Postdoctoral scholars at the University of Toronto have been certified as a trade union by the Ontario Labour Relations Board, after a four-year organizing campaign. In the representation vote held in April, 73 per cent of postdocs voted in favour of unionization.
Postdocs whose salaries are paid by the UofT will be represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 3902, and will become members of CAUT through that affiliation. The new bargaining unit will comprise approximately 600 postdocs, and will be the largest unionized group of postdocs in Canada.
Organizing efforts started in February 2009, when CUPE 3902 launched a drive to certify all postdocs at the university. An application was submitted to the OLRB five months later but the university challenged the application, arguing that postdocs were not employees and consequently not eligible for union representation. Although a vote was held, ballots were segregated and sealed while the parties litigated the challenge.
In a precedent-setting decision, the OLRB ruled in January 2012 that the UofT postdocs were employees. In doing so, the labour board dismissed virtually all objections brought forward by the university, which had maintained that postdocs were “academic trainees” more akin to students than faculty.
The labour board ordered that the ballot box be unsealed and the vote counted. The union lost the vote for representation by a slim margin.
It’s not unusual for an organizing campaign to sustain several elections before representation is achieved, but the question of employee status had been answered.
After a mandatory waiting period, CUPE 3902 launched a second organizing drive in January 2013 and collected more membership cards than in the previous shot at unionizing. The new level of support brought a majority vote for the union.
“We are ready to begin the hard work of improving the working conditions of postdoctoral fellows at the University of Toronto,” CUPE 3902 chair Abouzar Nasirzadeh said in an email. “Postdocs were the only group of unrepresented academic employees at the university. With unionization, postdocs have now gained a voice and a seat at the table that they deserve in discussions about their working conditions.”
The U of T postdoc union joins the ranks of postdoc unions at McMaster, Western, Queen’s, UQAM, Memorial, and most recently at Carleton.
The certification does not cover postdocs whose support comes directly from outside funding agencies. The employment status of these “externally-funded” postdocs has not yet been determined by the OLRB.