Over the summer, CUPE 3903 achieved yet another arbitration victory!
This case continues a trend of wins at arbitration to protect the rights of graduate student members with disabilities. The fact that the union has had to fight so many of these cases reveals a troubling willingness on the part of York University’s administration to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars attempting to deny disabled members.
This case concerns a member who is both living with a disability and has served on the union’s Executive Committee. Independently of each other, both circumstances entitle them to at least one year of priority pool extension each. The Employer took the position that these two entitlements could not be used by the same person. They asserted this despite a long precedent supporting the union’s position, the fact that the collective agreement does not relate these two provisions at all, and the fact that preventing a disabled member from accessing a provision available to non-disabled members is discriminatory.
The arbitrator agreed that:
There is nothing in the collective agreement that precludes an individual, who is otherwise eligible, from accessing each of these entitlements in successive years. This reading is consistent with the fact that the extension of priority pool entitlement in each of these provisions is provided for entirely separate reasons, namely on Code protected grounds and based on executive service with the Union.
This victory comes on the heels of two others which were also related to the rights of graduate students facing health complications or living with disabilities. The first was an individual case that confirmed a member’s right to complete a contract when they were forced to take a retroactive medical leave from their studies. The second was a related policy grievance confirming that the individual ruling extends to all Unit 1 members who lose their full-time status mid-contract. There are several other cases relating to the employer’s failure to provide members with disabilities access to rights outlined in the collective agreement that are scheduled to be heard.
Arbitration is expensive. The union and employer share the cost of the arbitrator, and each side must pay the costs of legal representation to prepare and present the cases, usually over multiple preparation and hearing days. In this moment, where York is blaming purported financial problems to justify cutting course offerings and staffing, it is remarkable that the budget to prevent disabled graduate students from accessing basic rights, as well as the budget to fight for consistent violations of the collective agreement, is seemingly bottomless.
As the Auditor General’s report noted, York created a whole new position—AVP Labour Relations—in 2019 (among other expansions to senior admin). Almost immediately after this new position was created, unions on campus noted a change in Employer strategy: to deny as many grievances as possible and send those cases to arbitration, no matter the cost. This expensive upper admin bloat has only created more labour strife, ballooning costs for both unions and the employer.
CUPE 3903 continues to hold York accountable in as many venues as possible. Arbitration is only one small and legalistic way to contest the employer’s mistreatment of members. We have been keeping the pressure on FGS by demanding they live up to their collective agreement reporting obligations. We have also been collaborating with the York University Graduate Student Association (YUGSA) to push back on issues of graduate timelines and extensions and keeping the pressure up when York tried to deny this collaboration. None of these battles are over until all members have their rights respected.