On February 26, CUPE Local 3903 workers representing graduate teaching assistants, contract faculty, and graduate assistants at York University started strike action. Workers have been bargaining with York for eight months to address the cost of living crisis, protect our rights, job security, and improve working conditions, which would improve students’ learning conditions.
Workers struggling with record high inflation
The Ford government’s unconstitutional Bill 124, which capped wage increases at 1 percent for public sector workers, paired with record high inflation, means workers are struggling to keep up with the rising cost of living and afford basic necessities. Workers are fighting for fair wage increases to make ends meet without having to work a second or third job.
This cost of living crisis and the loss of real wages as a result of inflation disproportionately impact international students due to higher tuition rates and precarious legal status, resulting in higher vulnerability to exploitation. Wage increases are a migrant workers’ rights issue.
It is not that York University cannot afford to pay graduate workers and contract faculty a living wage. They just choose to spend that money on hiring union-busting lawyers, giving their senior administrators a 47 percent raise, and investing in Israel’s colonial genocide against Palestine.
Workers’ rights, working conditions key
During bargaining, York has made proposals that would make it more difficult for workers to file grievances regarding harassment and discrimination. In response, workers are fighting to strengthen protections against harassment and discrimination, establish better workplace accommodations, and defend our rights to free speech.
In the current climate of York’s heightened surveillance and attacks on free speech in support of Palestinian liberation, many workers, especially those who are racialized, face reprisals, harassment, and discrimination for speaking out against the genocide. We need an approach that is trauma-informed and intersectional to improve and reduce barriers in the grievance process and accommodations, and resist the proposed employer-led complaints process without member agency.
York University, like many post-secondary institutions, relies heavily on low-wage precarious labour to provide education and support students. The majority of the teaching at York is done by contract faculty, yet York does not value or protect them, as demonstrated in their continuous refusal to address job precarity and potential job loss they face every few months. Workers are making job security a key issue in this strike because we know York works because we do.
In the end, our working conditions are students’ learning conditions. CUPE 3903 members are most often in direct contact with undergraduate students. Issues relating to our working conditions, compensation, and equity rights directly affect their quality of education.
When post-secondary workers get fair wages, are protected from harassment and discrimination and have their accessibility needs met, and have employment stability without worrying about whether they’ll have a job next semester, this improves students’ quality of education.
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