It has been over five months since the victory of Liberal party leader Justin Trudeau in the Canadian federal elections, ending Stephen Harper’s nine-year rule of tyranny in Parliament. Canadians rejoiced, thinking that there has finally been an end to the racist fear-mongering tactics of the Conservative party leader. But what has actually changed so far under the leadership of the Trudeau government?

Was the appointment of a “diverse” cabinet, one which supposedly “looks like Canada” according to Trudeau, but is only made up of people making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, really worth celebrating?

The appointment of Harjit Sajjan as Minister of Defense made many celebrate the racial diversity of Trudeau’s new cabinet. Sajjan, a Sikh man from India was paraded around by media as a “badass” Canadian hero, earning his chops by being the biggest “Uncle Taj” in the Canadian military.

Working in a position of authority in the Canadian military intelligence body, he was aware of the ongoing torture of civilians but did nothing to address or stop it. Far from being a hero, his experience in the army shows that he is responsible for the deaths of many innocent civilians in the war in Afghanistan that can never be justified and continues to this very day.

G.I. Sajjan, A “Real Canadian Hero” By: Jason A. Das

The appointment of an Afghan refugee, Maryam Monsef, to Minister of Democratic Institutions means that there will be no mention of the reason why she had to flee her country in the first place. Her swearing in is an oath of submission to the monarchy, and there will be no recognition of the attempts made by the British military to invade her country.

As the imperialist war against the Afghan people continues, Monsef is used as a tokenized tool of her own colonizers. Let us keep in mind that the Liberals voted for the “Barbaric Cultural Practices Act”, a racist law that specifically targets people who look just like Maryam Monsef.

So what do these Cabinet appointments mean for the people of Canada? Faces and policies may change but our material conditions remain the same; with poor housing, precarious work, and overall exploitation. As much as Trudeau might present himself as a Prime Minister of the people, when working class people continue to struggle to make enough to survive on a monthly basis, what difference does it make if our cabinet is more diverse?

While Trudeau’s public relations and media team distract us with people of colour in exploitative leadership positions, we cannot forget the programs that routinely exploit working class labour.

Let us not forget that the Liberal party was the one to create the Temporary Foreign Worker program, a form of labour exploitation that tears apart families and has people working many years in indentured servitude.

Real change will not come from a swap in power within a system built upon genocide and theft. That change can only come from the people themselves. The Liberal and Conservative parties of Canada are two sides of the same coin. It’s not just about stopping Harper or other Conservatives; it’s about collectively challenging systemic issues that are engrained in the very system that Canadians are celebrating because it includes some semblance of diversity.

The participation of minorities within a capitalist system, which seeks to exploit the very people it continually excludes, is not a solution. It is not “real change”, as much as Trudeau may like to throw those words around. The so-called lesser of evils is still evil.

Featured Image from Time.com

In Toronto, one of the main ways that working class people find work when they find themselves out of a job and need to pay bills is through various temporary agencies. These agencies play the role of middlemen between corporations and workers. Corporations use them for a number of reasons, though they all add up to saving the corporations money. Workers hired through temporary agencies are often paid minimum wage, with the temporary agency making money off of each worker they supply to a company.

While it doesn’t immediately appear this way in any accounting books, what basically happens is that the temporary agency takes part of the money the worker would otherwise be paid for every hour of work. What is even worse about this is that this total amount is often still less than a ‘regular’ full-time employee of a company doing the same job makes per hour.

Javeed, a printing factory worker interviewed for this article, explained, “I’ve been working in this factory for eight months and still make minimum wage. The full-time packers make nearly double what I make, while machine operators make even more than that. I’m only working there as a temp so that I can get a job with the company, but it’s getting too frustrating. I have no idea how much money the temp. agency has been making off me, but i know they are making good money. I see the cars they drive there when I pick up my paycheques.”

These temporary agencies operate in different parts of the city, often on a particular ethnic, language or community basis, recruiting exploitable immigrants from all the various communities of Toronto so that companies can make an easy profit without having to worry about taking care of workers.

Sometimes, these temp. agencies attempt to take even more money from their workers by purposely not paying them for the hours they’ve worked and still refusing to pay even after a formal complaint has been made. A case of exactly this kind was brought to the attention of Basics several years ago in Etobicoke.

In this case, a worker named Mohammed was refused several days pay worth over $200 by his temp. agency after he finished working for them. This temp. agency particularly focused on recruiting workers from African backgrounds in the northwest part of the city and was controlled by one man out of a small office located in a strip mall.

However, Mohammed was able to get back his money after contacting the Solidarity Committee of the Industrial Workers of the World, who came out to his temp. bosses office with him and presented him with formal written and oral demands for the wages to be paid. This confrontation was enough to get this temp. agency to pay up.

As workers, many of us have no choice but to work for temporary agencies to pay the bills, though this doesn’t mean we should just accept their parasitical nature as natural or normal.

People should not profit off us by sitting in an office or even their own home and siphoning off money while we work in some of the most physically demanding and stressful jobs in the city, barely being able to afford to get to work each day. The same goes for the big corporations themselves and their executives and managers. All of these parasites make money off us each day and live luxurious lifestyles off the labour we provide for them, for which they pay us as few scraps as possible.

On Wednesday March 4, the constituency office of Finance Minister Joe Oliver was picketed as part of the beginning of a nationwide “Campaign Against the 4 Year Limit on Migrant Workers.”

Organised by the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change (MWAC), “a coalition that includes migrant workers, allies, workers’ centres, legal aid clinics, and unions,” protesters denounced a law dubbed the “4-and-4 rule,” which allows temporary foreign workers to stay in Canada for only four years before forcing them to leave for at least another four.

“Our message here is loud and clear: we want the Canadian government to hear our call and remove the 4-and-4 rule,” said Jesson Reyes, an organiser with Migrante Ontario, to the assembled crowd. “Harper, Harper, go away, foreign workers are here to stay!” chanted picketers in response.

Forming a picket line.

“Have you ever lived in a place for four years?” asked Tzazna Miranda, an MWAC activist. “You make friends. You find family. You find a community. You learn your rights, the law. You learn your job.”

“This law doesn’t make any sense,” she continued, “for employers, for workers, or for the economy. It means employers are forced to bring in new labourers every four years, to be retrained at great cost and who know less about their rights. For workers it’s unjust; it’s traumatising.”

The action took place as part of the beginning of the cross-country campaign against the 4-and-4 rule. In the week leading up, protests around the same issue took place in Hamilton, Guelph, Edmonton, Surrey, and the Okanagan Valley. Another rally is being planned for Toronto area residents on March 29.

“When this law comes into effect on April 1, 2015, we will see massive deportations of temporary foreign workers and caregivers across Canada,” Reyes told BASICS in an interview. “We believe that if you are good enough to work here, you’re good enough to stay.”

Many activists have expressed concern that enforcement of the 4-and-4 rule will only lead to a huge increase in undocumented people, as temporary workers may refuse to leave after their visas expire, either because of a lack of opportunities at home or in account of roots they have established in Canada.

The plight of undocumented labourers has gained a great deal of publicity in the United States, where millions work for starvation wages under brutal conditions, and where any attempt to unionise or militate for higher wages or better working conditions leads to crackdowns and deportations.

A similar system has long since begun to be constructed in Canada, with much less fanfare. The municipal government already estimates that up to 500,000 undocumented workers may live in Canada, about half of which probably live in Toronto.

“Almost all migrant workers who live and work in Canada support their families back home,” said Samay Cajas, an organiser from No One Is Illegal. “To lose status and the right to work is devastating for them and their families. To even arrive, many workers incur huge debts.”

Organisers had planned to deliver a person-sized painted STOP sign to the MP. However, the Honourable Mr. Oliver was evidently too embarrassed by the government’s policy to defend it: he refused to meet with protesters and closed his office for the day.

Probably just an unfortunate coincidence.

Unlike MPs, however, police officers were present in abundance. During the course of the protest at least four separate squad cars showed up in a parking lot directly across the street from the constituency office. Why the MP for Eglinton-Lawrence regards police as better public representatives of the government than himself remains, unfortunately, unclear.

Police gathering across the street to observe the peaceful protest. A fourth car was stationed about 20 metres to the west.

The March 29 action will take place at Citizenship and Immigration Canada Headquarters, (55 St. Clair E) at 2 p.m.

* * *

For more about the Campaign Against the 4 Year Limit on Migrant Workers, go to no4and4.tumblr.com

CUPE 3902 Unit 1 represents more than 6000 teaching assistants, part-time lecturers, lab demonstrators, graders, and invigilators employed at the University of Toronto. In the early hours of February 27th, a tentative agreement between the employer and the union was reached, awaiting a ratification vote from its members. The vote, which took place last Friday afternoon, resulted in a resounding ‘no’.

Regarding this overwhelming vote to strike down the tentative agreement, one TA explained that “while the employer made concessions on a number of fronts, the main issue — the lack of a liveable wage — was hardly addressed.” The strike began immediately, with picket lines forming Monday morning.

Support for the union’s cause has been widely expressed, both on the picket line and in social media. Rachel MacKinnon, a first year PhD student, commented on this remarkable level of solidarity on the picket line near King’s College Circle. “I’ve actually seen other students with bigger funding packages who aren’t even teaching this term coming out for us, and that’s really awesome. So I want to be able to give that back to people.”

As outlined in a previous article, the guaranteed funding package for graduate students at the University of Toronto is $15,000, falling $8,000 below the Toronto poverty line. The central issue in the current strike is to bring the funding package, which has not been increased since 2000, closer to a ‘livable wage’. “None of the demands the union is making strike me as overreach,” said Eric Mathison, a PhD student in philosophy. “Graduate students and sessional instructors help this university operate. Requesting fair, stable employment is reasonable.”

Members also want to remind the public that while they see the strike as necessary, they would still much rather be in the classroom performing their regular duties. “We’re not doing this because we really want to be out here,” MacKinnon said. “We want this to be over as soon as possible.”

Picketers slow traffic as part of their demonstration.

There is still little indication as to how long the strike will last. In an email sent out to all students early this morning, the union stated that the University has not yet been in contact. The University did, however, send an email to all students last Friday, warning students of potentially ‘intimidating’ picket lines and to call campus police should they feel unsafe–a peculiar response, which the union called “scare tactics.”

Meanwhile, CUPE 3902 Unit 3, representing non-student academic staff such as sessional lecturers, voted Monday night on whether or not to ratify their tentative agreement. The result was a decision to send the vote to the entire unit across all three UofT campuses. According to one source, the agreement for Unit 3 faculty represents a strong step in ensuring more job security, but very little movement towards wage increases. Unit 3 may choose to reject the offer and strike in solidarity with Unit 1.

A similar labour strike looms further north at York University. CUPE 3903, representing contract faculty and teaching assistants, had also reached a tentative agreement with the employer. According to the union’s website, this agreement was voted down on Monday night, with a ‘no’ vote of nearly 70 per cent. 3903 also welcomes students and the public joining them on the picket lines.

A picket line near Queen’s Park.

The University of Toronto and CUPE 3902, which represents student and contract teaching staff on campus, are currently negotiating new collective bargaining agreements. Negotiations seem to have stalled, however, and Units 1 (mainly TAs) and 3 (mainly sessional lecturers) are readying for a possible strike. At a townhall last Wednesday, BASICS caught up with two union reps.

Erin Black is the Chair of CUPE 3902 and the chief negotiator for Unit 3. Ryan Culpepper is the Vice-Chair for Units 1 & 2 and the chief negotiator for Unit 1.

Interview with Ryan Culpepper and Erin Black, 11 February 2015

BASICS: Is the University stonewalling you guys? I’ve talked to a few Unit 1 members, and it kind of sounds like that.

Ryan Culpepper: I think that’s fair, yeah. I think they’re doing the bare minimum that they can do and not run into trouble with the Ministry of Labour.

BASICS: And why do you think they’re pursuing that tactic?

RC: I don’t know, I mean—

Erin Black: They have claimed, and there is some truth to this, but how much truth is the question, virtually every unionised group on campus is bargaining this year, so they have been trying to kind of prioritise things or schedule things, and there’s only so many of them, uh, so they say. I have some—there is some truth to that, absolutely.

RC: Though they themselves negotiated the terms of the agreement, so like the fact they all expire in the same year is something that they themselves have set up.

EB: And they’ve known that we’ve been coming for three years, and could have, in my humble opinion, prepared for, better than they did, in terms of, ‘I’m sorry, we just don’t have any dates for you, ’cause we have to go talk to, uh, whoever.

RC: But right now they’re not meeting with us and there’s no other unions bargaining, it’s just us and they’re still not meeting with us.

BASICS: So most of the agreements have already been made, for the other unions.

RC: Yeah, the other two biggest are done, Steelworkers and another big CUPE local.

BASICS: So, in terms of [Unit 3] membership, there’s sessional Instructors, like Rank 1, Rank 2, Rank 3?

EB: Yeah we call it sessional lecturer 1, sessional lecturer 2, sessional lecturer 3, or SL 1, 2, 3.

BASICS: So how many people are in Unit 3 of CUPE 3902?

EB: Unit 3 represents approximately a thousand individuals, that’s sessional lecturers, writing instructors, we have some hourly paid employees who are musical professionals, but the bulk of the membership is sessional lecturers.

BASICS: And what percentage of the sessional lecturers would you say are SL1’s?

EB: Oh, the majority.

BASICS: And I think you said there were, 44–

EB: There were exactly 44 who have hit that brass ring of guaranteed work [this refers to SL3’s having guaranteed positions].

BASICS: And do you know how many SL2’s there are?

EB: You know what, if you give me a minute I actually ran these numbers for our bargaining team, if you give me a second.
[Reading from phone]: So there are 440 SL1’s, 120 SL2’s, and, sorry, 45 SL3’s, we have a new one this term.

BASICS: Moving up in the world. And so, the rate at which an SL 1 is paid per course is $7500?

EB: The SL1 is $7,125[per course], the SL2 is going to be…I can’t pull the exact figure out but it’s going to be around $7500, um, and SL3’s would be about $7900.

BASICS: And they are guaranteed four half-courses?

EB: Four, yep.

BASICS: No guarantee for SL2’s, but just preferred hiring.

EB: Just hiring preference.

BASICS: Is there a maximum, I don’t know if you mentioned this earlier, for the maximum number of courses—

EB: That you can teach? No. If you get to SL3 they owe you four; you can apply for work on top of that, and if you get it you can have it; but after 8 years of service, at least 8 years of service to the University, after having taught at essentially that course load, that 2/2 load, that’s how we refer to it, for at least 3 years, and after having been deemed ‘superior’ not once but twice, the university owes you what amounts to a gross salary of around $35 000. After all of the stuff you’ve got to get. And I might add, that commitment was not permanent, we successfully have achieved that in this round of bargaining. It was time-bound to each collective agreement, and in this round of negotiations they have now agreed to make it non-negotiable.

BASICS: Do you have a lot of people who are sessional lecturers for very long periods of time who aren’t moving up?

EB: We do, we have a classification called ‘SL1 Long-Term’, uh, so those people don’t have hiring preference but they get like a hundred bucks extra pay in honour of their at least six years of service to UofT.

BASICS: Do you have any idea how many people are in that category?

EB: That’s actually a small category, ’cause most people do advance, um, I think it’s probably about twenty or so who are at the long-term rank, most advance, but for—the reason some of these people, I’ve asked them, like, ‘you qualify for advancement, why don’t you do it?’ and the most common response I get back is, uh, ‘the process [of teaching review to be able to move up in level] is too intensive for the outcome; I have to go through all of these hoops, for what amounts to just a smidgen more pay, and a hiring preference, which is a good thing, but which may or may not matter because the course may not exist in the future anyhow.

RC: Also increasingly they’re screwing with the advancement process. Like, they’re denying more people advancement, and they’re doing weird things, like just as someone’s about to reach the threshold for an advancement review, they’ll pull their courses—

EB: ‘Oops, we don’t need your course this year!’

RC: —yeah, they’ll pull their courses so that they can’t reach the threshold to be reviewed for advancement.

EB: They’ll tell you that it was just, you know, curricular changes necessitating that.

RC: There’s lovely coincidences out there.

BASICS: Right, ‘changes in the historiography necessitate the end of your course.’
What’s the–do you have a rough idea of how many sessional instructorships there are offered in a year versus the new tenure track positions which would sort of, be offered? What would you say the ratio is?

EB: That’s a bit harder to answer. UofT is a little different than other institutions, so the growth rate of tenure-track positions—there was a study done by the Higher Education Council for Ontario…which investigated a bunch of universities in Ontario. At UofT, which is different than other institutions…there has been greater sessional growth than tenure growth, but UofT has also created a bunch of ‘teaching-stream’ positions, so full-time, permanent benefits, all that sort of stuff, represented by the faculty association, so those guys are higher than us, but less than the tenure-stream. And at other Ontario institutions…who aren’t doing this, it’s basically like, tenure [gesture to show tiny increase], sessional [gesture to show large increase]. But UofT has this weird sort of blip because of these teaching-stream positions that have been created, that are full-time positions; we’re thrilled to see them, [but] our long-serving members often don’t get hired into them; so you’ve created a teaching-stream position, and instead of affording it to the individual who’s been doing that work for five, six, seven, whatnot years, chances are it’s not going to go that person.

BASICS: So, these are full time positions, but they’re not professorships.

EB: Their rank system is ‘lecturer–senior lecturer’, but they are full time positions, they are continuing positions, they come with benefits and pensions and they are represented by the Faculty Association. But because they’re ‘teaching-stream’, they’re not ‘assistant, associate, full professor’, which has a much greater research requirement; so that’s the difference.
And then there’s us: the course-by-course-by-course.

BASICS: What’s the average TAship in terms of hours? How many hours is the average contract?

RC: Probably an average contract would be about 140 hours for a semester or 280 for a year.

EB: I can tell you in my department, for any incoming new student…they work very hard to make sure they do not get over the 205 hours [beyond which T.A.s are paid at the rate of $42.05/hour; under this threshold, their remuneration is considered to be made up by the $15 000 stipend which all PhD students receive]. This year I have two T.A.’s who were brand new students who were each capped at the 205.

BASICS: And that’s why they kind of start having contracts where you don’t have any remuneration for–

RC: Yeah they trim the hours so that they don’t have to pay you the hourly rate. When you get offered a job, you get offered a job that is for a certain number of hours. And then you have to sit down with the supervisor and go through the breakdown of the hours. So that’s where the process happens of saying, ‘you’re going to get so many hours for marking, so many hours for office hours–

EB: So many hours for actual class time.

BASICS: So this may be anecdotal, but in your experience, does it tend to be in situations where they’re trying very hard to make sure that a TA doesn’t get a contract for more than 205 hours, where they tend to have these, sort of, more brutal regimes where you don’t have any time to talk to students, where you don’t have any time to hold office hours, that kind of thing?

RC: Yeah, I mean, I don’t know how it is all over the university, I only know in departments where I’ve worked, I’ve seen big trimmings on contact time and prep time. That’s where they’re trimming back hours.

BASICS: And so, because course instructors are salaried, I assume there’s no–I don’t know, do you have an average of how many hours a sessional lecturer will spend working on a course?

EB: We did a survey of our members and asked that question; most said, if you were to add it up, the whole course, from start to finish, creation to delivery and marking and all that, most said that it’s probably at least 250 hours from start to finish. Interesting fun fact: for employment insurance purposes, a course is only credited at 230 hours.
And it really does vary. For instance I mentioned earlier, I teach a fourth-year seminar; because there’s no lecturing in that course, it’s straight up student discussion, and there’s fifteen students, it’s less labour-intensive than a course that I prepare lectures for. And the first time you’re preparing lectures for a course, it probably takes an average of maybe 8–10 hours to write one single lecture; so what gets spoken to the students in 2 hours takes probably 8–10 hours to actually draft. That first year I taught I actually kept track of my hours, and then I divided it by the stipend, and I was making below minimum wage. Because we’re not paid on an hourly basis; we’re paid like, ‘here’s a stipend.’ TA’s get this, Ryan referred to it, this Description of Duties and Allocation that breaks it down, x hours for this, x hours for that. I get a letter that says, ‘Dear Dr. Black, we’re hiring you to teach this, there are 24 hours of lecture in this course and one hour of office hours per week, and you will be paid x,’ which is the stipend, and x includes everything, from creating the syllabus, picking the readings, delivering the lectures, meeting with students, grading the students, or if I have TAs working for me, supervising the TAs—it’s kit and caboodle for them, it’s all part of delivering the course, so it’s one stipend.

BASICS: Can you tell us where the bargaining process is at?

EB: Sure. Both units are in similar spots actually; we’ve both filed for conciliation, which Ryan mentioned, that happened in December, we did it on the same day, that’s the process where you involve the Ministry of Labour. Both teams have now, after a meeting in conciliation, requested what’s called a ‘No Board’ Report, it’s a labour term basically. The upshot of that is when that report is issued, that starts a clock ticking, a 17-day clock, at the end of which puts either the union in a legal strike position or the employer in a legal lockout position. Both Units 1 and 3 have asked for the report that is now ticking down to a legal action on either side. But both have more dates to meet, [to Ryan] you have–

RC: Four.

EB: Four dates scheduled between now and the strike deadline, uh, the ticking clock ending, and we so far have the one additional date that they offered at 2 a.m. on Tuesday morning.

BASICS: And I guess in your experience, or in the experience of the union, is that–are four dates or one date a realistic amount of time to get an agreement?

That one’s harder to answer, I think what’s more telling is that Unit 1—what have you had now, a total of what, 14—maybe—dates? In the last round of Unit 1 bargaining [during the 2011–2012 school year], well before they even got to conciliation, they had like 25 dates.

RC: We had 18 even before our strike vote last time.

EB: Yeah, and this time there were like 6 or something. So it’s—at the end of things, processes can move or they can stall, that’s sort of amorphous, but—

RC: I mean, they know what it would take to get an agreement, right?

EB: Yes.

RC: They know what it would take to get an agreement, they’ve known since Day 1, so it could take one day, but that’s not the way that they bargain, so I mean, is timing a concern? Yeah, definitely.

BASICS: So, you mentioned the role of the province, the Ministry of Labour mediator, in the process, how helpful has that been? I don’t know what the specifics of that mediator role are.

EB: It’s up to the parties. So, sometimes the conciliator, he’s called a conciliator at this [earlier] stage, although now he’s a mediator, because both of us have filed the No Board Reports, he or she can do different things. Sometimes the parties sit in separate rooms and he or she shuttles back and forth, sometimes the parties meet face to face and the conciliator’s in the room, to sort of hear both sides, so it’s really up to the parties how they do it.

RC: And the Ministry of Labour employs conciliators in the first place for one purpose, which is to prevent strikes. That is their job. Their job is to prevent labour unrest in the province, so they come into the process, to sort of bash both sides on the heads and get them to come to an agreement. And so they go the employer and say, ‘Listen these guys are serious they’re gonna strike, you should be scared, give them what they want,’ and then they come to the union and they’re like, ‘Dudes they’re ready, they’re ready for you they’re gonna squash it you can’t go out you have to take the deal,’ like that’s their job, so you know. I don’t begrudge them for doing that job, but you have to recognise, I guess on both sides, what that is.

BASICS: I guess was just trying to get at—what kind of help from the province can you get, I mean, it doesn’t really sound like much if at all.

RC: I think the conciliator—the conciliators I’ve worked with in the past and our conciliator now, they’re usually quite aggressive, they really try to get you to make movement, draw proposals, that kind of thing. And that’s annoying and you have to develop your own way of dealing with them, but the good part is they also do that to the employer. I have found the ones I’ve worked with to be quite neutral in how they—all they want to do is prevent a strike, so they’ll be aggressive with both parties if it means, you know, getting you to sign a contract, so that is sometimes helpful.

BASICS: I wanted to ask about the solidarity between the two sections of the union: how did that come about, and is that rare, I guess? Do they often work together in collective bargaining? And also, it seems as though the University, if they’re closer to making a deal with Unit 3, then they might—is there a possibility that they would then use that against the TAs? Because it’s a lot harder to do a strike for just the TAs, right?

RC: Yeah.

EB: Well they’re a lot bigger though, I mean, much bigger, 6 000 to 1 000. So I think size takes away that sort of differentiality.

RC: I think it’d be more like, um, sessionals are—I mean, I’m learning from going out to events like this and talking to journalists, and sessionals are a more sympathetic crew; people like sessionals. So that’s great, um, so I think if sessionals [Unit 3] settled before we [Unit 1] did, I think the damage that it would do to us would be more like, ‘well, we always thought you were a bunch of unreasonable, radical students anyway, that nobody could deal with, and look, like the sane people, the people who will listen to reason settled; you’re on just some crazy crusade,’ and you sort of then lose the war of public opinion.

EB: I don’t disagree with Ryan, I think that would be the perception out there; what’s behind the scenes, though, is that for—[the University] are not making movement for Unit 1; they are making movement for Unit 3, and I’m not saying it’s enough—

RC: Oh yeah, fair enough, I think they’re absolutely trying to set themselves up to do exactly that, so that they can take, you know, frankly the more politicised Unit and give them a lot less, by giving some crumbs to the one that looks more sympathetic.

BASICS: But my impression is that Unit 1 is not asking for a lot—you said something like, a raise [to the guaranteed minimum funding package] of a few thousand dollars is not even going to put you above the poverty line—that doesn’t seem like an insane amount to—

RC: I don’t think it’s insane at all, but I think they would like to paint us as entitled, greedy—

EB: And what they’ll focus in on, and this is focused in on by student news coverage at UofT, is the $42.05/hour rate. Which is like, ‘Oh my God, you make that much? What are you complaining about?

RC: I did an interview with the Star today, and like, that’s all, I could not get her off the wage, that’s all she wanted to talk about.

BASICS: What would both of you want to say to people about the positions of your Units of the union?

EB: Well first of all, we are separate units, we have separate agreements, but we’re the same union, to come to your question about solidarity…we are CUPE 3902. So, we’re looking out for each other, to the extent that we can, we brought joint language, um, around common issues, which really freaked them out, ’cause this is the first time we bargained at the same time, normally it’s been one ahead of the other—

BASICS: So this is the first time that’s happened?

EB: Yeah, so that really freaked them out, and Ryan for Unit 1 came to the Unit 3 table, and they’re all like, [miming shock]—

RC: They spent an hour arguing whether I should be there or not.

EB: —it’s like, ‘what’s, what’s going on here?’

RC: They’re very very scared of the idea of collaboration. They said to me at that time, they said like, ‘You are the negotiator for Unit 1, how dare you try to bring that leverage to bear at this table!’ you know, like they are very scared of the idea of [collaboration]. I think the thing that is shared, and I hope it makes everyone equally sympathetic, but I’ll say this definitely about Unit 1 members, like I see, I’m out at info sessions and town halls all the time, and member department meetings, like, people are broke, they’re broke and they’re overworked and they’re exhausted and they’re exasperated, and the reason we are where we are is they feel like they’re out of options. So I think that’s shared with Unit 3.

EB: Oh it’s absolutely shared with Unit 3, equally as broke, equally as stressed. Have you heard of ‘Rhodes scholars’, right, like the impressive scholarship for Oxford, there’s a take on it, ‘Roads scholar’…because sessionals are always on the road so much, working at like a gazillion different campuses… One of our bargaining team members like goes to Peterborough for Trent, to teach. We have people who work on our campus who come in from as far away as London and Kingston and stuff like that. So yes, absolutely, the common ground is that whether you’re a graduate student education worker or somebody who has actually crossed the floor and gotten your PhD, we are similarly in the same economic boat.

BASICS: Living paycheck to paycheck.

EB: While being asked to do an incredibly important job, which is undergraduate education.

BASICS: What can students and the public do to mobilise or show solidarity?

EB: If the university can be told in no unequivocal terms, ‘We’re on their side,’ that’s going to be worrisome in Simcoe Hall.

* * *

You can follow updates from CUPE 3902 on Twitter at @cupe3902 or on their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/CUPE3902

Tensions are running high at the University of Toronto between administrators and CUPE 3902, the union which represents 7000 T.A.s and sessional lecturers on three UofT campuses.

During 2014, Units 1 and 3 of CUPE 3902 both had their collective bargaining agreements with the university expire. However, the University has shown little interest in negotiating new ones. In the face of intransigence from administrators, both Units have set a strike date of February 27. If collective bargaining agreements are not successfully signed by then, a large part of the teaching activities at UofT will temporarily cease.

A townhall held last Wednesday night at the George Ignatieff theatre, just south of Bloor and St. George, clarified the issues. Originally, it was organised as a forum for both CUPE and University representatives to explain their positions. A mere two days before the event, however, the University e-mailed organisers and notified them that it was refusing to participate. The peculiar reason provided was that “[negotiations] have not reached an impasse.”

This statement appears to bear little relation to reality. CUPE representatives Erin Black and Ryan Culpepper say that the University is resisting setting meeting dates on which both sides can negotiate.

“They’ve claimed [that] virtually every unionised group on campus is bargaining this year,” said Black in an interview, “[but] they’ve known that we’ve been coming for three years, and could have prepared better.”

Culpepper added: “But right now they’re not meeting with us and there’s no other unions bargaining. It’s just us and they’re still not meeting with us.”

Far fewer meeting dates have been set during this round of negotiations than in previous years. But so far it’s unclear why the university is uninterested in negotiating.

Empty chairs at empty tables: UofT representatives neglected to even show up on Wednesday.

Units 1 and 3 of CUPE 3902 are composed of different parties. Unit 1, with about 6000 members, represents mostly teaching assistants, who are almost all either graduate or undergraduate students at the University. Unit 3, with about 1000 members, primarily represents sessional lecturers.

Labour conditions for workers in both Units are no longer tenable. A minimum funding package for all PhD students at the University was won during the last CUPE 3902 strike in 2000, according to organisers. But this $15 000 per year stipend falls well short of the poverty line in this city, estimated at $23 000 per year.

“People are broke,” said Culpepper, “they’re broke and they’re overworked and they’re exhausted and they’re exasperated….they feel like they’re out of options.”

Despite inflation and rising tuition costs, it has been seven years since the last funding package increase. Furthermore, the package runs out after five years, forcing many students to search for other sources of funding. The goal of CUPE Unit 1 bargainers, therefore, is simply to get their members above the poverty line.

Sessional instructors, members of Unit 3, make on average about $7500 per half-year course they teach. If they manage to teach two courses per semester, which demands hours equivalent to a full-time job, they can make about $30 000 per year, plus a meagre $300 in benefits.

During the question period at the townhall, one speaker observed that the highest-paid person at the University (Jim Moriarty, who manages the UofT asset corporation) makes $750 000 per year, while President Meric Gertler, who because of his position has a residence provided by the University rent-free, makes over $400 000 per year.

Another student commented on the similar quality of instruction provided by sessional lecturers compared to tenured professors. She had taken a philosophy course one year from a tenured prof, and sat in on a lecture for the same course a year after, finding the experience “pretty much the same.” But, she pointed out, the University had to pay that professor almost $300 000 the year he taught that course, and only $7500 to the person who taught it a year later. “That’s not equal pay for equal work.”

The University’s media division did not respond when reached out to for comment.

Immigrant workers are the first to experience the shift in the labour market towards an increase in temporary work, and the reduction of permanent jobs with benefits and legally enforceable health, safety and labour standards.  Many immigrant workers obtain temporary jobs through agencies that are unregulated and fly-by-night.  R’s experiences shed light on the difficulties that temporary agency workers in Montreal face, difficulties that create what he described as “a kind of super-stress.”

R came to Canada from Mexico in 2008 and obtained different kinds of jobs through agencies: cleaning trays in a bakery, general cleaning work, jobs clearing snow and ice.  When we asked him about safety conditions on the job he said, “Well, the degree of safety that I’ve had is basically nil.”  He described “clearing snow at a height of three metres on slippery icy roofs…without safety equipment, cleats, cords, harnesses” for the temporary workers. “At the other end, people that were insured, who worked directly for the company, the whole team was provided with helmets, cleats, harnesses, special tools and special clothing for the cold, and meanwhile all we had was rubber boots.”  R left that job but he told us, “One of my buddies fell, fractured his clavicle, and was incapacitated for two or three months.”

R eventually did suffer a serious workplace injury: “The injury that I had was caused by a fall on a production line, on a conveyor belt. We didn’t have access to the controls for the machines, so people had accustomed themselves to jumping the belt. There was no other way, because shutting down the machine would slow things down and cause problems with production. One of the security railings was loose…I fell on my head, and remained unconscious for a few moments. And there, I don’t remember… After what happened, there was no ambulance called. They sent me to the cafeteria. I was in a state of shock. And they continued with the production, which for them was the most important thing.”

The employer took no action whatsoever after this accident.  Under pressure to keep working to meet family expenses, and because he didn’t want any trouble, R continued to work.  Later, as he continued to get headaches and suffer from tinnitus, he went to see a doctor, but didn’t receive proper care because he hadn’t sought it in time.  “I’m still dealing with some gaps, holes in my memory, even to date.”

R told us that he had witnessed other temporary workers sustain terrible injuries on the job: “Well, I remember in one case, there was a station where there were normally supposed to be two people doing packaging, and they only put one person at the station, to try to force her to speed up, but there really should have been two…She slipped and fell and hurt her mouth, opened up her lip. Intense. For another person, it was their hand in one of the conveyor belts, where the trays come out of the oven, got stuck and their skin got ripped off. They had to take them to the emergency room, and the wound was about 10 centimetres long.”

“One of the worst accidents that I saw, a co-worker fell backwards because the floor is always covered in mineral oil, so he slipped and one of the protective railings on the machine that the oil was leaking from wasn’t there, so he fell, lacerated his hand, cutting his tendons and lost the ability to use his hand. Afterwards, this person went to make a demand to the employer, but the employer pointed the finger at him, and then he started to have problems with immigration. I think he was deported.”

Besides the physical dangers, the conditions of work were extremely gruelling.  R had to work night shifts, and found changing his sleep rhythm difficult.  “It starts to produce a lot of stress in your body, and besides that, physically, you have to be constantly alert and focused on what you’re doing. For example they set you to work in places where normally the machine should be able to function on it’s own, but nobody had calibrated it, because they didn’t bother to contract a technician to do it. It’s controlled with a kind of laser beam in order to keep the size of the loaves of bread standard. But we had to do it manually, so you’re watching these laser beams constantly for an eight our shift… some people ended up dizzy or vomiting. So really, you come out of that totally physically drained.”

But even more draining than the physical stress was the constant psychological pressure that supervisors put on workers.  R described this pressure: “They were constantly threatening to fire us…The state of being constantly threatened with dismissal sets off a kind of super-stress, and that can end up also creating psychological problems. I lived through that, and, well, it’s pretty tough. It leaves a mark on you.”

“And the problems then can get transferred through a person to their family, to their wife, their children, neuroses… and a person feels a kind of incompetence towards all kinds of things, their job… being in that kind of situation constantly blocks the kind of consciousness that you need to get out of the vicious cycle.  And having a low wage puts you in a situation where, say, you can’t handle having a whole week without work. And as a result, you can’t leave your job. On a psychological level, that’s really hard to deal with.”

As R explained, employers use threats of dismissal to discourage workers from complaining about their working conditions: “Well, even when you invest yourself in doing the job well, doing it right, that doesn’t get noticed and basically they don’t care about you. But say you arrive five minutes late, then they notice, and that’s a horribly serious mistake for one to make. And all of a sudden it’s like you’re on a kind of blacklist. And so it starts to get complicated, because you can’t even make the tiniest of mistakes, and that to is a pretty serious form of pressure. And just as much, it’s a way to keep a worker submissive. I think that’s one of the basics for the use of psychological pressure as a means of controlling workers.”

R elaborated on the fact that temporary workers form a sort of parallel work force in the same place of employment.  “In a lot of cases there isn’t even a contract. Obviously we don’t have all of the rights that workers have, we’re basically pawns that they plug in to the assembly line until they’re no good anymore, and then they bring someone else in.”

Even though temp agency workers often do the same job as permanent workers, they are almost always paid less.  “I was making nine dollars, in contexts where, in the written contracts that I saw with my own eyes, it was stipulated that a person would be making seventeen dollars an hour, for example, in the packing area. In a context where normally they would have two people working there full time, they have one person, making nine dollars an hour…The difference in pay between what we make and somebody who is hired directly by the company, well, that’s profits for the temp agency.”

Some temporary agencies pay workers irregularly, and frequently, temporary employment agencies ‘disappear’ without paying all of their workers’ wages. As R put it, “Once the term of work is over, sometimes it’s easier for the agency to simply leave its workers behind without paying them at all, without granting them their vacation pay or any other kind of severance, then to go and open up a new agency, and avoid having to even pay taxes to the government.”

R ultimately decided to act on his rights, with the help of organizations that exist to help workers.  This involved “going and presenting my complaint and presenting the situations at work, explaining what had happened, and the resulting debts that I had, the fact that I hadn’t gotten my vacation pay, my rights, and also bringing forward other people that were in the same situation, and bringing them right to the Labour Standards Board [in Quebec]. I put in my complaint at Labour Standards, and the person who was my agent looked through the system and found that this agency owed more than a million in income tax. And then they started to follow the agency’s tracks. But the agency had already closed and filed for bankruptcy.”

Eventually, R became a member of the Immigrant Workers Center.  He described how this happened: “Well, I contacted the Centre when I was, let’s say I was already at the end of my line… I didn’t have a job anymore, I couldn’t get access to welfare, I had zero income. I had to reach out to organizations that provided assistance. And I met a person who told me about the existence of the Immigrant Workers Center, and told me that they might be able to help. So I got in touch, and little by little they got me oriented, and at every step they accompanied me in filing complaints, they accompanied me with translators, they provided contact with lawyers, through volunteers in the universities, and basically because of that I was able to file my demands the right way.”

R’s message for other workers was: “Well, I hope that many people won’t have to suffer the same kinds of consequences that I suffered for lack of consciousness, lack of knowledge about my rights, also that they realise that this organization exists, that they can get help at any time, even if they’re not dealing with any problems… For people that are going through a problem, the most important thing is to find calm, so that they don’t get immersed in that super-stress, since they do have rights, and those rights can be demanded.  They need to reach out, that they need to file letters, they need to make their demands, and not stand there with their arms crossed because if that’s what we do, this situation is going to continue, this abuse of workers…”

Montreal’s Immigrant Workers’ Center has just launched a new newspaper, “La Voix des Migrant(e)s”, from which this article is sourced.

R’s message for the federal and provincial authorities was this: “There are gaps in the law, through which all kinds of agencies can grow and thrive.  This is a problem that affects the government itself, because these companies aren’t paying taxes, but also because it damages the image of investment, damages the image of the government.  They have to focus their attention on these gaps in the law so that it’s harder for agencies to dodge the law and leave people in situations like this. They should specify exactly who holds the responsibility for paying medical insurance and taking care of workplace safety. Is it the agency, or the company that hires the agency? It needs to be spelled out clearly so that workers can protect their rights.”

“We asked people working minimum wage jobs what they thought the minimum wage should be,” said Deena Ladd over the phone.

Deena Ladd is an organizer with the Workers Action Center in Toronto. In 2013, the Workers Action Center starting organizing to raise the minimum wage in Ontario.

The coalition was able to reach out to groups in over 15 cities throughout the province of Ontario throughout 2014. They met with working people to come up with a set of principles to determine the minimum wage.

“Together, we looked at how the price of living had increased, yet the minimum wage had stayed at $10.25.”

They agreed that the minimum wage should bring workers and their families out of poverty. The minimum wage should be set 10% above the poverty line. The minimum wage should also be updated every year with the cost of living. (Four other provinces and territories have already adopted this policy: Alberta, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Yukon).

Based on their principles, the coalition agreed to fight to raise the minimum wage to $14 per hour.

For their first action, they invited their members to freeze $10.25 in a block of ice and deliver it to their provincial representatives.

Every 14th of the month, the coalition organized new actions throughout the province. They made the actions exciting and accessible for people with various levels of political experience.

“Our actions were covered in the small town newspapers and talked about on the radio,” said Ladd.

“Because our members were people working minimum wage jobs, they were great spokespeople. They spoke about their own hardships. They could tell anyone why the minimum wage needed to be increased.”

Beyond the grassroots, the campaign received a boost from professionals like doctors and nurses who testified about the adverse effects for health of living below the poverty line and the need to raise the minimum wage.

As the campaign gained momentum and press coverage, businesses and the provincial government got scared.  Rather than be divided, the coalition would continue to organize to put pressure on the government.

Businesses also tried to manipulate the public opinion and Ladd stressed the importance of having vocal small business owners on board.

After one year of organizing, the coalition was able to force the government to unfreeze the minimum wage and to agree to index the minimum wage to inflation.

Unfortunately, the Liberal government only raised the minimum wage by ¢75 as the NDP opposition was silent when it was time to ask for more.  The coalition was extremely disappointed by the NDP’s inaction at a crucial moment, and they took to calling the leader of the NDP to criticize them. Perhaps as a result of this pressure, the NDP has now put forward a call to raise the minimum wage to $15 – but only after the Liberals took a majority in Ontario and so only after it became easier to take a hardline from the sidelines.

Deena Ladd says that the Workers Action Center is continuing to organize and fight to raise the minimum wage for people throughout the province.

By: Aiyanas Ormond

On Tuesday, September 16, about 30 people picketed St. George’s, an elite private school in Vancouver.  The picket, organized by Grassroots Women comes after more than 2 weeks of school closures as teachers in B.C. have been on strike.

St. George’s is the most expensive private school in the province with tuition ranging from $15,000 to $20,000 for non-boarded students and upwards of $50,000 a year for boarded students.  The school boasts of its small class sizes, extensive supports and extracurricular programs, the exact things that public school  teachers are saying are under attack with declining funding in B.C. public schools.

Grassroots Women, a working-class and militant women’s organization active in Vancouver since 1995, called for the picket to expose the fact that St. Georges also receives significant public funding, and to make the connection between the increasing number of students enrolled in publicly funded private schools and the economic starving of public schools, especially in working class neighbourhoods and communities.

“We’re picketing this school because, even though the tuition here is more than the annual income of tens of thousands of B.C. families, this school is subsidized from the public purse,” said Grassroots Women member Martha Roberts.  “They receive 35% of the funding a public school would receive, per student enrolled – millions of dollars annually.  And yet the sole purpose of this school, which is evident in reading any of their materials, is to replicate the economic power and class privilege of the families who can afford to send their kids here.”

It also happens to be the school where B.C. Premier Christy Clark sends her son.  Her support for education privatization goes beyond her own personal preference though, British Columbia subsidizes private schools in the province to the tune of $300 million annually and has the highest number of children enrolled in private schools per capita of any province.  B.C. also has the highest child poverty rate in Canada.

On the morning of the picket, the Province and teacher’s union announced a tentative agreement in contract negotiations that have been ongoing since public school teachers were left without a contract before the end of the school year of June 2013. “The union mounted escalating stages of labour action starting last April in an attempt to get movement from the employer at the bargaining table. After three weeks of rotating strikes, teachers launched a full-scale walkout about two weeks before the end of the last school year,” according to the Canadian Press. Thus, being on strike since the beginning of the current school year.

But the picket organizers were very clear that the issues of school privatization will not be resolved by a new contract for teachers.

“The public funding for private education is going to continue after this strike,” said Grassroots Women member Suzanne Baustad.  “What we have is an increasing two-tiered system, one that is based on reproducing the next generation of bosses and bureaucrats on the one side, and workers on the other.  This conflict really isn’t about government and teachers – its a class conflict, and redistributing resources from public to private schools is an attack on working class women and children.”

The action was the target of a significant online backlash, both from St. George’s parents, as well as from public school teachers and supporters, who were worried that militant action would “damage the teachers bargaining position.” An interesting reminder of how taboo it remains to engage in class conflict outside of the mediation of the State or the carefully scripted and managed collective bargaining process.

The picket that was organized by Grassroots Women in front of St. George’s Private School to protest education privatization. PHOTO: AIYANAS ORMAND

Leanne Wilkins, a UFCW member for over 20 years and a paid organizer for the last 6 years, was recently fired by her local’s executive for, she believes, trying to unionize her fellow staffers, among other political reasons.

“The labour movement is broken.” Strong words from long-time union organiser Leanne Wilkins. Wilkins has been part of local 1000A, a local of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) for over 20 years. Wilkins was fired from her paid position in December 2013 for voicing her displeasure and exposing the hypocrisy of leaders of her local.

Wilkins became a union member in 1993 when she started working at a grocery store part time. In 2008 she was hired by the union. She left her job at the grocery store, and took on the role of a union organizer.  As an organizer she helped non-unionized workers, mainly retail workers, form unions.

In mid-November of 2013, she, along with two other colleagues were told they would not receive the wages they were previously promised. When Wilkins was hired as a staff member of the union, she was put on a pay progression scale. Each year, staff members move up a level of pay and after six years a staff member reaches the final level. Wilkins, herself, was six weeks away from moving up to the final level, when she and two other staff members were told they would not receive this increase. After trying to talk to her employers and getting nowhere, Wilkins decide to take action.

At the Ontario Federation of Labour convention in November 2013, Wilkins took to her Facebook wall, stating: “My intention was that if I could get out what they are doing to us and potentially why they are doing this to us, if you put pressure on the outside and on the inside, to our president to change her mind“.   Her local president contacted her right away, and asked her to take the Facebook post down. Leanne refused and was fired December 19 2013.

But her Facebook comments amounted to more than griping about a pay raise unfulfilled.

Anti-union sentiments in the union

Leanne felt that her and her colleagues were being unjustly and specifically targeted for prior actions. In 2011 some staff at her local tried to unionize its staff members. At UFCW Local 1000A, staff members are not themselves unionized, despite the staff of other locals under the umbrella of UFCW being unionized. Leanne was part of the group of people within the local who wanted to unionize.

“The staff were basically divided right down the middle,” Leanne told BASICS; and in the end, they were not able to unionize.

The president of her local was part of the group of people who were against the local unionizing. “She made some quite controversial statements, basically chastising those of us who were supportive of unionizing.” This experience left Leanne feeling vulnerable, as she was on the side in favour of unionizing. “Everyone that was really open and supportive now had big giant targets on their back” she explained to BASICS.

The job of a local is not only to work for its members, but also to go out and try and unionize other work places. They encourage workers to unionize by educating them about all the benefits of a union. One of the reasons it can be difficult to organize, is the fear and intimidation that workers receive from management and owners. But these same tactics are being used within a union itself.  One questions how they can encourage others to unionize, when they themselves are subjecting their own employees to fear and intimidation.

Targeted for challenging the leadership?

Just a few months after the failed attempt to unionize, there was an internal election to determine the president and executive for local 1000A. In the 70 year history of the local the reigning executive and presidents had always been acclaimed. For the first time, a group of members ran against the current executive. “Needless to say our president did not take that too well.”

In the spring when the election was called, the president gave the staff a letter asking for donations for her campaign. Leanne remained neutral in her support for the executive, and Wilkins claims, she was the only staff member who refused to donate to the current president’s campaign. “I didn’t care at that point. Go ahead try and fire me right? I’ll just bring everything out and say I was fired for political reasons because I didn’t donate. And that contradicts everything that we stand for. Well what we are supposed to stand for in the labour movement – you know, democracy, free speech, all those kinds of things.” In the end, the incumbent president and top executive retained their positions.

Leanne Wilkins is known, among many other things, for her behind-the-scenes contributions to Toronto’s annual May Day rally. A participant in the May 1st Movement, Leanne Wilkins has driven the May Day truck since the founding of the May 1st Movement in Toronto.

Broken Promises

The staff members who were told they would not receive the wages they were promised, were all strong supporters of the group of staff who wanted to unionize the local.

“I feel like we were being [reprimanded] for wanting to unionize at the local, which obviously violates our rights. It completely contradicts the spirit of the labour movement and what it’s suppose to encompass” Wilkins went on to say that “The culture of fear and intimidation in our local that our staff is subjected to, is so deep.“

Wilkins has decided to take legal action and will be suing for wrongful dismissal. She has had to retain a lawyer out of her own pocket. The local on the other hand, has hired a lawyer, who ironically enough is being paid in part through the union dues that Wilkins has paid out for the past 20 years. Essentially her own union dues are being used against her.

BASICS contacted local 1000A to obtain their side of the story. They did not return our calls.

Whither the labour movement?

Wilkins explains that she publicized what was going on in her own local for a specific reason. “It would shine a light on the hypocrisy and contradiction within the labour movement, not only in our local union but the broader labour movement as well. This issue is not exclusive to my local.”

It’s no secret that the labour movement is under attack. General anti-union sentiments are being widely propagated by the media, think tanks and all levels of government. Potential legislation like ‘Right to Work Ontario’ – once promised by Tim Hudak, who back-peddled on it early this year to soften his deeply anti-working class image – would make paying union dues voluntary, are designed to break unions. It goes without saying that the foes and challenges the labour movement face are enormous.

But the labour movement is also being undermined and attacked by those who are supposed to nurture and encourage it. A revitalized labour movement would have to first deal with the internal opportunism and bureaucratism of its leadership and leadership structures if it will be able to tap the energy and power of its members to fight the ongoing and oncoming attacks.