After three years of organizing and negotiations, CUPE Local 5524, the union representing graduate student workers and sessional instructors at UW, has finally ratified collective agreements for its members. The new agreements for Unit 0 and Unit 1 are retroactively effective from May 1, 2023 and currently in effect until May 1, 2027.

“This is an excellent first contract and a very good contract in general,” says Scott Sørli, president of CUPE 5524 and member of the bargaining committee for Unit 0, the local’s subunit representing sessional faculty. Both contracts include minimum wage raises, formal grievance procedures, and other policies the union hopes will improve job security and working conditions.

CUPE 5524 was first certified as a union in January 2023, originally made up of sessional faculty, after 86.1 per cent of eligible voters voted to unionize. The local expanded to include graduate student TAs and RAs under a second subunit, Unit 1, in early 2024, with 95.1 per cent voting in favor.

What followed was a longer and more drawn-out process than expected. After delays in assembling the employer’s bargaining committee to negotiate Unit 1 contract items, both parties negotiated shared items and language that applied to both Unit 0 and Unit 1 last summer. In August, union representatives reported that the employer intended to refuse bargaining Unit 1 contract items until after Unit 0 items were finalized, contrary to a previous verbal agreement. That and minimal meaningful engagement in negotiations during the bargaining window sparked an e-action campaign in late August, which CUPE 5524 hoped would push the university to come to the table in good faith.

In October 2025, the union came close to striking as perceived stonewalling continued. CUPE 5524 held a larger members’ meeting to discuss the possibility of picketing, but in November, turnover in members on the employer’s bargaining committee helped avert a walkout.

“After that, bargaining was astronomically faster for getting much more reasonable and much more frequent passbacks from the employer,” states Erin Silver, vice president of Unit 1 and member of the unit’s bargaining committee. “They were willing to meet up and discuss issues much more readily.” Imprint reached out to the university for a response, but they declined to comment on the matter.

Negotiations continued steadily in the months after, with bargaining sessions sometimes going late into the night. Sørli recalls that one Unit 0 session ended at 10:30 p.m. on a Friday night. The final bargaining session for Unit 1, which entailed negotiating wages and administrative oversight over TA and RA assignments to undergraduate students, lasted 19 hours, ending at around 5:30 a.m. on Jan. 27. 

“We could see that there was going to be agreement from both sides coming forward,” Sørli recalls. “Once there starts to be some kind of velocity at the table in terms of the final issues, you really don’t want to leave the room.”

Both parties finalized tentative agreements for Unit 0 on Jan. 9 and Unit 1 on Jan. 30, with members voting to ratify the documents on Feb. 3 and Feb. 25 respectively. Members voted overwhelmingly in favor of the new contracts and had a highly positive response. “I think everyone, the employer as well as the union, was really looking forward to com[ing] to an agreement at the end,” says Sørli.

While UW declined to comment on the details of the bargaining process, the university said in a statement to Imprint that the ratification is “an important development for the university community and was achieved thanks to the hard work of both CUPE 5524 and the university bargaining teams,” with the agreements “[reflecting] the mutual priorities of both parties.” Both documents will be available on UW’s Human Resources website, where collective agreements with other bargaining units and associations are posted.

As for what is in the ratified agreements, union leadership believes that the contracts codify hard-won victories that will make it more sustainable for their members to study and work at UW.

Communications director and math graduate student Gaia Noseworthy has emphasized that the Unit 1 contract’s new clauses will protect funding and job security for graduate students. “There was a long history in the past [where], if you got other funding, you start losing your [teaching assistantships] or TA funding, and one of our biggest items was to remove that,” says Noseworthy. Typically, graduate students in doctoral or research-based master’s programs will receive TA or RA appointments as part of their funding package. These graduate students may also be eligible to receive additional funding, like the tri-agency scholarship from Canada’s three major research councils that oversee academic research funding.

“Something that used to happen to a lot of [graduate] students here is, if they were to gain one of these big scholarships … you would lose all of your other funding sources,” Noseworthy said. The new Unit 1 contract prevents the loss of TA or RA employment that would offset funding from other sources, so the total funding given to a graduate student is expected to increase rather than remain unchanged in these circumstances.

Another section Noseworthy highlights is a seniority clause for TA and RA positions. Graduate students typically are guaranteed a minimum number of TA or RA appointments to help fund their studies for a fixed number of years. Under the new agreement, graduate student TAs and RAs who have worked longer are prioritized for new positions. This includes graduate students who are studying beyond that initial duration, “meaning people who might be struggling financially because of this decision are much less likely to face struggles throughout the latter [part] of their degree.”

In addition to job security, the new agreement also enforces higher wages for its members. Silver cites that the agreement gives all members a minimum increase of 2.8 per cent in wages. Effective May 1, graduate TAs now have a minimum hourly wage of $51.53. Master’s research assistants are paid at least $49.14, and PhD research assistants are paid $58.46. Graduate students who were paid higher rates prior to May 1 will not see their wages decrease.

For sessional faculty, incremental wage raises have been negotiated. A sessional instructor who began teaching on or after May 1, 2023 would be paid a minimum of $8,910 per 0.5 credit. That wage increases by 3 per cent for courses taught in 2024, another 3 per cent in 2025, and a 2.5 per cent increase in 2026 for a current rate of $9,688.93 per 0.5 credit. That minimum, Sørli says, “is better than what most universities are getting right now for sessionals,” and is a step towards alleviating financial pressure during a struggling economy and high living costs.

Kavi Duvvoori, CUPE 5524’s recording secretary and English PhD student, is particularly glad to now have a formal grievance process for members. “We’ve seen situations across the university where … really devastating demands were being put on people,” says Duvvoori. “Sometimes that looks like TAs being asked to do dozens of hours of extra work that conflict with their own work as students and researchers.” With explicit timelines and policies for each stage, Duvvoori hopes members will be better protected against exploitation in the workplace, “but even more importantly, teach the lesson that there is accountability even for workers that are lower in the hierarchy, and … prevent these situations from happening.”

So what’s next for CUPE 5524? While the agreements are a good first step, one priority of renegotiations in 2027 is securing benefits for members, like health insurance and pension plans. The current agreements pay a rebate to members at the end of each term in lieu of benefits, totalling $100 for graduate student employees and $200 for sessional faculty members.

In the meantime, union leadership has shifted their focus to enforcing the collective agreements, like helping members obtain backpay and continuing outreach to the wider UW community. Duvvoori notes that prior to joining CUPE 5524, many members have had little experience or knowledge in advocacy and organized action.

“Canadian labor law contexts and histories of labor are not shared by everyone,” Duvvoori states. “One important part is just explaining how democratic, member-led unions work for everyone involved [and] showing through this process that coming together with your coworkers to try to improve conditions … can provide concrete results within a reasonable time frame.”

As for working within the institution itself, Sørli says, “every department has operated as a little bit of an isolated fiefdom,” where one department’s policies and practices differ from the next. “It’s been an interesting experience and challenge to begin to communicate a standardized contract … to those various departments that operate in extremely different ways.”

CUPE 5524 also hopes to continue its strong working relationships with other non-member groups at UW, like its sibling chapter CUPE 793, UWSA, FAUW, and WUSA. Noseworthy observes that many undergraduate students in particular have volunteered or plan to become members when they start graduate studies at UW. “Almost every undergrad student I’ve talked to really does understand why we’re doing this … they’re surprised that some of their teachers are in conditions that are so economically unsustainable, and they want to support them in some way.”

Ultimately, the local hopes to strengthen the culture of solidarity, inclusion, and collective action in the UW community, especially during uncertain times. “It’s really important that we allow ourselves to ask the question of what a good university would look like — a university that really provides for the needs and hopes” of the campus community and society at large, says Duvvoori. “At its best, this process allows us to ask that question and pursue it in a democratic and member-led way, rather than one that just depends on what the Premier decides or what big companies decide.”

Noseworthy encourages readers to volunteer for causes they are passionate about, especially local organizations. “You don’t need to spend 20 hours a week. It can be two, and that will still make a difference.” They stress that there are other ways to contribute outside of donations, as “sometimes money is not the biggest problem you can face, [but] having people to use that money … to try and build a better world.”