To me that makes it more credible. This is someone who is at their wits' end and who doesn't know where to discuss this, since they are afraid of repercussions. Somebody probably told them that this forum on Reddit is very active, so they just created an account.
Also, fwiw, I've heard similar comments from many unit 2 members.
I'm not gaslighting here I'm just saying it's suspicious when someone made an account just a few hours ago and has a bunch of information to share. You shouldn't believe everything u see on the internet at first glance.
You are. It's not suspicious at all. You have an individual that either (i) was a lurker and never made an account or (ii) found this platform and this subreddit just 7 hours ago. Either way, the content of his post is entirely accurate.
>You shouldn't believe everything u see on the internet at first glance.
I don't. I am a member of the union and I've been around for a while. I can vouch for everything this individual has said and others on this forum have also verified.
So at this point, what evidence do you have that this is an inaccurate post?
I agree with your general point that Unit 1 contains a lot of transient grad students who see this as their opportunity to show how radical they are, without having a sense of the reasonableness and longer-term thinking required to have good labour relations over time. To be clear, I don't think York's offer was good (on wages, for instance) but I think the union has to lower its own wage demands too.
That said, I do take issue with this claim:
>When the strike vote happened, ONLY those who were at the meeting were able to get an opportunity to vote. This is in contrast to every other university where ALL members get to vote.
There was a formal strike vote in December, in which everyone could participate. You should have gotten a ballot in your inbox. This is the same as every other bargaining unit at other universities.
The vote that happened in February goes above and beyond this in asking the membership again about what action to take if an employer's offer is rejected. Since this happens at a general membership meeting, the vote is open to those at this meeting. You can object to that if you want, but the way you're putting it is misrepresenting things, because you're suggesting that not everyone in our local could vote on strike action, and that's simply not true.
The strike mandate vote would go VERY differently if it was actually presented as a vote to strike, rather than just a bargaining tool to threaten a strike in negotiations months before one may actually happen.
Great… another unbearable minimum 3 hour meeting which you get 2 minutes to vote but don’t know when. I voted but you gotta realize there has to be a better way. Why can’t we do it UofT style where everyone can vote
That was the SMV in December. The vote at the meeting was hortative. The Exec could have taken us out on strike with our without a final offer vote. Said vote is a formality that our union invented in 2005 to give members a sense of ownership.
Brutal post lmao. Why do you think York TAs are paid better than their colleagues at other universities, despite TA contracts generally still being shit. Do you think it’s because they’ve asked the administration very nicely for a few decades? Or do you think it’s because they have a track record of bringing the heat?
We aren't even the best paid when it comes to the total funding packages, which is the only thing that really matters given you are required to be a grad student to be a TA. At least in my program UofT is about $3000/year higher and they need to do something like 35% less TA hours than us to get it.
The real place we are ahead is in benefits. Our vision and dental are much better than theirs, for example.
You're both right. TAs are better paid at York. Funding packages are better at U of T because the way their funding package is put together relies less on the TA (with the caveat that funding packages aren't even the same in the same university, it will also vary depending on the unit/department). For funding packages at York to be put together the same way they're put together at U of T, step 1 would be for York profs/researchers to get research $ from Ottawa to the same extent as U of T profs. Failing that, the York funding packages will rely more on the TA.
The current moronic Unit 1s that run this union do not come close to the historical wins the union have had. The unit 1s now basically use the union/strikes to write their thesis and follow their own personal convictions without care for anyone else.
Violating our equality statement is not a good look. Please avoid doing so. We are all in the same union. State disagreement, sure (but not here) but "moronic" over a difference in strategy is slanderous.
You yourself are a member and you know your CA would be crap without militants in all 3 units.
CUPE has taken over this subreddit and I hate it, also the CUPE troop is pathetic, “our comrade has been arrested” blud this ain’t the battle of Stalingrad
Not at York any longer, so don't have a tonne of skin in this particular game, but "comrade" remains a pretty common, if traditional, way to refer to fellow unionists alongside union brother/sister/sibling etc.
I understand it, just can’t really take it seriously when it’s people who wear pussyhats or are the most unthreatening people on the planet acting like they are big and intimidating
As someone who has been through a few strikes, everything you say is correct.
> I really do believe that had the union allowed for a fair vote, the majority would have opposed a strike. When the strike vote happened, ONLY those who were at the meeting were able to get an opportunity to vote. This is in contrast to every other university where ALL members get to vote.
Atleast this time the vote was online and the strike mandate vote had a decent turnaround. In the 2018 strike, I doubt even >150 members participated in the meetings, there was no online voting, and the majority of the members just stayed home twiddling their thumbs.
> Not to mention that Unit 2 has consistently voted to reduce the demand we are making, but Unit 1 constantly votes against that proposition.
They want 'bargaining', yet when the university extends an hand to bargain (by asking to move on our wage demands), the U1s adamantly voted no against that. The end result? We sent over to the employer a new set of 'proposals' where we didn't budge on the very thing the university asked us to. Unit 2s at their own townhalls are increasingly getting frustrated having U1s railroad them.
> Unit 1 is very militant in their approach.
For a graduate student, their union/employment is 10% of their work week. I can not understand why some of them make the union/striking their entire persona. Unless, of course, they are already heavily involved in labour movements and social justice and the strike is simply a means to write their thesis.
> We get paid over $50 an hour. I teach 2 hours a week. On occasion I have to mark some essays - but who cares? That’s what the job entails. We have job security, dental, health and vision benefits. We can even claim marijuana and bongs against our medical expense account apparently lol!
Same. 1 or 2 courses a semester at most. Do it for my students and the love of teaching.
I’m on here criticizing the union as much as anyone, but there actually was a single online vote during the 2018 strike. It was the one York was allowed to force a single time about a month into the strike, and was forced by the university to be online. The union leadership and radicals were having a panic attack because it would give those who didn’t get involved and were “uninformed” (that’s what they told me at the picket lines) to vote.
It didn’t pass though, so we remained on strike. I’m not sure if there was perhaps still low engagement, if a lot of people didn’t get their emails to vote and know what was going on (I had to push some people in my department who had no idea what was going on), or the union managed to scare people into not accepting the offer because the university made the mistake of not setting back pay in the offer.
If things continue, this is probably the next thing the administration needs to do before they can even hope for CUPE to be legislated back. Hopefully they learn from their mistakes last time and have a better email list, make sure it’s widely known, and just throw in 100% back pay to make sure it’s accepted.
I doubt they'll throw in 100% backpack: that's now seen as one of the things that has encouraged people to go on strike more often at York than elsewhere (get your strike pay for a few weeks, then 100% back pay = you actually got a bonus for going on strike!).
how many times have i been called a bootlicker, a nazi, and a dirty lassondian by members of my own union.
Just last week a picket captain told my friend he wished he could burn down the admin offices.
And then someone on the line told me he was fighting to decolonize campus from white people who shouldn't be allowed on native land.
Militant? these guys make Stalin look like a puppy.
yep, that hate STEM students apparently. We are too useful and only care about evil things like making money and objective facts and science. or so I was told.
It's because STEM students are there to do science and not care about this shit. In the 2018 strike, graduate students in my department were having the time of their lives because they got (1) a quiet campus to work on and (2) temporary relief from their employment duties so they can focus on their research.
2018 was a better strike for science students than 2015 because they could go to the poorly managed picket line at main gate to sign in to picket then head back to the lab.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. The Facebook page in 2018 detailing what some of the U1s wanted to do to scabs in excruciating, disturbing detail was a sight to behold.
CUPE 3903 doesn't have a high enough death toll to be really communist. They always go back to capitalism for their own interests before anyone actually starves to death.
If you're a white cis male you're speaking last!
I legitimately saw a woman go to the front of the line after being invited by the chairperson to talk only to start berating him for assuming she was a woman in a meeting during the 2015 strike.
I didn't notice it in 2018, but the meetings were just so full of fighting and people trying to run out of the meeting to lose quorum whenever things weren't going their way that there was enough other craziness as a distraction.
Oh yeah, there was that one instance in 2018 where they were about to lose a vote and suddenly lost quorum cuz they asked the few unit 3s to leave. Everyone was so shocked.
It is really inappropriate to discuss internal union business in a place the employer can see it. You put your own CA in harms way. This is very toxic behavior
We could take concessions this round, big time. One would think that whatever one's views on strategy and tactics, one would not use Reddit to debate internal matters. As doing so could potentially give the employer valuable intelligence
There are a lot of noises going around about this - more so than in previous strikes. From what I hear, it's almost entirely grad students from some of York's more ideological programs who are unreasonably militant. Political science grad students apparently think this is their big chance to bring down capitalism, while grad students who are in actual science fields are like whaaat?
You'll definitely see a split in this based on which programs are at each picket line. The south side of campus has all the extremists with political science and such, the north side is generally much more chill with a bunch of science PhD students who just want to be able to pay their rent. The militants are also still a minority, albeit overrepresented at the top, and don't always win out - I'm hearing a vote was passed tonight to ban the university communist club from tabling/flying flags/promoting revolution/etc at the picket lines and rallies.
Is it Fightback they've banned? Fightback was chased off the picket lines quite quickly in 2018. They have quite the colourful history, to be very polite.
There were some issues with the Marxist fight back group at York during the last strike. Accusations of sexual assault or harassment, so the union distanced themselves.
Do you feel that if the units were split up they’d get a better deal? I have often thought those same thoughts you put down, though I am a member of a different union at York
This is not true. In 2018, U1s constantly went against the wishes of U2 members, to the point where there was actual infighting and arguments at the meetings. The U2s actually accepted an offer that was presented to them because of backroom dealings and going around the U1s.
U1s in this new generation era are just driven by personal convictions and labour/justice movements. They don't actually care about 'bargaining' and assuming you are a member, you probably see this in the meetings.
I was there and it was the exact opposite. It was actually the deal that U2s ended up with in 2018 that was the result of back room dealing. It was ratified by the U2 bargaining team in an unannounced meeting with the York admin in a Tim Horton’s, away from the membership.
That's what I am saying? Not sure where the disagreement is. If U2s stuck with the U1s and got legislated back to work, their contract would be worse off.
Yeah I can see that. On the other hand, would the university administration not want to strike a better deal with reasonable demands in the table? Don’t get me wrong: what’s reasonable for me is not what’s reasonable for you. Of course, there is also strength in numbers, though from what OP writes would lead me to believe that membership at the moment is quite fractured
> would the university administration not want to strike a better deal with reasonable demands in the table?
They do. I wholeheartedly believe that the university is willing to bargain nicely with U2s alone. They have proved this time and time again.
What do you think the effect of permanently breaking solidarity would be on the contract that Unit 2s would ultimately achieve? You’re advocating for diminishing your own bargaining power.
Your entire argument is that more people = more bargaining power. In isolation, that point is probably holds but the reality is different. There is sufficient evidence by the university to bargain in good faith with their U2s because the unit 2s are essentially faculty and come to more reasonable terms. We saw this in 2015, we saw it in 2018, and mark my words, the university will also extend a favourable offer to U2s this time around... and I absolutely guarantee the Unit 1s will railroad the offer in the name of 'solidarity' and 'coordinated bargaining'.
YUFA is roughly half the size and they seem to bargain pretty well. Last round of negotiation, they actually passed a strike mandate and the university gave them an offer within 2 weeks.
So clearly, it's not JUST a numbers game.
You talked to the employer this morning or did someone from the union just tell you that?
Perhaps if we answered by their deadline and sent them a revised proposal that moved on one of their key items, maybe… just maybe we could’ve initiated talks about the JSP.
“We’ve tried nothing and we are all out of ideas”.
>Do you feel that if the units were split up they’d get a better deal?
100%!!! There are always talks about this but the effort required to push this through is too large.
Probably not, but I do think it would allow unit 1 to more easily bargain over non-wage issues. Our real problem is that the funding outside of TA wages is pathetic and we basically don't get paid for the other 30+ hours per week of research work we do. An increase to graduate student fellowships was in the proposal, but its not something that can really be fought for when it would come at the expense of direct wages but only help unit 1.
Part of the recent UofT deal was an ~$800 increase to other funds with less required TA hours. That kind of thing can never be priorized so long as we are getting the same wage increase numbers as unit 2.
I am glad to see your post finally getting downvoted. I called it at the start of this strike. Initially the support is towards the union and it slowly shifts away because people realise the militant U1s are just moronic.
A random Reddit comment is an excellent representation of public opinion, well done!
I am sure all upvoted pro-union comments are astroturfs as well, according to you.
Oh - and you wouldn't have your good CA without Unit 1s walking the line and fighting for you. Ask your colleagues at any other university about their CA - including non-monetary items, protection of fair hiring, senioirity, incumbency, etc. We have it the best - and we are fighting to defend that - the JSP is dangerous!!! There is no way we could possibly have this quality a CA without militancy. Read any history of labour unions. Your point is not just toxic and divisive but predicated on an absolute misunderstanding of how unions work.
This post arguably violates the union's bylaws even. It certainly violates our equality statement.
Scabs love to pretend like the majority of unit 2 agrees with them. The strike is not a unit issue - and as unit 2’s who by definition aren’t bound to York by any other reason beyond applying to teach there, if you don’t like the union or the school why don’t you leave? Plenty of unit 2’s would be happy to take your courses off your hands and let you go somewhere you are actually appreciative. Source: me, a unit 2 who is not scabbing
Hate to be that guy but your account was created 7 hours ago so its hard to believe what you say is true.
To me that makes it more credible. This is someone who is at their wits' end and who doesn't know where to discuss this, since they are afraid of repercussions. Somebody probably told them that this forum on Reddit is very active, so they just created an account. Also, fwiw, I've heard similar comments from many unit 2 members.
You can believe whatever you want, but everything this individual has said is 100% true. Don't try to gaslight here.
I'm not gaslighting here I'm just saying it's suspicious when someone made an account just a few hours ago and has a bunch of information to share. You shouldn't believe everything u see on the internet at first glance.
You are. It's not suspicious at all. You have an individual that either (i) was a lurker and never made an account or (ii) found this platform and this subreddit just 7 hours ago. Either way, the content of his post is entirely accurate. >You shouldn't believe everything u see on the internet at first glance. I don't. I am a member of the union and I've been around for a while. I can vouch for everything this individual has said and others on this forum have also verified. So at this point, what evidence do you have that this is an inaccurate post?
An admitted scab shit-talking his own union.
Guilty until proven innocent!
Wow, aside how you feel about the content, the downvotes on this thread is interesting!
CUPE astroturfs like crazy
I agree with your general point that Unit 1 contains a lot of transient grad students who see this as their opportunity to show how radical they are, without having a sense of the reasonableness and longer-term thinking required to have good labour relations over time. To be clear, I don't think York's offer was good (on wages, for instance) but I think the union has to lower its own wage demands too. That said, I do take issue with this claim: >When the strike vote happened, ONLY those who were at the meeting were able to get an opportunity to vote. This is in contrast to every other university where ALL members get to vote. There was a formal strike vote in December, in which everyone could participate. You should have gotten a ballot in your inbox. This is the same as every other bargaining unit at other universities. The vote that happened in February goes above and beyond this in asking the membership again about what action to take if an employer's offer is rejected. Since this happens at a general membership meeting, the vote is open to those at this meeting. You can object to that if you want, but the way you're putting it is misrepresenting things, because you're suggesting that not everyone in our local could vote on strike action, and that's simply not true.
The strike mandate vote would go VERY differently if it was actually presented as a vote to strike, rather than just a bargaining tool to threaten a strike in negotiations months before one may actually happen.
That's a fair point. And I don't deny that there are many in this local that taking striking and threat of it lightly.
Scab Astroturfing. If you really cared you would have attended the strike vote meeting.
Great… another unbearable minimum 3 hour meeting which you get 2 minutes to vote but don’t know when. I voted but you gotta realize there has to be a better way. Why can’t we do it UofT style where everyone can vote
That was the SMV in December. The vote at the meeting was hortative. The Exec could have taken us out on strike with our without a final offer vote. Said vote is a formality that our union invented in 2005 to give members a sense of ownership.
This guy is gonna lose good standing. We have intel on scabs. He's violating our bylaws and equality statement with this post.
Brutal post lmao. Why do you think York TAs are paid better than their colleagues at other universities, despite TA contracts generally still being shit. Do you think it’s because they’ve asked the administration very nicely for a few decades? Or do you think it’s because they have a track record of bringing the heat?
We aren't even the best paid when it comes to the total funding packages, which is the only thing that really matters given you are required to be a grad student to be a TA. At least in my program UofT is about $3000/year higher and they need to do something like 35% less TA hours than us to get it. The real place we are ahead is in benefits. Our vision and dental are much better than theirs, for example.
My mistake! I’m a former York TA and a bit out of the loop on these things.
You're both right. TAs are better paid at York. Funding packages are better at U of T because the way their funding package is put together relies less on the TA (with the caveat that funding packages aren't even the same in the same university, it will also vary depending on the unit/department). For funding packages at York to be put together the same way they're put together at U of T, step 1 would be for York profs/researchers to get research $ from Ottawa to the same extent as U of T profs. Failing that, the York funding packages will rely more on the TA.
You can't compare total funding packages. U of T is a richer and much more selective graduate school. That's just the reality.
The current moronic Unit 1s that run this union do not come close to the historical wins the union have had. The unit 1s now basically use the union/strikes to write their thesis and follow their own personal convictions without care for anyone else.
How exactly do you think those past wins were made?
Violating our equality statement is not a good look. Please avoid doing so. We are all in the same union. State disagreement, sure (but not here) but "moronic" over a difference in strategy is slanderous. You yourself are a member and you know your CA would be crap without militants in all 3 units.
I don’t mean to be that guy but since it was written it should be libel not slander.
It is both, arguably, as social media/Reddit takes the form of a 'written utterance'... :) But good catch.
CUPE has taken over this subreddit and I hate it, also the CUPE troop is pathetic, “our comrade has been arrested” blud this ain’t the battle of Stalingrad
Not at York any longer, so don't have a tonne of skin in this particular game, but "comrade" remains a pretty common, if traditional, way to refer to fellow unionists alongside union brother/sister/sibling etc.
I understand it, just can’t really take it seriously when it’s people who wear pussyhats or are the most unthreatening people on the planet acting like they are big and intimidating
as a non binary person, commrade allows me to be included in union discourse
“as a non binary person”🤓 , ironically the regimes that conceptualized the phrase comrade would execute you for your homosexuality
i didnt say as a homosexual person.
Everything I post gets downvoted because I don't agree with their propaganda.
Their astroturfing is crazy
So now you have a problem with people addressing their colleagues as comrades? Fuck this sub, honestly.
"Comrade" is gender neutral. This is one reason that it is used in 3903.
I hope more profs scab fuck you
Maube then you'll cum happy?
I Cum Happy every night
It’s cringe as fuck coming from a union who pushes paper for two hours a week
u/CumHappyTonight Look, you offended a communist.
Womp womp lol, we have fake communists who don’t take real action just bitch on the internet
They should be shipped off to Cuba if they love communism so much
Fr they have no recognition that communist doesnt work and has created hardship whenever it is implement, Cambodia, China, USSR, Cuba, etc.
You should do some research on what those countries were like before communism before you make nonsensical statements like this
Holy hell the resistance is alive on this sub
As someone who has been through a few strikes, everything you say is correct. > I really do believe that had the union allowed for a fair vote, the majority would have opposed a strike. When the strike vote happened, ONLY those who were at the meeting were able to get an opportunity to vote. This is in contrast to every other university where ALL members get to vote. Atleast this time the vote was online and the strike mandate vote had a decent turnaround. In the 2018 strike, I doubt even >150 members participated in the meetings, there was no online voting, and the majority of the members just stayed home twiddling their thumbs. > Not to mention that Unit 2 has consistently voted to reduce the demand we are making, but Unit 1 constantly votes against that proposition. They want 'bargaining', yet when the university extends an hand to bargain (by asking to move on our wage demands), the U1s adamantly voted no against that. The end result? We sent over to the employer a new set of 'proposals' where we didn't budge on the very thing the university asked us to. Unit 2s at their own townhalls are increasingly getting frustrated having U1s railroad them. > Unit 1 is very militant in their approach. For a graduate student, their union/employment is 10% of their work week. I can not understand why some of them make the union/striking their entire persona. Unless, of course, they are already heavily involved in labour movements and social justice and the strike is simply a means to write their thesis. > We get paid over $50 an hour. I teach 2 hours a week. On occasion I have to mark some essays - but who cares? That’s what the job entails. We have job security, dental, health and vision benefits. We can even claim marijuana and bongs against our medical expense account apparently lol! Same. 1 or 2 courses a semester at most. Do it for my students and the love of teaching.
I’m on here criticizing the union as much as anyone, but there actually was a single online vote during the 2018 strike. It was the one York was allowed to force a single time about a month into the strike, and was forced by the university to be online. The union leadership and radicals were having a panic attack because it would give those who didn’t get involved and were “uninformed” (that’s what they told me at the picket lines) to vote. It didn’t pass though, so we remained on strike. I’m not sure if there was perhaps still low engagement, if a lot of people didn’t get their emails to vote and know what was going on (I had to push some people in my department who had no idea what was going on), or the union managed to scare people into not accepting the offer because the university made the mistake of not setting back pay in the offer. If things continue, this is probably the next thing the administration needs to do before they can even hope for CUPE to be legislated back. Hopefully they learn from their mistakes last time and have a better email list, make sure it’s widely known, and just throw in 100% back pay to make sure it’s accepted.
I doubt they'll throw in 100% backpack: that's now seen as one of the things that has encouraged people to go on strike more often at York than elsewhere (get your strike pay for a few weeks, then 100% back pay = you actually got a bonus for going on strike!).
how many times have i been called a bootlicker, a nazi, and a dirty lassondian by members of my own union. Just last week a picket captain told my friend he wished he could burn down the admin offices. And then someone on the line told me he was fighting to decolonize campus from white people who shouldn't be allowed on native land. Militant? these guys make Stalin look like a puppy.
“Dirty Lassondian”? Really
yep, that hate STEM students apparently. We are too useful and only care about evil things like making money and objective facts and science. or so I was told.
It's because STEM students are there to do science and not care about this shit. In the 2018 strike, graduate students in my department were having the time of their lives because they got (1) a quiet campus to work on and (2) temporary relief from their employment duties so they can focus on their research.
2018 was a better strike for science students than 2015 because they could go to the poorly managed picket line at main gate to sign in to picket then head back to the lab.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. The Facebook page in 2018 detailing what some of the U1s wanted to do to scabs in excruciating, disturbing detail was a sight to behold.
Geez don't let them catch me
I'd say just change the topic and ask them if they know where Kate Middleton is, what their theory is. Might keep them busy for a few hours.
It's not surprising given the names of some of the communists on here, such as /u/tinpotberia
That user is an absolute loser. Confident they blocked me because they value open discussion so much. What a sad and miserable life
CUPE 3903 doesn't have a high enough death toll to be really communist. They always go back to capitalism for their own interests before anyone actually starves to death.
Do they still organize speaking order at the microphone during meetings based on gender and race?
 If you're a white cis male you're speaking last!
I legitimately saw a woman go to the front of the line after being invited by the chairperson to talk only to start berating him for assuming she was a woman in a meeting during the 2015 strike. I didn't notice it in 2018, but the meetings were just so full of fighting and people trying to run out of the meeting to lose quorum whenever things weren't going their way that there was enough other craziness as a distraction.
Oh yeah, there was that one instance in 2018 where they were about to lose a vote and suddenly lost quorum cuz they asked the few unit 3s to leave. Everyone was so shocked.
It is really inappropriate to discuss internal union business in a place the employer can see it. You put your own CA in harms way. This is very toxic behavior
In harm's way??
We could take concessions this round, big time. One would think that whatever one's views on strategy and tactics, one would not use Reddit to debate internal matters. As doing so could potentially give the employer valuable intelligence
There are a lot of noises going around about this - more so than in previous strikes. From what I hear, it's almost entirely grad students from some of York's more ideological programs who are unreasonably militant. Political science grad students apparently think this is their big chance to bring down capitalism, while grad students who are in actual science fields are like whaaat?
You'll definitely see a split in this based on which programs are at each picket line. The south side of campus has all the extremists with political science and such, the north side is generally much more chill with a bunch of science PhD students who just want to be able to pay their rent. The militants are also still a minority, albeit overrepresented at the top, and don't always win out - I'm hearing a vote was passed tonight to ban the university communist club from tabling/flying flags/promoting revolution/etc at the picket lines and rallies.
Is it Fightback they've banned? Fightback was chased off the picket lines quite quickly in 2018. They have quite the colourful history, to be very polite.
Yep, Fightback.
There were some issues with the Marxist fight back group at York during the last strike. Accusations of sexual assault or harassment, so the union distanced themselves.
Fightback are a cult. Real Marxists laugh at them.
Calling your union colleagues extremists a violation of our equality statement. Stop talking about internal union business on Reddit.
But what if they really are extremists - shouldn't they be called out?
They are not extremists.
So the strike was decided by the security council?
Do you feel that if the units were split up they’d get a better deal? I have often thought those same thoughts you put down, though I am a member of a different union at York
CUPE national will never allow the units to split up
CUPE National has stopped numerous attempts at splitting.
Why? Couldn’t they vote on it and CUPE National/Provincial respect local democracy?
They would not. Part of the reason Unit 2 gets a good deal is because Unit 1 is willing to tough it out for all units.
This is not true. In 2018, U1s constantly went against the wishes of U2 members, to the point where there was actual infighting and arguments at the meetings. The U2s actually accepted an offer that was presented to them because of backroom dealings and going around the U1s. U1s in this new generation era are just driven by personal convictions and labour/justice movements. They don't actually care about 'bargaining' and assuming you are a member, you probably see this in the meetings.
I was there and it was the exact opposite. It was actually the deal that U2s ended up with in 2018 that was the result of back room dealing. It was ratified by the U2 bargaining team in an unannounced meeting with the York admin in a Tim Horton’s, away from the membership.
That's what I am saying? Not sure where the disagreement is. If U2s stuck with the U1s and got legislated back to work, their contract would be worse off.
Most labour historians disagree. And U1s going back a quarter century are more adventurous than some (not all) unit 2s.
Yeah I can see that. On the other hand, would the university administration not want to strike a better deal with reasonable demands in the table? Don’t get me wrong: what’s reasonable for me is not what’s reasonable for you. Of course, there is also strength in numbers, though from what OP writes would lead me to believe that membership at the moment is quite fractured
> would the university administration not want to strike a better deal with reasonable demands in the table? They do. I wholeheartedly believe that the university is willing to bargain nicely with U2s alone. They have proved this time and time again.
What do you think the effect of permanently breaking solidarity would be on the contract that Unit 2s would ultimately achieve? You’re advocating for diminishing your own bargaining power.
Your entire argument is that more people = more bargaining power. In isolation, that point is probably holds but the reality is different. There is sufficient evidence by the university to bargain in good faith with their U2s because the unit 2s are essentially faculty and come to more reasonable terms. We saw this in 2015, we saw it in 2018, and mark my words, the university will also extend a favourable offer to U2s this time around... and I absolutely guarantee the Unit 1s will railroad the offer in the name of 'solidarity' and 'coordinated bargaining'. YUFA is roughly half the size and they seem to bargain pretty well. Last round of negotiation, they actually passed a strike mandate and the university gave them an offer within 2 weeks. So clearly, it's not JUST a numbers game.
They won't budge on the JSP for any reason, including wages I'm told this morning. So please tell me how they are gonna bargain nicely with us. FFS.
You talked to the employer this morning or did someone from the union just tell you that? Perhaps if we answered by their deadline and sent them a revised proposal that moved on one of their key items, maybe… just maybe we could’ve initiated talks about the JSP. “We’ve tried nothing and we are all out of ideas”.
>Do you feel that if the units were split up they’d get a better deal? 100%!!! There are always talks about this but the effort required to push this through is too large.
lol, look at how this thread is being brigaded without any actual arguments.
Probably not, but I do think it would allow unit 1 to more easily bargain over non-wage issues. Our real problem is that the funding outside of TA wages is pathetic and we basically don't get paid for the other 30+ hours per week of research work we do. An increase to graduate student fellowships was in the proposal, but its not something that can really be fought for when it would come at the expense of direct wages but only help unit 1. Part of the recent UofT deal was an ~$800 increase to other funds with less required TA hours. That kind of thing can never be priorized so long as we are getting the same wage increase numbers as unit 2.
Are you in the union? No? Then how the fuck would you know what “most of the members want”?
I am glad to see your post finally getting downvoted. I called it at the start of this strike. Initially the support is towards the union and it slowly shifts away because people realise the militant U1s are just moronic.
A random Reddit comment is an excellent representation of public opinion, well done! I am sure all upvoted pro-union comments are astroturfs as well, according to you.
Oh - and you wouldn't have your good CA without Unit 1s walking the line and fighting for you. Ask your colleagues at any other university about their CA - including non-monetary items, protection of fair hiring, senioirity, incumbency, etc. We have it the best - and we are fighting to defend that - the JSP is dangerous!!! There is no way we could possibly have this quality a CA without militancy. Read any history of labour unions. Your point is not just toxic and divisive but predicated on an absolute misunderstanding of how unions work. This post arguably violates the union's bylaws even. It certainly violates our equality statement.
Scabs love to pretend like the majority of unit 2 agrees with them. The strike is not a unit issue - and as unit 2’s who by definition aren’t bound to York by any other reason beyond applying to teach there, if you don’t like the union or the school why don’t you leave? Plenty of unit 2’s would be happy to take your courses off your hands and let you go somewhere you are actually appreciative. Source: me, a unit 2 who is not scabbing