CUPE 3906

Despite our best efforts to work out all technical glitches in advance of today’s Executive elections, it has come to our attention that several of you have yet to receive your ballots via your McMaster email addresses. We have located a solution and, barring any further issues, those of you who have yet to receive your credentials should receive them soon, along with everyone who has yet to vote. Due to these delays exacerbating an overlap with a religious holiday, we will be extending the voting until 12pm, Monday, June 1^st.  We appreciate your patience and understanding as we navigate this new online platform.

All elections related information can be found here: https://cupe3906.org/elections-2020/

Click here for candidate statements.

As most of you will know by now, McMaster University has officially announced that the Fall 2020 semester will be hosted entirely online. We are in regular communication with the Employer about how this will affect our members, and you can expect more details from us soon. In the meantime, we would encourage you to track any hours spent preparing to take your Fall classes online. While the Employer has yet to definitively say whether they will acknowledge such work as Post-Contract work, we firmly believe that it should be treated as such and would thus encourage you to submit a Post-Contract Payment Form for any time spent moving or preparing to move your courses online. You can read more about what constitutes Post-Contract Work in Article 15.05 of the current Collective Agreement for Unit 2. The full statement from President Farrar can be found here. Should you have any additional questions, feel free to email us at either president@cupe3906.org or mecampbell@cupe3906.org.

Several weeks ago, we sent a detailed update on some changes the University has made to the PSF application process in the context of COVID-19. As a follow up, we’d like to remind you that applicants are no longer required to complete the Estimated Expenses and Estimated Income table in the PSF application form.

You can read the full update here, and a detailed overview of the PSF itself here.

As many of you will already know, applications for the Canada Emergency Student Benefit (CESB) opened today, May 15. CUPE National has created a helpful FAQ on the CESB, found here. Given that your potential eligibility for the CESB relates primarily to your student (not worker) status, we recommend sending any questions you may have to student associations within the University such as the GSA, who have remained apprised of the situation since the news first broke. We thank the GSA for their diligence in providing so many detailed updates to McMaster graduate students, many of whom are also our members!

As you likely know by now, the current circumstances of COVID-19 require that this year’s Annual General Meeting (wherein our Executive Committee is elected by the membership) be hosted online. Nominations are now open, and will close May 25 at 5 PM. Elections will then be open from 12 PM on May 28 to 12 PM on May 29.

To learn more about the elections process, and how to nominate yourself or a fellow member, click here.

Sessionals, earlier this week, you were notified via email of an upcoming election for the position of Alternate on the Unit 2 Bargaining Team. We’d like to remind you that nominations close at 5 PM this Monday, May 18th. For more information on the position of Bargaining Team Alternate, and how to nominate yourself or a fellow Unit 2 member, read the full announcement here.

Occupational Health Clinics for Ontario Workers (OHCOW) are hoping to to assess the impacts of COVID-19 on all types of workers from across the  province. OHCOW is a great organization that operates with the goal of improving the health of working people by providing clinical and prevention services, including research. The current survey is being offered in collaboration with health and safety union representatives as well as researchers from Duke University and the Institute of Work and Health. That being said, we would strongly encourage all of our members to not only participate in this survey, but also to share it widely within their personal and professional networks. You can find it here.

IMPORTANT UPDATE for Sessional Faculty Working in the Spring/Summer 2020 Term: May 04, 2020

If you are a Sessional Faculty or Hourly Rated Sessional Faculty Member working in the spring/summer 2020 term (but did NOT work in the Fall 2019 or Winter 2020 term) and you wish to enroll your family in family dental coverage or opt out of the CUPE 3906 dental coverage, please complete the change of coverage forms (below, same forms for fall/winter change of coverage) and email them with any required supporting documentation to: administrator@cupe3906.org.  The deadline to submit these change of coverage forms is May 18, 2020.

You can find the opt-out form, family enrollment form, and other information and forms here.

Finally, some good news! We are pleased to announce that CUPE 3906’s first-ever Gender Affirmation Fund is officially up and running. Unit 1 members (TAs and RAs in-lieu) who identify as Two Spirit, trans, or nonbinary can now be reimbursed for a wide array of costs associated with their gender affirmation, to a maximum of $1,250 per year and a lifetime cap of $2,500. To read more about the Gender Affirmation Fund, including eligibility criteria and instructions on how to submit a claim, click here.

We’d like to thank our sister Locals like CUPE 3902 and CUPE 4600, who have led the charge in providing benefits like these to academic workers at U of T and Carleton, respectively. Their own Trans Funds served as great examples after which we could model our own Gender Affirmation Fund. Many thanks, also, to the trans and nonbinary members of CUPE 3906 who assisted in the creation of this fund and the relevant application materials. Your input has been invaluable to ensuring that the Gender Affirmation Fund addresses the needs of those for whom this benefit is intended.