Our next General Members Meeting will be taking place on Wednesday January 20th at 5 pm in CNH B-107.
The agenda includes: Election of Vice President, Election of Benefits/Advocacy Officer, Discussion of Mental Health Fee Increase, and Bargaining Update.
Pizza will be provided, and childcare costs will be reimbursed upon request.
We hope to see you there! For more info, please contact staff@cupe3906.org
Happy New Year! 2016 is an important year for local 3906 as we have two collective agreements that are set to expire and will need to be re-negotiated. Both the Unit 1 (TAs/RAs in lieu) and Unit 3 (Post Doctoral Fellows) collective agreements expire on August 31, 2016.
The collective agreement is a democratically decided employment contract that covers all TAs and RAs (in lieu), and includes a variety of rights and benefits, including wages, hours of work, benefits, sick days, and working conditions. Collective bargaining is the process by which we are able to make improvements to the existing collective agreement.
We have already begun working toward securing new and improved collective agreements. Both Unit 1 and Unit 3 have elected their bargaining committees, which will be responsible for helping to re-negotiate a collective agreement and the committees have participated in some bargaining preparation workshops.
We have also hired two member mobilizers to help the bargaining committee with membership outreach. These folks will be conducting a series of one-on-one and small group meetings with members to inform them of the bargaining process and, most importantly, to hear their issues and gather their feedback.
We will also be launching a bargaining survey for both Unit 1 and Unit 3 to ensure that the priorities of our members are reflected in the bargaining proposals package, which will be voted on by the membership in March.
It will be a busy year, and we hope to see you at our General Membership Meetings.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact staff@cupe3906.org
Please be advised that the CUPE 3906 will be closed over the holidays (effective as of December 17th, but with some limited access until December 23rd) and will not re-open until January 4th, 2016. Some e-mail accounts will be monitored on a very limited basis, while others will not due to people being out-of-the-country with limited access.
In the event of an absolute emergency, please e-mail Brad Walchuk (Staff Representative) at bwalchuk {at} cupe3906.org
We hope that you enjoy a well-deserved break from school and work, and have a safe and successful 2016!
McMaster has a new full-week fall break this year which has been introduced to help undergraduate students decrease their stress levels and manage their academic workload. A team of researchers is studying whether these goals are met, and how the Fall Break affects the wider university community. Specifically, they are interested in how the new fall break influences the workload and stress levels of instructors who are teaching in Fall 2015.
The survey will take about 10 minutes to complete. Please complete the survey within the next few weeks; it will close on Monday, December 21 at 5:00pm.
Please click the link below for more information and to be directed to the online survey.
https://surveys.mcmaster.ca/limesurvey/index.php/394786?lang=en
This term’s Professional Development Fund (PDF) application deadline is December 8th, 2015. Please drop off your application to the CUPE office (KTH B111) by the deadline.
More information about the fund, including ineligible items and the submission form, can be found here.
We’re sure that you’ve all heard of MOSAIC, the university’s new multi-million dollar online interface. We’re also fairly sure that you’ve experienced at least one (but probably more) complaints with MOSAIC. You may not have realized though that MOSAIC recently turned one year old.
We figured what better way to mark this monument failure than by throwing MOSAIC a birthday bash?
Please join us on Thursday, December 4th over the lunch hour at our table in MUSC to help ‘celebrate’ MOSAIC’s 1st birthday. We’ll have free cake, free non-alcoholic champagne, and a few giant birthday cards that you can (anonymously) write all of your complaints about MOSAIC in. We’ll deliver them to the appropriate people later on.
We hope to see you there!
Enthusiastic congratulations to former President Evan Johnston, who was recently awarded the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) Young Worker Award at the Cliff Pilkey Awards dinner in Toronto. Well done!!!
December 6th marks the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. It is both a day for remembering and honouring and a call for action against the ongoing and widespread violence experienced by women in Canadian society.
In the spirit of solidarity and with a call for men to act against all forms of gender based violence, a Memorial Walk for Men has been organized by the Ontario Public Interest Research Group (OPIRG) McMaster to take place on campus from 10 am until 11 am on Friday, December 4, 2015. They will meet outside the Indigenous Studies Program entrance of Hamilton Hall. Directly following, participants are invited to attend the McMaster Anti-Violence Network Commemorative Service taking place at 11 am in Gilmour Hall Room 111.
Unfortunately the CUPE 3906 International Committee event “Take your stress out” this Friday is postponed for Monday, December 7th @ 5:00 pm. We apologize for any inconvenience.
We would be happy to see you all on that Monday at 5 in JHE-328 (lounge room).
Why?
Beside eating delicious pizza, talking about issues that bother us as TA/RAs, and play some awesome board games, we will be discussing writing a letter that CUPE 3906 International Committee wants to send to the Parliament Members in Ottawa and possibly to the prime-minister. In the letter we want to give our thoughts about better immigration benefits that we should have when applying for permanent residency since we are pursuing a degree from Canadian Universities. In the current immigration programs we are pretty much in the same status with out-of-country applicants.
You can still register using the following link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GoS2i4ZMmm0295T-e1X7_l82TG0HOeDpRhvxCN598fE/edit?usp=sharing Thank you for understanding. Hope to see you all on Monday, December 7th @5 pm in JHE-328.