Change of dental coverage reminder: If you hold an undergraduate degree, are working as a TA or RA in lieu during the Winter 2021 Term, and did not work as a CUPE 3906 member in the Fall 2020 Term, there may be important updates about dental benefits (specifically, changes of coverage) and relevant deadlines (January 27, 2021) that apply to you.  For more information, click here.

The Hamilton District Labour Council is campaigning for the city of Hamilton to pay its student workers a Living Wage. As university students, you can help in two ways:

(1) Emailing a quote on why YOU as a student need to be paid a living wage to hdlcsummeryouth@gmail.com and
(2) Signing up to talk to Hamilton City Council about why you support a living wage for student workers on February 8. If interested, please email hdlcsummeryouth@gmail.com and someone will help you sign up!

Did you know? Meeting with your supervisor is paid work! In our last round of Unit 1 bargaining (for TAs and RAs in lieu), we clarified that any time spent meeting with your employment (TA or RA in lieu) supervisor to discuss your work is paid time!  This means that your Hours of Work form should reflect the time it takes to meet with your employment supervisor to fill out the Hours of Work form itself. If your Hours of Work form does not reflect the time it took you to meet with your employment supervisor to discuss your TA/RA in lieu duties and fill out your Hours of Work form, you have the right to meet with your employment supervisor and revise the Hours of Work form – and your workload – to make sure that you get paid for your time. To view this protection in your Unit 1 Collective Agreement, see articles 13.03(b) and 13.04 (page 18) here.

Finally, we also wanted to remind you about our online hours tracker, developed with help from CUPE Ontario. You will need to make an account, and from there you can easily join the CUPE 3906 group. From there, you will see a number of pre-loaded drop-down options of common TA tasks from which to choose. Given that a number of our Unit 1 Members (TAs and RAs in-lieu) have expressed concerns about going over their hours allotted by their employment contracts, we are encouraging you all to use this hours tracker. The more you track your hours, the better chance we have at ensuring you aren’t overworked or underpaid! Please also feel free to forward any feedback or technical issues to president@cupe3906.org.