Newly unionized language instructors at University of Toronto make historic job security gains
University
The Ontario University Workers Coordinating Committee represents more than 30,000 CUPE members working in the university sector. OUWCC coordinates bargaining and province-wide political action on issues facing university workers.
The goal of the OUWCC is to unify university workers in Ontario and leverage our collective power to strengthen public post-secondary education and improve workers’ lives.
There are 39 CUPE locals on 17 university campuses across Ontario. Our membership includes both support and academic workers, such as: parking, skilled trades, clerical and administrative positions, caretaking, food services, grounds keeping, research, technical and library workers, sessional instructors, teaching assistants, post-doctoral students and workers in student unions, student-run services and student-run businesses. Most work directly for a university, although some of our members work for contractors on campuses.
COVID-19
- Letter to OUWCC Locals re: September Student Safety (6 Aug. 2021)
- Memorandum: Risk Reassessment of COVID-19 Aerosolized Particles (3 Aug. 2021)
- Click here to download “Pathway to a Safe September: A Script for University Sector Joint Health and Safety (JHSC) Committees”
- Click here to download a template letter for JHSCs re: Risk Reassessment of COVID-19 Aerosolized Particles (28 Jul. 2021)
- Click here to download the Draft Risk Reassessment Checklist: COVID-19 Aerosolized Particles
- Tell Doug Ford to save Laurentian University
- Click here to access COVID-19 resources for the Black community.
- Click here for COVID-19 information & updates.
- Health & Safety Checklist for CUPE University Workers
- Click here to download the COVID-19 Stop the Spread Poster
- Preventing exposure to COVID-19 Post-Secondary Education Sector
- Click here to read the Letter to the Minister of Labour & the Minister of Colleges & Universities regarding safe & inclusive return-to-work planning on campuses.
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What We Do
CUPE Ontario Convention 2022
Dear Friends and Comrades,
As many of you will recall, at our 2018 CUPE Ontario Convention, delegates passed a comprehensive anti-racism action plan, better known as the Anti-Racism Organizational Action Plan (AROAP). This important plan seeks to address the systemic underrepresentation and exclusion of Black, racialized, and Indigenous members in our union. This work is more important and more critical than ever.
Over the past year, the University sector and our coordinating committee has worked to move us forward and ensure we are in a place to begin this important work. Friends, it is time for our sector to begin the important task of breaking down barriers and eradicating racism from every single aspect of our sector’s structures, practices, and policies. This work is important. This work is not work that your sector committee can do alone. We need you to join us!
We are inviting applications from individuals interested in joining our AROAP working group. This group will work over the coming months to fully review our sector, to suggest ways forward, and to prioritize the work ahead to be done. The sector’s AROAP Working Group will consist of the sector Chair, Equity Representative, as well as 5 rank-and-file members. Please note that the sector will prioritize applications from BIPOC members. Members appointed to the Working Group will have wages, per diem, accommodations, and travel paid for by the Union where these expenses are incurred.
The deadline to apply is Friday, February 11, 2022.
WTF? Where’s the Funding?
It’s time to hold University administrations in Ontario to account! It’s time to ask: WHERE’S THE FUNDING?
Campaigns and Events
- WTF Campaign
- Member Action
- No Hate on Campus
- Mental Health Matters
- End Precarious Work
- Dine-in: Bring Food Services Back In-House!
- Tell U of S: Paws off our Pension
- CUPE 3902: Precarious Situation
- Stop Workplace Sexual Violence
It’s time to hold University administrations in Ontario to account! It’s time to ask:
WHERE’S THE FUNDING?
Across Ontario, CUPE members support positive learning environments. We work as educators, we work to maintain buildings and systems on campus, and we work to create safe and healthy universities.
CUPE opposes all forms of discrimination and oppression. This campaign fights the rising tide of hate and intolerance on our campuses by mobilizing against hateful acts, promoting inclusivity and diversity, and educating students and workers about how to be better allies.
Health and safety at work includes mental health. This campaign seeks to de-stigmatize mental health in our union, raise awareness about the supports our members and families desperately need and make gains at the bargaining table.
This is a campaign to defend good jobs and high-quality education. As many as half of the university and college workforce are employed in precarious conditions in which workers experience temporary contracts, unpredictable hours and low wages. Precarious work is not inevitable. It is a choice made by employers and encouraged by government underfunding. We will collect and analyze data on our membership in order to craft bold solutions for bargaining improvements, and we will organize non-union workers on campus.
Students and workers need quality, affordable and healthy food options on campus. Food service workers deserve job security, high health and safety standards, and decent wages and benefits. This campaign presents the case to end contracting out of food services on campus and bring it back in-house.
For decades, CUPE 1975 and the University of Saskatchewan have negotiated changes to the pension plan at the bargaining table.
But now the University wants to leave workers out of the conversation about their retirement security.
The U of S is threatening to make unilateral cuts to the pension plan outside of the collective bargaining table – even though the Local is currently in bargaining. The Employer has stated that it plans to close the benefit pension plan and unnecessarily impose an inferior Defined Contribution (DC) pension plan in its place.
Local 1975 is currently in collective bargaining, hoping to resolve this issue and preserve both their defined benefit pension plan and their right to determine any pension plan changes at the bargaining table. Talks, however, have reached an impasse and a provincial conciliator has been appointed. The Local has a strong strike mandate from its members.
Like all workers, Local 1975 members deserve a decent and secure retirement after a career of work. Like all workers, Local 1975 members deserve to be able to bargain the terms and conditions of their employment, instead of having them imposed unilaterally by an Employer.
Send a message to the University of Saskatchewan and tell them to take their paws off our pension.
Precarious Situation is a campaign coming out of the work of a team of dedicated Unit 3 members called The Precarity Working Group. Upon the conclusion of Unit 3 bargaining in 2017, the bargaining team was unable to make large headway on developing a clear path towards permanent work for employees working on precarious contracts. The University of Toronto was not even interested in forming a working group, so Unit 3 members decided that they would develop their own working group dedicated to research, mobilization, and member education around the precarious situation of contract academic workers on campus.
Check out the website at http://precarity.cupe3902.org/
In order to better understand what is happening across the country and whether there are additional tools and resources that CUPE National can offer the post-secondary sector that will help CUPE members to navigate the process of dealing with incidents of sexual violence and harassment, we are asking CUPE post-secondary members to fill out this short, informal survey.
Campus Representatives
- Brock University
- Carleton University
- Guelph University
- Lakehead University
- McMaster University
- University of Ottawa
- Queens University
- Ryerson University
- Trent University
- University of Toronto
- Waterloo University
- Western University
- Wilfred Laurier University
- University of Windsor
- York University
- Thornloe University
- Laurentian University
Brad Worden (Local 1295)
Local 1295
Local 4207
Local 2220
Jerrett Clark (Local 2424)
Local 910
Local 2424
Local 3778
Local 4600
Local 3011
Laura Maclure (Local 1334)
Local 1334
Local 3913
Local 1281
Vacant
Local 3905
Richard Mah / Liam Midzain-Gobin (local 3906)
Local 3906
Local 1281
Vacant
Local 2626
Local 1281
Rosie Sardinha (Local 229)
Local 1302
Local 229
Local 254
Rob Bajko / Kelly Train (Local 3904)
Local 233
Local 3904
Local 1281
David Hollands (Local 3908)
Local 3908
Local 3205
Local 1281
David Vieira (Local 3261)
Local 1230
Local 1281
Local 3261
Local 3902
Local 3907
Doug Turnbull (Local 793)
Local 793
Local 1281
Cheryl Senay (Local 2692)
Local 2361
Local 2692
Vacant
Local 926
Daria Millenkovic (Local 1393)
Local 1001
Local 1393
Local 4580
Local 1281
Colleen Ferreira
Local 1356
Local 3903
Local 1281
Vacant
Local 895-2
Vacant
Local 5011
Send us a message!
Send a message to the Ontario University Workers Coordinating Committee – just fill in the form below and we will get back to you.
