At Thursday’s September General Membership Meeting (GMM), CUPE 3903 members voted to empower the Units 1, 2, & 3 Bargaining Team (BT) to file for conciliation with the Ministry of Labour. This step comes after members’ dissatisfaction following multiple months of bargaining that have dragged on slowly due to a lack of consistent effort and preparation on the Employer’s side, even despite the BT being ready very early on with a thoroughly detailed proposal package of their own.
Filing for conciliation is an effort to help the negotiation process move along effectively, requesting for Ontario’s Ministry of Labour to appoint a third party (known as a conciliator) to help the two sides get closer together on priorities and reach an agreement.
Negotiations are continuing, and there’ll be more updates coming soon from your BT! Please check this link to the BT reports category on our website, because you can expect to see a more detailed report written by the BT coming later this week.
Following Thursday’s GMM, the BT filed for conciliation on the morning of Friday, September 25. They were in bargaining with the Employer until 5PM that day, having previously been in bargaining the same week on Tuesday.
In this past week’s bargaining on Tuesday and Friday, the BT advocated about multiple serious topics impacting students and workers at York University. One of these topics was air quality as a health and safety issue, which has been increasingly concerning, with the Employer recently worsening the allowable threshold of CO2 in buildings at York and seeming unsure about what routine air quality testing takes place at York (if any).
Another key topic at bargaining this past week was artificial intelligence (AI), with the BT seeking real protections around members’ intellectual property, potential AI-related job losses, and more — not just a powerless joint committee where discussion of AI can be siloed off.
Stay tuned to the BT reports category of our website, the bargaining hub webpage, and the newsletter for more updates coming soon from your BT! Remember, if you’re a member, you can attend any of the upcoming bargaining sessions (per our practice of open bargaining), so take advantage of that!