Despite a fair and generous offer of a renewed Collective Agreement from the YUFA  bargaining team, the 8 staff members that YUFA employs, who are represented by CUPE 1281, remain on strike. The YUFA offer includes handsome wage and benefit increases and additional leave time. The Collective Agreement on offer provides staff with job security, full political autonomy, ironclad health and safety protections, and a bountiful retirement package. Our proposed provisions, counter to 1281’s claims, protect staff’s important work so that it will continue to be done by staff members.  YUFA is a great employer!

The Executive thanks the YUFA members who attended our Special General Membership Meeting on October 29 to discuss the staff strike, joining in a diverse, respectful, and productive discussion.   We continue to seek a constructive resolution to this situation.

In an effort to discredit YUFA, CUPE 1281 has appealed to the Ontario Labour Relations Board (OLRB), claiming that our most recent offer constitutes an unfair labour practice. This claim is entirely without merit. It is disappointing that 1281 prefers litigation to bargaining, and we welcome the chance to clear this matter up before the OLRB. With due diligence, we have retained experts in labour and employment law to defend us against this new legal challenge by YUFA staff.

The democratically elected YUFA Executive has determined that, like most other faculty unions of our size, our union requires a General Operations Manager to help manage an office whose functioning has become unwieldy, given the constant crises in our sector and York’s unrelenting approach to restructuring and litigation. In addition, the Executive has concluded that there is a need for an in-house lawyer to reduce our spiraling legal costs. Both moves will help YUFA to better defend the rights of members and more nimbly serve our members in a climate that is increasingly hostile to the work we do as researchers and educators.

CUPE 1281 insists that both new positions be folded into their bargaining unit. Not only would that be contrary to current Ontario law (managers and lawyers who are the employers’ representatives, by definition, belong outside an employees’ union), but it contravenes the very point of such hires and exacerbates the problems they are designed to mitigate. We need a manager and a lawyer who will help advance YUFA’s overall priorities, provide continuity across officers’ mandates, and vigorously represent YUFA members’ interests throughout the hard times we are facing.

CUPE 1281 is claiming that by even proposing these changes, we are being unfair.

However, exchanging proposals across the bargaining table is not engaging in unfair practice. Rather, that is the very definition of Collective Bargaining. In bargaining negotiations, we have approached staff fairly, honestly, openly, generously, and in good faith.

CUPE 1281’s claims and public campaign seem designed not to benefit staff interests but rather to discredit YUFA and hamper efforts by the elected officers of YUFA to assist our members and strengthen our union’s long-term viability.

Last February, as we know, York summarily announced the suspension of new admits to 19 academic programs. When YUFA’s Executive Officers contacted the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) to discuss effective ways to contest York’s unilateral dismantling of these important programs, CUPE 1281 filed a grievance against YUFA, claiming our discussions with CAUT violated the “no contracting out” provision of their Collective Agreement. In this way, CUPE 1281 staff actively tried to curtail YUFA’s actions in defense of colleagues at Glendon, in Jewish Studies, Religious Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies, Indigenous Studies, and other vital programs across our campuses.  YUFA is a dues-paying member of CAUT. We work in solidarity with CAUT to defend our interests in the higher education sector across Canada. Our support for CAUT’s work entitles us to access their expertise. The CUPE 1281 grievance of our conversations with CAUT was unfounded, counterproductive, and vindictive -- an example of why an in-house lawyer and a General Operations Manager are needed.

Staff have even suggested that YUFA withdraw from CAUT to save money.  And they have proposed that any layoff of a staff member may only take place for reasons of financial necessity, if overall staff costs exceed 75% of YUFA’s gross revenue and YUFA members reject an extra increase in dues.  (Note that this percentage is twice the threshold in YUFA’s own Collective Agreement, 39.46%; our actual number is now below 23% and falling). Representing the interests of our membership, the YUFA bargaining team cannot agree to such proposals.

CUPE 1281 has claimed we are engaged in “union-busting.”   We are in full solidarity with workers’ rights to organize.  1281 has accused us of an unfair labour practice in bargaining. We remain at the table and open to dialogue. 1281 accuses us of emulating the aggressive tactics of our own employer. Yet it is 1281 that is hampering efforts by the elected representatives of YUFA members to assist individuals and groups.  CUPE 1281 is striving to undermine our academic freedoms, and deploying a litigious approach designed to force YUFA to squander members’ resources. 1281 accuses us of eroding their political autonomy and sacrificing their health.

By contrast, we advocate for a safe and free workplace for all, including YUFA members whose interests we serve.  We are resolute in seeking better ways to use YUFA’s resources and members’ dues to enhance our overall community and our goals of a stronger union.

It is distressing that, in a time when universities are under attack and our rights as workers, educators, and researchers are besieged on a number of fronts, CUPE 1281 is conducting a campaign to publicly besmirch YUFA, to entangle us in pointless, expensive, and time-consuming litigation despite the fact that YUFA dues pay their generous salaries, to weaken our capacity to defend individual members and our collective rights, to drive a wedge through collegial processes, and to further imperil academic freedom.

Nonetheless, YUFA services for members continue and YUFA’s elected officers will continue to uphold the rights of members, defend colleagues’ interests, and champion our membership.   

In solidarity!