"I consider it important, indeed urgently necessary, for intellectual workers to get together, both to protect their own economic status and, also, generally speaking, to secure their influence in the political field."
- Albert Einstein, on why he joined the faculty Union at Princeton as a charter member
UPDATE: Meeting on February 16 2009
In December, the Labour Board determined that more than enough postdocs (40%+) signed cards in favour of unionization, and therefore the application and the vote are legitimate. A great success! However, the University maintains its challenge to the application on the basis that, as they claim, postdocs are not employees. Hearings on this matter will begin in March. CUPE 3902 will be hosting an informational meeting on February 16 at 5pm, in the Baldwin Room of the International Student Centre (33 St. George), to offer additional information and answer questions. Please put it in your calendars. Thanks.
VOTING LOCATIONS ANNOUNCED BY ONTARIO LABOUR RELATIONS BOARD
The Labour Board has called a vote for Monday 10 August at the following locations and times:
Sidney Smith Hall, Main Lobby, 10am-4pm
(100 St. George Street, downtown campus)
UTM, Meeting Place, 12pm-1pm
UTSC, Meeting Place, 12pm-1pm
POSTDOCS FILE FOR UNION CERTIFICATION!
CUPE 3902 and your postdoc colleagues are pleased to announce that we resubmitted an application for certification on July 31. After the Labour Relations Board dismissed the first application, we were met with tremendous support from our fellow PDFs and now have more than enough cards to ensure that there will be a vote. This vote will likely be held on Monday, August 10, at all three campuses. Stay up to date on voting information: info@uoftpostdocs.ca.
RUTGERS POSTDOCS GET CERTIFIED!
On Monday July 20, the New Jersey Public Employee Relatios Commission certified the Rutgers AAUP-AFT as the representative of the 350 postdocs at Rutgers. Read more about this wonderful success on their homepage: www.rutgerspostdocs.org
Please see the NEWS page for information on the new $200 Post-doc Administrative Fee Offset!
Can we unionize?
A response to the U of T Administration's memo
Colleagues,
We're sure many of you have noticed the announcement on the SGS website concerning this membership drive. The University of Toronto finds our action "strange" and announces that when we apply for certification to the Ontario Labour Board, the University will challenge it on the basis that we are not employees.
On the contrary, we are very much employees. We have supervisors, job contracts, our labour contributes to the University's research output, and despite our pay coming from a variety of sources, it is processed through the University. Indeed, the University has the ability to impose deductions on that paycheque (the recently introduced $200 "administrative fee").
We, the post-doctoral fellows at the University of Toronto are no less academic workers than the postdocs at MacMaster University, and they have unionized. Our research is of no less value than that of the postdocs at the University of Western Ontario, and they have unionized. Those postdocs are recognized as academic research professionals, but here we are treated as "students" or "trainees". This is a distinction the Ontario Labour Board will not countenance. Just as the Mac and Western postdocs certificates were issued, so will ours.
The administration's memo also threatens that signing a union card will place in jeopardy the taxation status of postdocs. That is ridiculous. It is settled law (and common sense) that classification of income for income tax purposes is one thing and classification of employment under a labour law statute something else. The laws have different purposes and different tests. This is simple scare-mongering on the part of the administration. Frankly, we would have expected something better.
Join in this great feat. Sign a card! All the information you need to know is on this website.
And incidentally, CUPE 3902 recently won through collective bargaining the funds to reimburse that $200 administrative fee for postdocs who teach. If we were unionized, not only could that basic fund apply to all of us, but think of what else we could achieve!
A Union for Post Docs at UofT
