The leadership of the Simon Fraser Student Society (SFSS) has announced a Sunday lockout of SFSS’s union employees, after two years of unsuccessful contract negotiations. Unless an agreement is reached by tomorrow afternoon, CUPE local 3338’s twenty employees will be barred from working their jobs.
Unsurprisingly, the two sides characterize the state of negotiations differently, with CUPE arguing that SFSS is demanding “dramatic wage rollbacks and cuts to staffing levels,” while SFSS president Jeff McCann says that the student society is asking for a 12% average pay cut, with about a quarter of that loss to be restored over the course of the new contract. (Edit: see comments for more details on the proposed cuts.)
Activists claim that this move is ideologically motivated, noting that newly-elected SFSS leaders announced the lockout simultaneously with an effort to evict the Simon Fraser Public Interest Research Group (SFPIRG) from student-owned offices.
I’ll be following this story as it develops, but I think one element that hasn’t yet received much attention is worth emphasizing — the timing of the lockout.
Now, I don’t know anything about what triggered this particular decision. It’s possible that there’s a compelling reason why this had to happen now. But as I’ve written many times before, summer is the season when university administrators traditionally launch their most obnoxious initiatives, on the premise that there aren’t any students around to object. If you want to pave a community garden, or eliminate a department, or create a new parking fee, or whatever, summer’s the time to do it.
Like I say, I don’t know why SFSS acted when it did. Maybe they had a good reason. But if they timed this lockout — and the SFPIRG eviction — to take place in July because they knew that their student opponents wouldn’t be able to mobilize … well, that’s just punk. It’s anti-democratic, and it’s anti-student. It’s wrong.
studentactivism.net 
19 comments
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July 9, 2011 at 11:08 am
kevin harding
Thanks for your coverage! A couple of notes: the SFSS’ wage demands would have cut student staff wages 40%. Additionally, while the SFSS wanted a 12% wage cut on its permanent staff, the wage increase would have only been a 3% climb back to where wages had been once.
Directors of the SFSS have been on an attack against the PIRG and staff union for some time, with directors trying to find ways to withhold student-voted funding many times. They’ve chosen the summer to act because there are fewer students on campus and thus less able to respond.
Finally, I’d note that the Peak article you link to is poorly written; the author takes statements from both sides of the dispute, but weights the SFSS’ statements as more valid – for example, the union says that it had offered to suspend cost of living adjustments, while McCann claims that the union had not, yet the author of the article gives that the final word.
July 9, 2011 at 11:12 am
kevin harding
Further on the math:
If the current wage of the SFSS permanent staff is $30.48 (roughly average for supervisory staff with financial responsibilities in a university environment in British Columbia), a wage rollback to 26.66 would be a decrease of 3.82 per hour, or 12.5% of the original wage. A four percent increase on 26.66 would be an increase over the term of the contract of $1.07, or 3.4% of the original wage.
This doesn’t touch the desire to cut 40% of student staff wages – who pay tuition fees, student loans, living costs, and more working 8-12 hours per week – and to create a two-tiered contract, where new employees would be paid even less and have fewer benefits than current employees.
July 9, 2011 at 11:14 am
Angus Johnston
Thanks for the info, Kevin — I made a careless error when calculating the cut, and I’ve updated the post.
July 9, 2011 at 11:16 am
derpa derp SFU administration
The Peak is full of substandard self-entitled editors who write whatever the hell comes to mind without much knowledge, so I wouldn’t fret too much.
If SFU thinks the students won’t cause a media shit storm, they have another thing coming.
July 9, 2011 at 11:29 am
kevin harding
Thanks Angus!
July 9, 2011 at 3:59 pm
Someone who knows
I’d like to hear more about what Kevin thinks all the way from Toronto. Comment more on something you’re not involved in, Kevin.
July 9, 2011 at 4:34 pm
Jay
SFU currently offers nearly 60% of it’s classes during the summer semester, so campus is hardly empty, and that kind of editorializing undermines the crux of your post. The reason this is happening now is because the SFSS is in the process of developing their budget for the coming year, like every other student society in the country. This is no cloak and dagger scheming, it’s a response to fiscal year end and the financial implications of the coming years.
July 9, 2011 at 5:50 pm
Rod Smelser
I can’t help but wonder if the timing is influenced by preparatory work for a possible Fall BC Election.
July 9, 2011 at 6:17 pm
Angus Johnston
Jay, I’m not sure why you glossed over my “I don’t know why SFSS acted when it did. Maybe they had a good reason.” If that’s the reason, I’m glad to hear it.
July 9, 2011 at 7:09 pm
Someone who knows
The SFSS’ fiscal year runs from May 1 to April 31. Budgeting for this year has already been done.
July 10, 2011 at 7:23 pm
Sean Carleton
I love how the “logical” response to a fiscal year end (@ Jay) is to lockout employees, attack their collectively bargained positions, and, while you’re at it, try to block a social justice research institution. Hmm…doesn’t smell political to me. Nonsense. Please, people, refuse to buy it. They may tell you that in Business 101, but it doesn’t hold up with some critical thinking. Anyone who has more than 5 years experience at SFU knows that this issue has deep roots and is also caught up in rightwardshifting student politics.As a SFU student for many years, I am disappointed. The SFSS should be a student UNION not be a reactionary body that thinks like a business and who locks out the people that make the ship float.
July 10, 2011 at 10:46 pm
Kave
Um… Correct me if I’m wrong, but when did administrators at simon Fraser get control of the student union? They didn’t? So essentially you’re bitching about students going after employees…
July 11, 2011 at 12:39 pm
D.Carkner
You should also look at this in the context of labour troubles in the whole British Columbia post-secondary sector. Vancouver Island University went on strike, and we here at Langara College voted to go on strike earlier this year. There are province-wide austerity measures and “Zero increases” policies that colleges and universities are using as an excuse to freeze wages and cut services.
July 11, 2011 at 2:04 pm
Angus Johnston
Kave, my point was that university administrators do this all the time, and that it’s an anti-student practice — one that shouldn’t be emulated by student unions.
July 11, 2011 at 3:07 pm
T G
Hi,
Lock out are always done in bad faith, and are always a union breaking move. So boo on the student union.
I gotta say though, the Simon Fraser Student Union Staff seem to be the highest paid in the lower mainland. I worked at UBC, unionized, AMS, and was paid much much much less. WAY less. I am now a community outreach worker, working for a non profit, with a much higher work load and harder job to do, and while we are not unionized, we get paid compatible to union wages: and I get paid much much less. So much so, that I often look at permanent postings to work at SFU student union with longing in my heart. I in no way want to undermine the good work that CUPE members at SFU do, and I do not want to add fodder to the student union’s shenanigans; I for sure want to honour the strength of that staff group and the union for holding their own. for so long. But reality check: down here, off the mountain, there are not $30 an hour union jobs, including with CUPE. I would like to see what CUPE has won or managed to keep for employees doing similar jobs on other campuses and then I will be able to make up my mind about all this. I was just looking for work with both the federal and provincial governments this weekend, and only the most senior staff positions were coming in at that kind of wage.
I say all this as a union supporter and someone who believes we should all get more money on our paycheques, union membership or no. But I am also a working class gal who sees wages like that and says wtf? I wonder what is sustainable over time? Students are paying fees out their wazoos and the fact is I am paying interest on my student union fees as well as my tuition fees as part of my student loans. We all are. And most of us are not making, or going to make anywhere close to $30 per hour. Ever. That $30 /hour is coming out of student paycheques long after we are off campus.
I do not know the current politics of the SFU student Union, but they seem kinda right-ish maybe, and the staff are probably, as they have been in the past, left-ish, so I can imagine this doesn’t help matters either.
Bottom line for me: When I am on campus I want my long term student union staff to be well paid and very able to navigate the whims of the student unions which become their bosses every year (here’s an extra $3/hour for having to put up with that working condition alone!) so that students will have a well run bureaucracy to work on their behalf and represent their interests to the University. The politicos are done their terms and on to the next thing within a year or two – the staff are the back bone of the student unions for sure. So pay them well, don’t bust their unions. But I want some reality from the staff too – maybe $26/hour is an okay rate of pay (it is still higher then what most folks are paid in the Lower Mainland) and maybe they can actually live, and live well on that income.
July 11, 2011 at 5:24 pm
Sean Carleton
What is sustainable over time? Well, capitalism is not sustainable over time – really. In the meantime, we need to fight for EVERYONE to have a better quality of life. What people often forget or don’t realize is that union wage rates – which are, in fact, higher than most non-union wage rates, are high because working people fought for them and threatened bosses to pay them. As a result, non-unionized workplaces are forced to concede and raise their wage rates, if they want to keep unions out. Therefore, we all benefit from union wage rates – they are what we should all be getting if we only understood the value of fighting, struggling for them. Hell, why do we need bosses at all – while we make them rich we attack other workers who get more crumbs than us. We need a People’s movement!
July 12, 2011 at 1:15 am
I wear sunglasses during the day when it's sunny.
Last time I checked, the average canadian worker made 45k/year. The SFSS staff make $30.48/h which translates to 60K+ a year if they’re working full time. I’m not sure what the skillset of an SFSS employee is, but I doubt it justifies a 60k+ yearly earning. Sure they have to remember some things, sure they need some computer skills, but what job these days doesn’t? If you ask me, it sounds pretty average which justifies an average wage… @Sean, there’s nothing about capitalism that isn’t sustainable, it’s people’s greed that makes it unsustainable these days. And personally all this talk of the left and right has got me laughing, isn’t it leftward thinking to skim the wages of 10 employees to benefit thousands of students? And unions kind of blow…
July 12, 2011 at 11:38 am
EKS
I agree the salary is a good deal, though they put up with a lot of crap. But this doesn’t seem to be a good faith attempt to curb costs; rather it’s looking more like an ideological battle.
A good faith attempt wouldn’t lock out workers – it would allow the continuation of negotiations. Also a good faith attempt would never slash salaries – it would start with a freeze. However high they are, when you hire people at a certain salary, they come to rely on it. For example they rent an apartment or take on a mortgage at a certain level they wouldn’t have with a lower wage. You can’t pull the rug out from under them when they came to rely on a certain wage.
July 15, 2011 at 12:48 pm
Truth Vendor
It was done over the summer due to lower enrollment, you’re right. Why? So fewer students would be affected by any disruptions to services. Stop being so paranoid.
Does 30% of the student body benefit from the approximately 30% of SFSS funds these staff members are paid? I suspect not. Their pay is disproportionate to their impact and is not warranted, in general.