Union urges UW to bargain in good faith as talks continue

The union representing academic workers at UW (graduate student TAs, RAs, and sessional instructors) launched its e-action campaign on September 3, pressing the UW Board of Governors to action after multiple delays in bargaining since its inception.

“We established [the e-action] to put some pressure on the employer to respond to our request to bargain in good faith,” Katie Pita, the union’s Recording Secretary, stated in an interview with Imprint. Pita is also the Faculty of Environment representative on the bargaining committee for Unit 1, the subunit representing graduate student Teaching and Research Assistants at UW. CUPE Local 5524 officially ratified as a union in early 2023, before graduate student TAs and RAs joined the union in early 2024.

Nolan Shaw, VP of Unit 1 and PhD candidate under the Faculty of Math, is also a member of the Unit 1 bargaining committee. “One key component of the e-action campaign certainly has been to get the employer to the table at all, because the most pressing and really dire issue was that they were just not meeting us properly to bargain,” he said in an interview with Imprint on Sept 15, noting at the time that “the bargaining has continued to be very slow.” Shaw added that a support staff member from CUPE National with extensive experience, who helps local branches write first collective agreements, has said that “they’ve never seen progress move this slowly with an employer in their time bargaining.”

Notices to bargain were sent out to the university by both units at their respective times of certification in January 2023 and January 2024; both sides also agreed to form their respective bargaining committees to begin formal negotiations on collective agreements. By fall 2024, the union had finalized its committee and was ready to begin the bargaining process.

Shaw recounts that 9 months after the original notice to bargain, the university stated that they had a bargaining committee ready to begin discussing an agreement for Unit 0, but not Unit 1. As both sides were legally obligated to come to the bargaining table under labour law, they agreed to begin negotiation over items and language that would apply to both units. The union’s bargaining committee at this time consisted of Unit 0 and Unit 1 members to ensure transparency and prevent agreed terms from infringing on protections for both units’ members.

Both parties reached agreement on most commonly applicable items by June of this year; Shaw recounts that meeting dates were scheduled in July to start negotiating terms specifically for Unit 0. The employer stated that their bargaining committee members for Unit 0 items would not be present, since many staff take leave in August. Both sides thus agreed to discuss collective agreement items relevant to Unit 1 regarding graduate TAs and RAs in August, scheduling August 12 – 14 as formal meeting dates.

However, on August 12, according to Shaw, UW committee representatives stated that they would not begin negotiations for Unit 1 until after Unit 0 agreements were finished, in direct contradiction to what was previously stated. “The employer not only said that they weren’t ready to bargain, but in fact that they intended to refuse to bargain [on terms for] TAs and RAs until the sessionals had agreed on a contract—until Unit 0 had been ratified, in technical terms—and that is straight up illegal,” Shaw noted. “We reminded them of their obligation to bargain at the table…the pace of bargaining for the remainder of those two days, I think, showed that there wasn’t a true intention to bargain, because they hadn’t been given a proper mandate from the Board of Governors to do so.”

The University declined to comment on this incident and the details from bargaining discussions. “Our practice is to respect the collective bargaining process by keeping discussions at the table. The University remains committed to bargaining in good faith and to working constructively with CUPE 5524 to reach fair and sustainable agreements,” stated a UW spokesperson in a statement to Imprint.

The union’s representatives were told at that time that the university would fast-track approval of the bargaining committee for Unit 1 terms, with final approval being given no sooner than September 24. As of September 15, the university’s committee for Unit 1 has been finalized. Two new members have been added and the committee is now authorized to sign off on items during the negotiation process. The University stated through a spokesperson that “the parties continue to meet regularly, and negotiations are ongoing in relation to both units.”

In that time, Pita and other members of the local have connected with the wider community,  including WUSA and other undergraduate students, for support and solidarity, stating, “It’s not just the bargaining committee who’s paying attention to this; the larger Waterloo community cares about this as well.” CUPE 5524 held its own separate graduate student orientation on September 8 in Waterloo Park, after the Math and Environment GSAs did not allow them to present during official UW Orientation events. “The union really is just us: just the TAs, RAs and sessionals at Waterloo,” Pita said. “There’s nobody else in the local. And so I highly encourage people to come out to our social events, to attend our GMMs [general member meetings], to pay attention to those emails, even though sometimes they might be long. The union is us, and I hope that people are starting to see it a little bit more that way.”

Pita also put out a call to action for its members, who number more than 3000. “We know that these workplace issues affect all of us to some degree, some more than others…when things are going poorly for you, we need to know if you want the local to advocate for you on your behalf. We need to know what those issues are. So I call on anybody who’s facing an issue in the workplace with a supervisor, as a TA or an RA, [to] please get in touch. We can only do as much as we know about.”

And what about undergraduate students? Shaw said that while CUPE 5524 technically represents graduate assistants and sessional instructors, he and other representatives are also fighting to give undergraduate students a better educational experience and cement a precedent for better working conditions befitting a world-class institution like UW. “I love teaching…I’m working at a teaching-oriented place because I care about it. And many of our members feel the exact same way…while it is not a large proportion of the undergraduates, undergraduates do work on campus [too]. And those people deserve pay equity…We’re trying our best to fight for you as well.”