As detailed in recent YUFA-M messages to members, YUFA is awaiting conciliation meetings on October 3 and 7 to continue our negotiations for a renewal Collective Agreement with our eight accomplished staff members who are represented by CUPE 1281, YUFA sub-unit. Their Collective Agreement expired on May 31, 2025, and they have applied for conciliation.
We hope to wind up this round of bargaining amicably, with a settlement that builds on the generous provisions of our excellent staff’s Collective Agreement and is mutually satisfying to both parties. The six YUFA officers who are serving on the Bargaining Team represent the most diverse group who have ever bargained for YUFA. We are also supported by legal counsel, hired to support our main goal at the table this year: to negotiate small changes to the 1281 Collective Agreement which would facilitate our hiring an in-house Counsel and Executive Director for YUFA.
An in-house lawyer, by handling many legal responsibilities and providing grievance advice, will help to reduce our legal fees given the aggressive labour relations by our employer, York University.
An Executive Director (ED) will bring us in line with practices at most sister unions of our size. At unions such as the University of Toronto Faculty Association, the Queens University Faculty Association, the Wilfred Laurier Faculty Association, the Carleton University Faculty Association, CAUT, OCUFA, and CUPE 3902 at U of T as well as various other student and faculty unions across Canada, an ED provides continuity and institutional memory. This is particularly important given elected officers’ limited terms -- in the case of YUFA, 2 years. An ED supports and helps organize union work priorities, elected officers’ portfolios, and communications in the workplace. They assist with and help guide management and member support, along with workflow and work allocation across staff over vacations and leaves. They have proposed expanding staff leave provisions in this round of negotiations.
Elected Officers’ work will be significantly more effective, and the positions more doable for our elected colleagues, with an ED. The need for an ED has been raised repeatedly over past bargaining cycles. CUPE 1281 has thus far refused to discuss this with us at the bargaining table.
Recent communications by CUPE 1281 disseminated in print and on social media unfortunately contain a number of confusing, fallacious, and misleading statements on which some members have requested clarification.
1) Be assured that no “union-busting” is happening. We bargain in good faith. Indeed, we have already modified or withdrawn a number of our initial proposals over the course of discussing issues with CUPE 1281 at the table, as is normal practice.
2) Nor is anything on the table that would interfere with the political rights of CUPE 1281 members to participate in labour activity. The claim that we could somehow “compel” staff members to cross picket lines is spurious. We wouldn’t. We couldn’t. We won’t. And we can’t.
3) We remain committed to enhancing workplace safety. The Executive recently approved a Workplace Harassment policy which applies to all in the YUFA workplace. The proposals that CUPE 1281 has tabled regarding workplace harassment, by contrast, do little to promote or enhance workplace safety; rather, they are primarily disciplinary and punitive in nature. CUPE 1281 would have YUFA sanction our own members. We at YUFA are committed to Decolonization, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion and we are devoted to promoting the interests of our members and defending worker rights, not attacking them.
4) Electronic monitoring of staff is not happening now and will not.
5) We are certainly not proposing that staff be excluded from YUFA meetings! We are not gutting the CUPE 1281 Collective Agreement. We are not increasing discipline, limiting the work of stewards, or attacking equity or health & safety provisions.
The crux of our difference with CUPE 1281 relates to hiring an ED and In-house Counsel to make YUFA stronger.
So far, CUPE 1281 has been reluctant to modify their extensive proposals and has refused to respond thoughtfully to our invitation to discuss an ED position. Rather than bargaining at the table, they prefer to mount a public campaign that maligns our bargaining team and grotesquely misrepresents our actual positions and proposals.
We prefer honest debate to defamation. We very much hope that the parties can return to a substantive, engaged, and productive discussion of the real issues at stake.
We thank those members who have shared concerns based on the outlandish claims being made by CUPE 1281. The YUFA officers at the bargaining table, elected by the membership, are representing and advancing YUFA’s interests, based on our experience, credentials, and knowledge of the issues being bargained. We are working towards a mutually-agreeable settlement that builds a stronger YUFA for the future.