On Dec. 15, the staff at the York University Faculty Association (YUFA), represented by CUPE 1281, continued picketing to raise awareness about their strike. Their collective agreement with YUFA expired in May of this year.
According to their official website, YUFA is the “professional association and certified bargaining agent for approximately 1,700 faculty, librarians and archivists, and post-doctoral visitors at York University.” While YUFA represents faculty as a union, its internal staff are unionized separately under CUPE 1281 and are currently bargaining against YUFA as their employer.
This sub-union is made up of seven “executive associates” or “staff representatives,” and one “co-ordinator of accounting and administration.” CUPE Local 1281 is a “proud local” of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), representing over 500,000 workers nationwide. These eight staff representatives answer questions and deal with problems brought to them. Additionally, they support the union Executive in its work, and are also YUFA’s bargaining team.
In an interview with Excalibur, staff representative Alison Fisher explained that the sub-union has been bargaining with YUFA since June, but no agreement has been reached. “We’ve unfortunately had to take strike action as of Oct. 27,” she said. Mariful Alam, another staff representative, noted that members wanted “stronger protections around harassment and discrimination, and stronger language in their collective agreement.”
In the midst of the strike, YUFA is also trying to hire what an official Instagram post by CUPE 1281 highlights as “scab labour” while their staff is on strike. The post called out “truly shameful behaviour from any employer…Shame on YUFA.” The tentative positions would be managerial and would involve work typically carried out by unionized staff, Alam said. “When they are hiring managerial positions that do much of the work that we do, we are obviously concerned about contracting or job loss and job security,” Fisher added.
For the first position, the YUFA Executive are trying to hire a manager who would oversee the staff and, allegedly, would not be a part of CUPE Local 1281—something the striking staff have not agreed to. Additionally, YUFA tabled the changes to the collective agreement, which set out how a manager would “fit in.” As for the second management position, YUFA wants to hire an in-house lawyer to work on relations and bargaining.
According to an official handout, the other main points for striking (besides health and safety and job security) include quality service and an end to union busting. The handout claims that any new non-union positions will mean union job cuts, and combined with hiring an employer-side law firm to lead bargaining and tabling more than a hundred concession demands, it points out that it “looks to us like a union that’s trying to bust their staff union.”
In an official YUFA Bargaining Q&A document, YUFA claims that they began bargaining on June 11 and met for 8 full days over the course of the summer. After more bargaining in October, YUFA “was constantly modifying its proposals, and 1281 was also making changes to its proposals.”
The document continues to state that “on Oct. 27, 1281 announced that they were going on strike,” and on Oct. 30, it claims that “a CUPE lawyer acting for 1281 submitted an application to the Ontario Labour Relations Board, charging that YUFA had engaged in ‘an Unfair Labour Practice’ at the bargaining table.”
The document also claims that management and legal positions are not unionized staff jobs under Ontario labour law, and that YUFA engaged with a new law firm to defend against 1281’s application. As for their bargaining goals, YUFA’s document claims that their goal is more sustainability, both financially and organizationally, with no intention of laying off other staff members.
In the meantime, the strike has entered into its eighth week, and a mobile picket will take place on Keele campus from Dec. 15-19. To find out more about the ongoing strike, visit @cupe1281 on Instagram.
