Monday, January 12, 2009


CANADIAN LABOUR:
SUPPORT CUPE LOCAL 3902 AT THE U OF T:
Here's another appeal for online solidarity from the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), representing teaching assistants at the University of Toronto.
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Help CUPE 3902 at University of Toronto Appuyons la S.L. 3902 à l'université de Toronto:‏
Please take a minute to help CUPE 3902 in their negotiations with the University of Toronto.
Take action now
The teaching assistants are looking for:
***decreases in class and tutorial size
***public health care coverage for international students
***financial support for workers in deregulated programs, and
***inflation-level wage increases
Send an email to U of T's Vice-President of human resources and urge her to bring proposals to conciliation that will meet these demands.
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THE LETTER...Please go to one of the highlighted links above to send the following letter to the VP of human resources at the U. of T.
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I send this letter to register support for the position of CUPE Local 3902 Unit 1, representing Education Workers at the University of Toronto. From the outset of negotiations, CUPE 3902’s bargaining position has been has been both fair and reasonable. Still, negotiations persist nearly seven months after bargaining commenced, due primarily to the Uof T’s failure to acknowledge that the bargaining team has shown genuine sensitivity to the difficult economic times.

At the forefront of their issues, CUPE 3902 has chosen to emphasize family assistance (e.g. challenging the proposed university clawbacks to maternity leave) and the unfair University Health Insurance Plan, issues which amount to relatively little in terms of real dollars. And, while CUPE 3902 seems to have been successful in staving off the indefensible maternity leave clawbacks, there has been little movement from the U of T on other family assistance issues, or the UHIP issue.

A commitment from the U of T to pay the UHIP premiums of international students and post-graduate fellows would be a positive step toward resolving the negotiations. Moreover, it would be a first step toward eliminating the UHIP plan and getting international students and post-doc fellows on the Ontario Health Insurance Plan, a goal that President David Naylor has endorsed publicly on numerous occasions.

Another concern is the dissolution of the Tuition Assistance Fund for students in professional programs. Such programs are unfunded, and the University recognized that students require financial assistance in order to get through them, so they created a mechanism in the last contract by which to provide such assistance. The U of T has now chosen to eliminate this assistance, thereby downloading the burden of difficult economic times onto their least-assisted graduate students. This is unacceptable.

Finally, CUPE 3902’s proposals surrounding wages have, by all accounts, been fair and reasonable. As a guide to determining a reasonable funding package, CUPE 3902 pointed to U of T’s own published recommendations for what graduate students require to make ends meet living in the city of Toronto. Not only has the U of T rejected this most reasonable of approaches, they have failed to offer an amount that matches the recent increases achieved by other bargaining units working under the employ of the U of T. Education Workers shouldn’t be treated as less important than other workers and administrators at the U of T – because they aren’t less important!

Please, consider these points and return to the bargaining table in a spirit of resolving this dispute without a strike.

4 comments:

Francois Tremblay said...

Why do you always keep advocating government programs that either subsidize the rich or promote the ruling class' agenda? It's like you're a plant or something. Why would any Anarchist promote public education, the worst den of indoctination, the worst kind of jail for children that exists?

mollymew said...

Some people are real gluttons for punishment. Just for information to anyone new to either anarchism or this blog:
1)FT has been here before.
2)FT is an adherant of the bizarre and almost exclusively American perversion of anarchism known as "anarcho-capitalism". He may deny this, but his career stands as proof of this.
3)FT has been a "wart on the ass" of the 'left-libertarian' community (mostly an internet creation with little real existence). This,in turn, is a wart on the ass of the American Libertarian Party.
4)In his wartness FT has achieved the title of "most banned person" on the internet. This is because he has little(anything?) to say besides attacking others. He has caused chaos in the ranks of the libertarians and the atheists and been banned there. Several left anarchists have also banned him for his bad attittude.
5)His statement above is simply GOOFY. The imagination staggers at the idea that "advocating" support for a CUPE local at an university would be EITHER "subsidizing thw rich" or "promoting the ruling class agenda". Besides, the post above was about an UNIVERSITY. FT...how many "children" are enrolled there ? FT has tried to come back into the ring on a post that has NOTHING to do with "advocating government programs" at all. He could have come back for round two on a different post, but, being mindless, he came back here where his wierdness sticks out like a sore thumb.
6)Speaking of which...this guy ACTUALLY had the audacity to SELF publish a book on "anarchism" while being almost totally ignorant of what about 98%* of the anarchist movement has been and thought over the last 150 years. My favourite quote from him is that he has never heard (or "read" in his second take on the matter) of "AN ANARCHIST THINKER WHO SUPPORTED UNIONS". I shit you not. This guy doesn't know much, but he is absolutely convinced of what he advocates this week.
The last time I dropped into his sick world of internet controversy I was astonished to find that he was promoting himself as a "socialist". No doubt, if this wasn't his fashion of the week, he will write another vanity press book on socialism and outdo himself. 98% ignorance versus 99.999%. Impressive.
7)All that being said pest removal is not the only thing to be taken away from this. Out here in the REAL WORLD there is a conundrum for anarchists that we should be thinking through. Unless you are content to be an internet demon ala FT or to throw a rock through a window at midnight and call it anarchism we ALWAYS have to get our hands dirty with compromises. FT wouldn't know subsidizing the rich or promoting the ruling class agenda if it came up and bit him on his fat ass. But, from the opposite of the lack of vision from those who concoct solipcistic gardens in their pure minds, perhapos we do sometimes go too far in supporting "popular struggles". It's a thought that I have dealt with before here at MB, and, as I have said before, I have I have no magical catechism-like set of rules-unlike FT. I have been wrong, and I have been right.
8)I WON'T GIVE FT WHAT HE WANTS. This is my last statement on this post, and I already regret starting it. A pathetic nut who has left a trail of destruction wherever he has went is NOT worth wasting my time over. FT is free to have the final word here, but, just to strike at the core of his insanity, he is actually so inferior to most normal people that nobody should waste their time on him. This is it for me. Too bad I got carried away enough to do this, but Molly is far from perfect.

Francois Tremblay said...

I'm sorry that you still feel the need to lie to your readers in order to poo-poo anything I say. I have repudiated anarcho-capitalism publicly. If you cannot accept that, then what else can I do? No one in your worldview can realize their errors? You have NEVER admitted an error?

You must be fucking God... or a lunatic. I vote for the latter.

But you are a dangerous lunatic, because you make people believe that Anarchism supports the accumulation of State power. Maybe you are a statist plant, I don't know. Either way, you need to GET A LIFE and stop posting non-Anarchist rantings pretending to be an Anarchist.

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