Media Releases

CUPE 3902 Unit 1 today rejects enhanced offer proposed and recommended by union’s bargaining team

March 23, 2015

TORONTO, ON — For the sec­ond time, CUPE 3902 Unit 1 has reject­ed a set­tle­ment offer pro­posed and rec­om­mend­ed by CUPE 3902 Unit 1’s own bar­gain­ing team. The set­tle­ment, if accept­ed, would have end­ed the strike by teach­ing assis­tants, lab assis­tants, mark­ers, graders and invig­i­la­tors.

“We con­tin­ue to be in close con­tact with the Provin­cial Medi­a­tor and remain com­mit­ted to find­ing a solu­tion to this impasse that would end the strike and allow affect­ed stu­dents to com­plete their aca­d­e­m­ic term with­out fur­ther dis­rup­tion,” said Pro­fes­sor Angela Hild­yard, VP Human Resources and Equi­ty.

The pro­posed agree­ment pro­vid­ed enhanced wages, improved ben­e­fits, bet­ter finan­cial assis­tance and tuition fee off­sets – mak­ing it one of the best teach­ing assis­tant com­pen­sa­tion pack­ages in Cana­da. It remains, by any objec­tive mea­sure, a fair and rea­son­able basis for a set­tle­ment and an end to the strike.

Details of the offer CUPE 3902 Unit 1 has reject­ed

  • Wage increase of 3.75% to more than $43 per hour
  • A com­pre­hen­sive health­care plan – one of the only such plans in Cana­da
  • In a change which ben­e­fits TAs, reduced max­i­mum amount of TA work required for the fund­ing com­mit­ment, from 205 hours to 180 hours per year (all TA hours worked in addi­tion to this amount rep­re­sent addi­tion­al net income)
  • A Finan­cial Assis­tance Fund for child­care and edu­ca­tion-relat­ed expens­es totalling near­ly $1.1 mil­lion per year
  • A Bur­sary Fund of over $1 mil­lion per year
  • $600,000 per year in tuition assis­tance for stu­dents in years 5 and 6 of doc­tor­al pro­grams and stu­dents in year 2 of doc­tor­al-stream Mas­ters pro­grams

Info­graph­ic: High­lights of Deal Reject­ed by CUPE

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For more infor­ma­tion, con­tact:

Michael Kurts, Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to Com­mu­ni­ca­tions

416 272‑4734

michael.kurts@utoronto.ca