2,000 workers at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario are out on strike. PSAC 901 Unit 1, representing 2000 graduate teaching assistants, teaching fellows, and research assistants, is fighting for living wages and dignity in the workplace.
Graduate student workers need more than poverty wages
In January, Kingston City Council declared food insecurity an emergency. The region’s public health unit reported that one in three households experienced food insecurity, a three-fold increase since 2022.
Queen’s University is Kingston’s largest employer. In 2023, as it prepared to enter into bargaining with nearly all of its unionized workers over the next two years, the university administration announced a budget deficit and “financial crisis”. This came after workers endured years of Bill 124, which capped public sector wage increases at 1 percent per year for three years starting in 2019. The Bill was declared unconstitutional and repealed in 2023, but the impact is still deeply felt by workers at Queen’s, many of whom have seen their wages fall 11 to 15 percent below inflation. In July 2024, a year after the administration’s budget deficit announcement, the university’s Managerial & Professional Group was given raises of 4.25 or 4.75 percent.
Speaking with Spring Magazine, Jake Morrow, a PhD student at Queen’s and President of PSAC 901, noted that the leadership of Queen’s President Patrick Deane has shifted the culture at the university. Deane has pushed neoliberal managerialism and austerity measures while shifting the university away from liberal arts and science and toward technical and business programs, prioritizing “certain forms of productivity over the pursuit of knowledge as a public good.” This shift is part of a broader crisis in post-secondary education across the country, as college workers face looming mass layoffs, programs are slashed, student-led Palestine solidarity protests are violently repressed, and the federal government continues scapegoat migrant students and workers while offering no pathway toward permanent citizenship.
Queen’s employs approximately one in every 10 jobs in Kingston; it is no coincidence that food insecurity is skyrocketing in the city. For the 2,000 members of PSAC 901 out on strike, the central demand is an end to poverty wages. The minimum guaranteed funding package for PhD students at Queen’s is $23,000 per year, several thousand dollars of which goes toward tuition. There is no minimum funding for Master’s students. For comparison, full-time minimum wage workers in Ontario earn an annual income of $36,000.
Morrow shared that PSAC 901 has spent $100,000 on emergency grocery funds for its members. “This is a class issue,” says Morrow. While graduate degrees are increasingly required for decent jobs, “the graduate students who don’t have to worry about putting food on the table are the ones who survive,” while many working class graduate students are left in a situation where it’s impossible to make ends meet.
PSAC 901 members are also fighting for tuition minimization, affordable housing, and equal pay for equal work (as it stands, the employer expects teaching fellows to work on course design and management without proper compensation). The union is fighting against the employer’s bid to prorate sick leave, and its continued refusal to include graduate student workers in the Queen’s Childcare Support plan, even though better paid employees have access to this subsidy. The union’s February 14 strike mandate vote saw the largest member turnout and strongest strike mandate in its history.
Coordinated bargaining and a class struggle strategy
A key factor in building the engagement and confidence of rank-and-file workers in PSAC 901 is that they are not alone in their fight. In a call for a joint special assembly last spring, open to all unionized and non-unionized workers at the university, the Unity Council—a group comprised of presidents and delegates from each of the bargaining units operating at Queen’s—stated:
“The more we all see and learn about how Queen’s decides to present its financial situation and prioritize its spending for the coming years, the more we doubt the administration’s claims and motivation. Their responses to the budget deficit threaten to cause immediate and long-lasting economic damage, not only to our members and their families, but to the broader Kingston community—our community—by way of layoffs, a hiring freeze, non-renewals, and loss of real-wages in a continuing, and very real, cost of living crisis… We will not let Queen’s address its deficit crisis on our backs: an injury to our members is an injury to the entire Kingston community.”
As the Queen’s administration aims to cut funding to academic programs and has drawn on the familiar playbook of tactics in bargaining, for the first time, all bargaining units — including five CUPE units, as well as PSAC 901 and USW 2010 — have joined forces in an historic coordinating bargaining campaign. Together they represent over 5,000 workers including lab technicians, library technicians, food service workers, custodial and trades staff, graduate teaching assistants, and other support staff.
The fight for a fair contract across the various locals bargaining at Queen’s University comes after a big win by workers at the University of Toronto in 2024. The university administration had become used to setting a pattern of bargaining across units and locals—but for the first time, CUPE 3261 began to coordinate among its different units ahead of bargaining. The impacts of Bill 124 were a unifying issue, not just for CUPE 3261 but for workers across different locals going into bargaining at U of T, which became clear to local executives after engagement with rank-and-file members as well as increasing communication across units and locals. Eventually, all three locals collaborated to support each other’s bargaining process. As CUPE 3902, a UofT local representing undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral education workers, stated in a bargaining update to its members: “For too long, we’ve seen our employer divide us to treat us unequally, but we face the same issues: unlivable wages, job insecurity, and burnout from overwork. No more! Now, we are using our collective voice to send a strong message to the University of Toronto: we all deserve respect, dignity, and a living wage.”
At Queen’s, a similar strategy has brought about high levels of participation in strike mandate votes and readiness to strike. CUPE locals at the university have all ratified new collective agreements that include wage increases, and USW 2010 — which coordinated its strike mandate with PSAC 901 and planned to go out on strike if necessary on the same day — has just reached a tentative agreement.
As Jake Morrow notes, this has been a process not only of collective bargaining but of collective mobilizing, as workers have come together as a labour movement at the university — learning about each other’s struggles over a year of bargaining across unions.
For members of PSAC 901, the experience of coordinated bargaining has been a radicalizing moment. Morrow shared that democratic process and mutual aid have been central tenets for the union as they’ve prepared for and undertaken this round of bargaining. Over 80 picket captains have been trained, and the local’s standing groups and committees are buzzing with activity. He notes that the membership opted to use the local’s merch budget on warm clothing, to better prepare for being out on the picket lines in the event of a wintertime strike; there are plans to donate any leftover clothing to local organizations. Rank-and-file members have also set up a community kitchen, which will provide up to 200 meals a day for workers on the picket line and anyone in the community who needs it; the kitchen plans to continue as a mutual aid project for the broader Kingston community beyond the strike.. Morrow notes, ”slowing down to create communities of care, making space for tough conversations, and allowing each other to grow together” have been essential for building a confident and militant membership.
Support workers in PSAC 901!
The struggles of workers in PSAC 901 are the same as those facing working class people of all stripes across Ontario: fair wages, decent work, and protection of public services and education as a public good. Here are some ways to support PSAC 901 members on strike:
Follow the Unity Council and PSAC 901 online and on social media:
- Unity Council:
- PSAC 901:
Email Provost Matthew Evans (provost@queensu.ca) and Principal Patrick Deane (principal@queensu.ca) stating your support for the bargaining demands of PSAC 901 and for access to post-secondary education as a public good!
Did you like this article? Help us produce more like it by donating $1, $2, or $5. Donate
