Post-doctoral fellows at U of T have launched a campaign to become universally unionized under CUPE 3902.
The campaign, which commenced in January 2013, comes a year after the Ontario Labour Board’s initial ruling that post-doc fellows should be considered trainees, not employees of the university. The ruling was revised by the Board this year, resulting in a new provision that post-doc fellows should indeed be given employee status and thereby treated as such.
“If a vote were ordered by the Labour Board, we would encourage everyone in the proposed bargaining unit to vote and to let their wishes be known. The university values its post-doctoral fellows highly,” says Laurie Stephens, director, news and media relations at the University of Toronto. According to a press release issued by CUPE, post-doc fellows currently receive salaries as low as $27,500 (before taxes), and are subject to inadequate leave-of-absence options and meagre professional development opportunities.
“Post-docs are an integral part of the academic life at this university. They are working in labs, they are developing research that is being published in prestigious academic journals, and U of T gets its ranking as one of the best universities in the world partly because of those publications and what goes on in those labs. That is why these workers deserve better,” says Abouzar Nasirzadeh, chair of CUPE 3902.
U of T presently does not consider post-docs to be employees unless they teach at the university. Post-doctoral fellows who teach are the only fellows currently represented by CUPE 3902. The arrangement leaves those who do not teach unrepresented by a formalized bargaining agent and unable to receive standard workplace benefits.
As CUPE member organizer Jennifer Ridgley explains, this policy excludes a substantial number of the university’s post-doctoral fellows. “The vast majority of post-docs don’t teach courses — their full-time work is research. That work right now, with the way that post-docs are paid, is not considered employment income, which has a lot of implications,” says Ridgley.
According to Nasirzadeh, the most significant problem facing post-doc fellows is the lack of a formalized system under which the university’s post-doctoral fellows can be protected
“There is no protection whatsoever, and no formalized system,” Nasirzadeh says. “Post-doctoral fellows don’t have anything to prevent their principle investigators from overworking them. The other issue is that they don’t have any protection against arbitrary dismissal. They can be dismissed at any point.”
“Of all academic workers, post-doctoral fellows are the only major group of employees that don’t collectively bargain with the university,” says Ridgley.
If post-doctoral fellows successfully unionized, they could form a new unit of CUPE. The union would collectively negotiate workplace terms and conditions with the university.
Both Ridgley and Nasirzadeh are confident that the campaign will be successful, as they believe there is a large backing of post-docs to the campaign.
