#cupe 3902

💪🏼Job security

📢Improved access to healthcare and benefits

✊🏾 Fair compensation

🗣️and more!

The Canadian Union of Public Employees, Local 3902 (CUPE 3902), which represents teaching assistants, sessional lecturers, and postdoctoral fellows at the University of Toronto, has filed an unfair labour practice complaint against the University of Toronto through the Ontario Labour Relations Board, effectively initiating a form of legal action against the university.

Representatives from CUPE 3902 released a public statement in which they allege that, during labour negotiations with the university last winter, the university administration were dealing in bad faith in that they did not report data related to the contentious Graduate Student Bursary Fund accurately.

The university and CUPE 3902 entered into binding arbitration in March of this year in order to reach consensus on two unresolved grievances, one of which was the Graduate Student Bursary Fund. CUPE 3902 is now accusing the university of obfuscation. The statement alleges that the data relating to per-student funding on which the union had based their negotiating position was “out-dated, inaccurate and misleading.” The release goes on to suggest that the numbers provided by the university included other sources of income that “union members secured independently of their funding.”

“It cannot be overstated how important this data was to our position in bargaining. It completely underpins the Fund we negotiated. Not only is the Fund now insufficient for its intended purpose, we can’t disburse the money we do have because the data is junk,” added Isabel Stowell-Kaplan, vice chair of CUPE 3902, unit 1.

“The U of T administration lied to us. They lied about our members’ funding levels, then allowed us to negotiate the end to a 4-week strike based on incorrect data they supplied. They bargained in bad faith at a tense time when honest mattered more than ever. This behaviour calls the entirety of collective bargaining, the end of the strike and the whole collective agreement into question,” said Ryan Culpepper, chair of the local and member of the bargaining team for CUPE 3902 in the statement. 

U of T’s Angela Hildyard, professor and vice-president, human resources and equity, offered a different perspective on the issue. According to Hildyard, students have been contacting the university to ask about the $1.045 million in funding that was allocated under the Graduate Students’ Bursary Fund during the most recent round of labour negotiations that they have yet to receive.

“The University provided these funds to CUPE in late August 2015,” Hildyard was quoted saying in an email to The Varsity. “At the end of September, the University provided CUPE with the data required to allow them to distribute the funds to eligible students. CUPE has been provided with the funds and all of the information necessary to enable them to disburse the funds. Unfortunately, to date, CUPE has chosen to distribute none of these Graduate Student Bursary Fund monies.”

Hildyard’s statement went on to suggest that the university has “made several requests to CUPE to disburse these funds and we will continue to do so.”Professor  Hildyard also indicated that the university “vigorously denies the allegations.” The university will be responding to CUPE’s complaint and “the matter will be dealt with by the Labour Board.”

No not yet, CUPE 3902 was made an offer by UofT last week but they rejected it. There’s an update on the latest news here about an arbitration agreement that will be decided on tomorrow.

Yes, we’ll update any information like that on our blog and Twitter as soon as it’s released.

The CUPE 3902 strike at the University of Toronto continues after CUPE 3902 rejected the deal sent to them by the bargaining team. In response, the University of Toronto has issued a PR war against CUPE 3902, circulating misleading media releases that make graduate students and course instructors appear greedy. CUPE 3902, in response, has been circulating informative graphics. I especially like this one:

With the school year about to end, the Faculty of Arts and Science has decided to tell its students that the term won’t be extended. That most of their teaching staff isn’t there to actually, you know, teach doesn’t matter. Instead, some courses will be restructured to allow easier modes of evaluation for students. A friend told me, for example, that an English class will now have a multiple-choice exam (!!!) Furthermore, students will have the option of dropping their classes without penalty or being given “Credit/No credit” on their transcripts after they received their final grades. Administrators will take over courses without lecturers and will arbitrarily assign “general letter grades” to students who have only completed, say, one mid-term or one paper. In short, the Faculty of Arts and Science has made the assumption that the only thing that matters for students is the course credit they are receiving and not actual learning. The University of Toronto has become a diploma mill.

As mentioned repeatedly on this blog, I sympathize with undergraduate students. I love teaching and I understand how much the strike inconveniences them. The sad reality, though, is that the Faculty of Arts and Science specifically, and the University of Toronto generally, doesn’t seem to acknowledge the importance of undergraduate education. They have completely bought into the neoliberal model of higher education and see undergraduates as basic income units and not as ambitious and intellectually curious students who are in university to learn.

  From CUPE 3902 Unit 1 Chief Negotiator:

"Since the Unit 1 Bargaining Team is unable to get meetings with the Provost or the Employer’s Bargaining Team, the Union has decided to contact the Provost in a form she seems to prefer: an open letter":

"I’m asking you the following questions in an open letter because your Bargaining Team is not meeting with ours, and because when hundreds of freezing student-workers came to your office yesterday, and again today,requesting to hear from you, you refused to come out. We’re in the dark here. Without answers and with no communication, and with untrue and insulting information appearing in the media,  people are getting increasingly frustrated and angry. The possibility of a negotiated settlement is becoming more remote. I sincerely don’t think that’s what you want to happen."

University of Toronto Education Workers, March 6, 2015: Open Letter to Cheryl Regehr

"Toronto is in the midst of an unprecedented strike by over 10,000 Teaching Assistants at the University of Toronto and York University: the country’s two largest universities."

"Only blocks away from the University of Toronto picket lines, the Liberal government in Queen’s Park has been waging a war against the Ontario Public Service (OPS), represented by OPSEU, raising the prospect of the first OPS strike since 2002."

“Do you have any misconceptions about the strike that you want to clear up? I know a lot of rumours are spreading about how much you get paid and how striking is actually selfish on your behalf.”

“We make just over $40 an hour but we work part time. The wage is just enough to pay for our tuition. It’s important to understand the difference between graduate students and undergraduate students. Graduate students are full time students, the university employs us as full time students; so there’s an expectation that we’re doing our own research full time.”

“I heard that you guys are not allowed to have a second job alongside this one, is it true?”

“Yes, that’s true for some departments. A lot of us had to basically agree to not work outside of the university, however many graduate students do. Some TAs take on extra TAships beyond what they’ve been assigned, they take on other jobs outside the university as well. We work really hard to pay to live and the university consistently doesn’t support us."

“A lot of students are upset because of the buses being moved... is that something you think was necessary?”

“I don’t think it was necessary at all to move buses since we’re nowhere near the bus stops on campus and we’re not blocking any vehicles from moving. The university also sent out an email telling students to call security if they feel threatened but we would never hurt any undergraduate students; that’s not what we’re here for. It’s upsetting to all of us that the university is trying to turn students against us.”