Striking York staff to begin voting on offer that union is urging them to reject

Striking contract faculty and other staff at York University will begin voting today on an offer that their union leadership has urged them to reject.

Members of CUPE 3903 will be able to participate in an online vote on York’s March 20 offer from 9 a.m. today until 10 a.m. on Monday.

The Ontario Labour Relations Board ordered the vote last week following a formal request from the school. For its part, the union has called the forced vote a “shameful abdication” of the school’s responsibility to bargain.

In a message sent to members ahead of the vote, the union said that the offer is “not meaningfully different” from one that they voted against on March 2 and urged them to “reject it again.”

“We have said throughout this dispute that the path forward goes through the bargaining table, but York University has repeatedly tried to take shortcuts,” Devin Lefebvre, Chairperson of Local 3903, said in a press release issued on Friday morning. “Unfortunately, this forced ratification vote is yet another example of an employer that would prefer to everything, but the work necessary to resolve the issues that have led to this strike.”

About 3,700 members of CUPE 3903 walked off the job on March 5 after rejecting a so-called “final offer” from the university.

The two sides did briefly return to the bargaining table on March 20 but talks broke off later that night and have not resumed since.

In its message to members, CUPE 3903 said that the offer tabled by York “worsens job security for contract faculty and does not protect teaching assistants from unilateral changes to funding or claw backs of scholarships or additional work.”

Furthermore, the union says that the offer lacks back-to-work protocol that would protect members from reprisals and outline what they will be paid for completing their contracts this semester.

It should be noted that the university has contended that members will be paid and protected from reprisals for their participation in the strike and has said that “no written back to work clause is necessary” for those protections.

About 60 per cent of the classes at York University are taught by CUPE 3903 members.