At this event, we will be making an important pre-bargaining announcement, together.
We, the joint Executive Committees of a substantial majority of all unionized workers at Queen’s University and Aramark, are writing to invite our members and the Queen’s Community to join us at a Joint Special Membership Assembly on April 4, 12:00 pm, at the ARC main gym.
This year, Queen’s claims to be facing a budget crisis. That this “crisis” suddenly appeared when Queen’s is either currently bargaining or preparing to bargain with nearly every unionized worker on campus is not lost on us. Like many of our neighbours in Kingston and across Ontario, we all recently had our wages illegally suppressed under Bill 124. That these are the first contracts for all of us to be negotiated following that unconstitutional law’s repeal is also not lost on us.
The more we all see and learn about how Queen’s decides to present its financial situation and prioritize its spending for the coming years, the more we all doubt the administration’s claims and motivation. This “crisis,” whether real or manufactured, threatens to cause immediate and long-lasting economic damage, not only to our members and their families, but to the broader Kingston community — our community — by way of layoffs, hiring freeze, non-renewals, and loss of real-wages in a continuing, and very real, cost of living crisis. Queen’s University is the largest employer in Kingston. United, the members of our unions represent almost 5,000 workers in this community. We will not let Queen’s address its deficit crisis on our backs: an injury to our members is an injury to the entire Kingston community.
As the majority of our members prepare to enter bargaining, we stand together to declare that as workers and community members we cannot and will not be the ones to finance this administration’s ambition to operate our public university and community institution like a corporate, for-profit entity.
Our strength is our solidarity and we plan to demonstrate that on April 4th and everyday until we all get a fair contract.
Join us April 4, 2024 to hear more about this important pre-bargaining announcement.