Since the summer, members of CUPE’s Ontario School Board Council of Unions (OSBCU) have been in bargaining with the provincial government. The union, which belongs to 55,000 workers at primary and secondary schools and school boards across Ontario, has been fighting for a collective agreement that delivers some semblance of economic justice for severely underpaid educational workers, many of whom earn just $39,000 a year.

The OSBCU is also fighting for a collective agreement that ensures safer, healthier, and more effective public schools by committing the government to hire more educational workers, adequately staff school libraries, guarantee healthier cleaning standards, and tackle maintenance backlogs. To back these demands, OSBCU members voted 96.5% in favour of strike action.

Rather than bargain in good faith with these essential workers, many of whom have made profound sacrifices to keep our schools running throughout the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the Ford Government has tabled legislation to override their constitutionally protected right to strike and impose a four-year collective agreement. By invoking the “Notwithstanding Clause” the government is also attempting to shield its legislation from judicial review, because it knows what it’s doing is otherwise unconstitutional.

This legislation is an assault not just on the OSBCU members who are seeing their constitutional rights trampled, but on every single worker in the province. There is no reason to believe that the legislation applies to us, but this move signals that the Ontario Government has no respect for the right to strike and bargaining collectively.

In response, CUPE and a number of other labour organizations across the province will be supporting OSBCU members at picket lines and demonstrations tomorrow, November 4th. We are strongly encouraging all CUPE 3906 members to participate and show support.

Some CUPE 3906 members will be participating in the picket line at MPP Neil Lumsden’s constituency office tomorrow morning between 8:30 and 10:30am. His office is located at 115 Hwy 8 in Stoney Creek, and is accessible by bus. If you’re interested in joining, please let us know. We may be able to arrange transportation (so if you have a car and are willing to drive a few people, please also let us know!).

There will also be demonstrations happening from 8-4 tomorrow at Limeridge Mall and Eastgate Square. If you live outside of Hamilton but would like to attend a picket line or demonstration near you, you can used OSBCU’s picket line finder by punching in your postal code at www.cupe.on.ca/dontbeabully.

If you plan to attend a picket line, please consider printing out a sign to bring with you, in colour if you can. If you get any pictures of yourself on a picket line with a sign, feel free to share it on social media and tag us in your post!

Click here to download a sign.

In solidarity,

The CUPE 3906 Executive Committee

Since the summer, members of CUPE’s Ontario School Board Council of Unions (OSBCU) have been in bargaining with the provincial government. The union, which belongs to 55,000 workers at primary and secondary schools and school boards across Ontario, has been fighting for a collective agreement that delivers some semblance of economic justice for severely underpaid educational workers, many of whom earn just $39,000 a year.

The union is also fighting for a collective agreement that ensures safer, healthier, and more effective public schools by committing the government to hire more educational workers, adequately staff school libraries, guarantee healthier cleaning standards, and tackle maintenance backlogs. To back these demands, OSBCU members voted 96.5% in favour of strike action.

Rather than bargain in good faith with these essential workers, many of whom have made profound sacrifices to keep our schools running throughout the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the Ford Government has tabled legislation to override their constitutionally protected right to strike and impose a four-year collective agreement. By invoking the “Notwithstanding Clause” the government is also attempting to shield its legislation from judicial review, because it knows what it’s doing is otherwise unconstitutional.

This legislation is an assault not just on the OSBCU members who are seeing their constitutional rights trampled, but on every single worker in the province. The right to come together in a union and bargain collectively is meaningless without the right to back your bargaining with a strike. The entire labour movement must come together in opposition. The right to strike wasn’t won in the courts, it was won on the picket lines. We must defend it there as well.

OSBCU has already announced that some form of job action will happen as scheduled on Friday, November 4th, whether or not there is legislation that purports to ban it. When this happens, CUPE 3906 members will be there in support, and we will continue to stand in solidarity with education workers and anyone else who stands up for workers’ rights, for better schools, and for a better world for all of us.

In solidarity,

The CUPE 3906 Executive Committee

Teaching assistants (TAs) and research assistants in lieu (RAs) at McMaster University stand united in their fight to ensure high-quality academic jobs for over twenty-five hundred student academic workers.

In a historic strike vote held earlier this week, 90% of TAs and RAs voted “yes” to send a strong message to the university’s administration. TAs and RAs are demanding that McMaster table a fair and reasonable offer to protect students from tuition increases, address their concerns about the rising cost of living in Hamilton and a lack of work opportunities for graduate students, and to end inequitable wages between undergraduate and graduate TAs.

“Academic workers at McMaster are demanding better,” said Chris Fairweather, president of CUPE Local 3906. “The status quo of limited job security and inadequate wages is no longer sustainable for our members, especially when any wage increases can be clawed back by tuition hikes.” TAs and RAs at McMaster – nearly all of whom are students and pay tuition to McMaster – are facing once-in-a-generation inflation and raising house costs in Hamilton, yet wages and funding packages remain stagnant, inequitable, and unable to support student workers for the duration of their studies.

Your elected bargaining team is calling on the administration at McMaster to table a proposal that offers protection against future tuition increases, recognizes the job insecurity faced by graduate student-workers, and ends a significant wage discrepancy between undergraduate and graduate teaching.

“Not only are the proposals we have tabled around protections against tuition increases and extended work guarantees for graduate students reasonable and well within McMaster’s means, they also exist at many other comparable universities in Ontario” added Fairweather.

CUPE 3906 is seeking protections against future tuition increases in the form of a reimbursement, like those at the University of Ottawa and Carleton, and extended work guarantees for graduate students, similar to those that exist at the University of Toronto, York, and Carleton.

“With this strike vote, our members are overwhelmingly clear: we will not accept a contract that is more of the same and which fails to recognize the growing challenges and realities we face in simply getting by. We demand better of McMaster,” Fairweather explained.

A positive strike vote does not mean that TAs and RAs are on strike, nor does it set a date for a strike. It authorizes the bargaining team to call a strike in the event that talks break down at the bargaining table and after a provincial “no board” report has been issued. Further updates will be sent to your McMaster email accounts.

Quick Facts:

• Since 2016, McMaster University’s yearly consolidated surpluses have totalled over $730 million
• Despite representing roughly 1/3^rd of McMaster’s total workforce, TA wages make-up just 3.7% of McMaster’s total payroll
• While the average yearly rent in Hamilton has gone up $4,572 since 2019, the maximum yearly gross pay for graduate student TAs/RAs in lieu at McMaster has increased by only $575.87
• Doug Ford’s Bill 124 capped wage increases for TAs/RAs to 1% per year for 3 years starting in 2019. Had these wages kept pace with inflation during that time, TAs/RAs in lieu would be earning $5/hour more than they are today
• The wage gap between undergraduate and graduate TAs is nearly $19 per hour, despite both groups performing equivalent work
• CUPE 3906, Unit 1 represents over 2500 TAs and RAs (in lieu) per year – nearly all of whom are students

For more information, please contact:

Chris Fairweather, President, CUPE 3906 – president@cupe3906.org

Mary Ellen Campbell, Chief Negotiator, CUPE 3906 – mary@cupe3906.org

This morning, Teaching Assistants, Markers, Demonstrators, and Part-Time Academics at Dalhousie University in Halifax began strike action in pursuit of a fair collective agreement. While workers at Dalhousie have been facing staggering increases in the cost of living, their university’s wage proposals promise only to put them further behind.

All across the country, public universities and colleges have fallen increasingly under the control of lawyers and corporate executives whose only goal is to generate profits and create student debt for the big banks at the expense of students, workers, and the communities post-secondary education is meant to serve. In some cases, universities are generating hundreds of millions of dollars in profits each year while putting very little back into their communities. In others, reckless governance of this kind is putting universities at risk, as we recently saw with the catastrophic mismanagement and subsequent insolvency of Laurentian University in Sudbury.

As part of their relentless pursuit of profit, universities are increasingly exploiting the labour of precariously-employed academic workers. Rather than creating more full-time, tenure-track positions and other secure, fair-paying academic jobs, our universities are becoming job insecurity machines. This undermines not just our quality of living, but with it, the quality of the research and teaching our universities can produce. Academic workers, our students, and the communities that depend on us deserve better.

As Teaching Assistants at McMaster take their own strike vote over so many of the same issues, the CUPE 3906 Executive Committee stands in solidarity with CUPE 3912 and everyone else fighting for better post-secondary education across the country. We encourage members of CUPE 3906 to share their support for CUPE 3912. We call on academic unions and workers across the country to do the same. We join the growing chorus of groups demanding that Dalhousie return to the table and offer these vital workers a fair contract. In support of their struggle, we have also authorized a $500 contribution to the CUPE 3912 Strike Fund.

Your fight is our fight, and together, we will win!

In solidarity,

The CUPE 3906 Executive Committee

Teaching Assistants and Research Assistants (in lieu) will take a strike vote in our ongoing negotiations with the university. 

Have Questions about the Strike Vote?

The CUPE 3906 Executive Committee condemns the racist attack against Hamilton’s Ward 14 City Council candidate Kojo Damptey that took place on or around October 10th, 2022. Kojo’s campaign poster located at Upper Paradise and Mohawk Road was vandalized with white supremacist graffiti.

We share the view that this action was not a legitimate or spontaneous engagement in debate, but rather a pre-meditated and hateful attempt to silence and intimidate this candidate and BIPOC members of our community in general. The action exemplifies that white supremacy is a pressing problem in our communities, and should be treated as an organized and dangerous component by all people of conscience. The CUPE 3906 Executive Committee re-affirms our commitment against racism and white supremacy. We will be vigilant in our attempts to root out white supremacy and create safe spaces for BIPOC community members to seek voice and representation in whatever institutions they see fit.

In solidarity,

The Executive Committee of CUPE Local 3906

On Monday, the Ontario Superior Court began hearing a challenge to the Protections of Communities and Exploited Persons Act (PCEPA). The current challenge, undertaken by 25 sex workers and sex worker organization in Ontario, argues that PCEPA violates section 7 of the Charter. The CUPE 3906 Executive Committee stands in solidarity with sex workers in their fight for safer working conditions.

The current legal framework impacts sex worker’s access to safe working practices. While the sale of sexual services is legal under PCEPA, buying sexual services and advertising or communication for the purpose of selling sexual services are illegal. By criminalizing these aspects of sex work, workers have few options for vetting customers and negotiating terms. Further, the PCEPA has been criticized for conflating sex work with human trafficking and limiting sex worker autonomy and agency. Many sex workers also associate the current legal framework with police harassment, despite the sale of sexual services being legal under the current framework. This harassment, as well as the stigma surrounding this type of work, makes it difficult to take action when assault or a breach of terms occurs.

Sex workers rights are human rights!

In solidarity,

The Executive Committee of CUPE Local 3906