Student Commission, YCL-LJC

March, 2015

The Young Communist League of Canada calls for full solidarity with educational workers at the University of Toronto and York University. CUPE 3902’s and CUPE 3903’s educational workers are now on strike at two of Canada’s largest universities, at which almost 140,000 university students study.

Students and campus workers are suffering from a sharpening attack on post-secondary education across Canada. Capitalists have decided they are paying too much for public education and conceptualize education not as a right, but as a commodity, which is integral to the production of a trained modern workforce.

The attack on workers in the private sector is reflected on campus, accelerated by cuts to education in the name of austerity. University administrations, with their bloated corporatized pay scales, are acting as the attack dogs of austerity governments. At both UofT and York, over 60 percent of all teaching is done by contract faculty and teaching assistants, whose contracts often only cover a semester or two, meaning they are continuously looking for work. This is an attack on all faculty’s wages, job security, and on the quality of education.

Educational workers in CUPE 3902 and 3903 have had enough and are taking a stand. There is a spirit of militancy and unity in the face of this attack. In fact, 3902 had 90% of its membership vote to strike with the largest turnout to vote for an academic union local in Canadian history.

At the University of Toronto, teaching assistants receive graduate student-funding of only $15,000 per year. This is $8,000 below the poverty-line in the city of Toronto! Keep in mind that graduate students in PhD programs pay almost $8,000 per year, even when they are not enrolled in classes, to receive the ‘privilege’ of this underpaid work. CUPE 3902 is demanding graduate funding be raised to the low-income cut off line for a single person in Toronto, which is around $23,000. York University has shamefully tried to freeze poverty wages by offering a 1.5% increase in wages per year, which is essentially an inflationary freeze.

Students need to act quickly in order to reinforce the struggle of educational workers. Now is a key moment to stand alongside workers as they fight against the corporate restructuring of the university and its workforce; as they fight for smaller class sizes, reasonable workloads, decent living standards, and a better overall quality of education for students. Active student campaigns in full solidarity with the strikers should be organized in order to force the university administrations to bargain in good faith and ultimately to stand with students and workers against the government’s attempts to restructure, attack workers, and restrict access to universities.

The corporate press and the government have a long history in attacking labour and democratic rights, and we should expect no less from them during this struggle. These defensive battles are key and are necessary to bring together and catalyze a broad resistance in order to develop a counter-offensive in the streets.

The YCL-LJC stands in solidarity with all those taking a stand against the corporate attack. We recognize this as an important struggle against austerity, for labour rights and for accessible, quality, free and emancipatory public education. Students and workers stand up, fight back!