CANADIAN LABOUR:

SUPPORT CUPE LOCAL 3902 AT THE U OF T:

Here's another appeal for online solidarity from the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), representing teaching assistants at the University of Toronto.

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Help CUPE 3902 at University of Toronto Appuyons la S.L. 3902 à l'université de Toronto:‏
Please take a minute to help CUPE 3902 in their negotiations with the University of Toronto.
Take action now
The teaching assistants are looking for:
***decreases in class and tutorial size
***public health care coverage for international students
***financial support for workers in deregulated programs, and
***inflation-level wage increases
Send an email to U of T's Vice-President of human resources and urge her to bring proposals to conciliation that will meet these demands.

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THE LETTER...Please go to one of the highlighted links above to send the following letter to the VP of human resources at the U. of T.

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I send this letter to register support for the position of CUPE Local 3902 Unit 1, representing Education Workers at the University of Toronto. From the outset of negotiations, CUPE 3902’s bargaining position has been has been both fair and reasonable. Still, negotiations persist nearly seven months after bargaining commenced, due primarily to the Uof T’s failure to acknowledge that the bargaining team has shown genuine sensitivity to the difficult economic times.

At the forefront of their issues, CUPE 3902 has chosen to emphasize family assistance (e.g. challenging the proposed university clawbacks to maternity leave) and the unfair University Health Insurance Plan, issues which amount to relatively little in terms of real dollars. And, while CUPE 3902 seems to have been successful in staving off the indefensible maternity leave clawbacks, there has been little movement from the U of T on other family assistance issues, or the UHIP issue.

A commitment from the U of T to pay the UHIP premiums of international students and post-graduate fellows would be a positive step toward resolving the negotiations. Moreover, it would be a first step toward eliminating the UHIP plan and getting international students and post-doc fellows on the Ontario Health Insurance Plan, a goal that President David Naylor has endorsed publicly on numerous occasions.

Another concern is the dissolution of the Tuition Assistance Fund for students in professional programs. Such programs are unfunded, and the University recognized that students require financial assistance in order to get through them, so they created a mechanism in the last contract by which to provide such assistance. The U of T has now chosen to eliminate this assistance, thereby downloading the burden of difficult economic times onto their least-assisted graduate students. This is unacceptable.

Finally, CUPE 3902’s proposals surrounding wages have, by all accounts, been fair and reasonable. As a guide to determining a reasonable funding package, CUPE 3902 pointed to U of T’s own published recommendations for what graduate students require to make ends meet living in the city of Toronto. Not only has the U of T rejected this most reasonable of approaches, they have failed to offer an amount that matches the recent increases achieved by other bargaining units working under the employ of the U of T. Education Workers shouldn’t be treated as less important than other workers and administrators at the U of T – because they aren’t less important!

Please, consider these points and return to the bargaining table in a spirit of resolving this dispute without a strike.