It is the end of the semester, and many due to McMaster’s insistence on a precarious employment relationship, may sessionals will find themselves out of work. This means that you may find yourself without income – or with a major deduction in your income. We encourage you to apply for Employment Insurance, or EI.
You should be/should have been able to collect EI beginning on April 17th if you have enough insurable hours. For information on EI, click here. If you did not apply for EI immediately, it is not too late to apply. More information can be found at the link above.
If you have already served a withholding period in the past 52 weeks, you should have been able to collect EI as of April 17th. If you have not served a withholding period, you will need to serve one now (April 17 to April 23rd) and you should be able to collect as of April 24th.
If you are not working this spring semester, we would encourage you to apply to EI. Service Canada will determine your eligibility. In certain instances, it is possible to both work and collect EI (with some clawbacks) if the amount of work have in the winter has dropped substantially from the work you had during the fall term. More information is available here.
If you are teaching in the spring semester, you should be reporting to Service Canada that you are back working as of May 2, 2022. If McMaster is your sole employer, you should report your first day worked/first day for which paid as May 2, 2022. This means that you can collect EI from either April 17th to May 1, or April 24 to May 1.
The employer has already uploaded your ROE automatically to Service Canada for the past semester.
The final pay date for the winter semester was April 22, which covers the period from April 3rd to April 16th. April 16th is the date that you can report to EI as your last day of work/last day for which paid if you are applying to EI over the spring. The full pay schedule can be found here: https://cupe3906.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/501/2021/09/Pay-Dates-for-CUPE-TA-and-Sessional-Faculty_2021_22.pdf
If you have any additional questions, please contact brad@cupe3906.org or Carolyn (chiefsteward_sessionals@cupe39306.org)