Contract academic workers strike at York amid worsening conditions

Since February 24, over 3,000 workers and students represented by CUPE 3903, including teaching assistants, graduate/research assistants, contract faculty, and part-time librarians and archivists, are on strike at York University. This strike is one of many in the growing wave of strike actions across Canada, as the sleeping giant of the labour movement starts to lurch awake from its slumber.

CUPE 3903 employees have been without a contract since August 2023, and since that date, the union has been approaching York’s senior administration with consistent contract demands, which York has refused to engage with. The Ford government’s introduction of Bill 124 in 2019 capped public sector workers’ wage increases at 1 percent, while the cost of living has skyrocketed, in effect creating a massive cut to real wages. As was reported by CUPE 3903, members have experienced a 15.8 percent inflation increase between September 2020 and 2023, and many local members have sought out cheaper housing further away from campus as a result, or have sought out second or even third jobs.

These devastating conditions don’t only affect the workers themselves, but they also affect students. The question raised by CUPE 3903 in their recent report, “Who can afford to work at York?” also raises another question for students: who can expect to receive a quality education at a university where instructors are overworked, underpaid, and under-resourced? The fact of the matter is that CUPE 3903’s working conditions are our learning conditions, and this has been constantly addressed by the union in its negotiations, with demands such as smaller class sizes, lighter workloads, and policies around grading turnaround, all of which would serve to create more one-on-one time between instructors and students. All of these demands have gone unrecognized by York.

This seems to be a pattern with York’s senior administration, as was seen the last time CUPE 3903 went on strike in 2018. The same dismissive and bad-faith bargaining led to a strike that lasted nearly 20 weeks, and ended with CUPE 3903 being legislated back to work. Due to the Ford government’s interference in the collective bargaining process, the problems which led to the 2018 strike were never solved, and have in fact been intensified by the aforementioned increase in cost of living. 

Taking notice of these unjust conditions, many graduate and undergraduate students came to support CUPE 3903 at its strike rally on February 24, where speeches were delivered by the York Federation of Students and the York University Graduate Students Association. The message from these student unions was clear: the student population’s solidarity is unwavering, because we recognize that CUPE 3903 isn’t just fighting for their contract, but for improved education conditions generally.

At the University of Toronto, strikes are a far less common occurrence, with the last one occurring nearly a decade ago in 2015. However, two locals were recently in strike positions, with thousands of members voting overwhelmingly in favour: CUPE 3902 (contract education workers, postdocs, TAs) and CUPE 3261 (service workers, cooks, cleaners, etc.). In total, over 8,000 workers were able to strike as of February 4. The locals demanded wage increases keeping with inflation, as well as consistency and safety in their work hours.

On February 28, hundreds of these workers and their supporters gathered at Sidney Smith Hall to support these locals before marching to the Governing Council meeting at Simcoe Hall, which was blocked by campus police. Leaders and members from both locals spoke to the crowd, gathered despite the rapid onset of frigid and windy conditions. VP Finance and Operations Samir Mechel spoke on behalf of the University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU), which represents undergraduate students, in support of these locals. The UTSU made clear that it supports the locals in their strike positions, and will continue to do so if they strike, as well as directing students to support their fellow workers and students at rallies and on the picket lines. 

Overall, this large and coordinated organization, as well as support from students, forced the university to come to an agreement with the locals at the last minute. This shows the importance of our solidarity: when students and workers unite, university conditions can be improved for all. United, we all win.

Both the strike at York and the leveraging of a potential strike at U of T should be viewed not only in the context of the labour movement, but the student movement as well. As pointed out in a recent YCL statement, the conditions in post-secondary education (PSE) in Canada have reached a crisis point. As the Ford government pursues a plan of privatization via ‘death by a thousand cuts,’ university senior administrators have responded in lock step, shifting the burden on to students’ tuition, specifically international students. This has caused some sections of students and the broader community — both uniformed and reactionary elements — to claim that CUPE 3903’s demands will cause further tuition increases, implying that workers as well as students should further shoulder the burden of the PSE crisis. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

Although public funding to PSE in Canada has been slashed from 80 percent 30 years ago to under 50 percent today, the senior administration at York hasn’t had to face any austerity measures as a result. In fact, according to CUPE 3903, since 2018, the size of the senior administration team and its compensation (salary, benefits, bonuses and stipends) increased by 37 percent and 47 percent, respectively. 
Students at York and across Canada ought to take a lesson from CUPE 3903, 3902, and 3261, that organization is the key to our struggle. Without coming together and organizing ourselves in order to fight for our common interests, the ruling class’ privatization scheme will surely win. But this victory is far from imminent, students need only look to the Quebec student strike of 2012 for inspiration.

Rather than segmenting the labour movement and the student movement into two separate categories alienated from each other, the job for those of us in the student movement is to organize toward unity with the labour movement, with this unity existing as a part of the broader alliance of popular and democratic forces fighting against the barbarism of monopoly capitalism. Those of us in the YCL who organize within the student movement must lead the charge towards a strong foundation for this alliance.