 3903 Executive Committee