Mondays are usually the hardest day of the week when you’re a graduate student worker—it’s when emails, assignments, and phone calls start coming in. March 4, however, was different. I woke up to announcements from CUPE 3902 and CUPE 3261, who signed tentative agreements with the University of Toronto just minutes before they were set to go on strike.
The agreements they signed put real money into the pockets of the university’s most precarious workers: graduate workers, postdocs, and all the custodial and support workers without whom no university could open its doors for students and faculty.
It’s a stark contrast to the current negotiations between Queen’s University and the postdoctoral scholars who comprise PSAC 901 Unit 2. Queen’s latest offer to Unit 2 workers was a shocking $38,000 minimum wage with no other increases that could account for the inflation, the cost-of-living crisis, or the unconstitutionally low wages mandated by Doug Ford’s government and upheld by a select few conservative employers, including Queen’s University, under Bill 124.
Mondays, it seems, don’t have to be bad if you’re lucky enough to work at UofT. They do, unfortunately, if you work at Queen’s.
Those currently earning the Queen’s postdoc minimum salary earn roughly $18.44 per hour—only slightly higher than Ontario’s minimum wage. Imagine going to grad school, doing exceptional research, earning a doctorate—being an expert in your field—and then being offered a salary barely above the funding you could survive on in grad school.
No wonder PSAC 901’s Emergency Food Support Program received applications from 72 postdocs.
As it stands, 66 postdoctoral scholars at Queen’s earn less than $49.999. These 66 exceptional, brilliant minds decided to launch their academic careers here in Kingston only to arrive to find they can’t make ends meet.
On top of that, Queen’s removed postdocs’ access to the Health and Family Project Team (QHFT) to send a message on the first day of bargaining. Not only do these 66 top-level scholars have to fight for survival, they have to live with the knowledge that, if they get sick, they might not have access to medical care.
Most postdoctoral scholars aren’t from Kingston or haven’t been here long enough to qualify for a family doctor, so this loss of critical dignity and support is especially cruel. It seems that Queen’s expects these people to produce world-class research at work every day that it can bank its reputation on while endorsing a view that postdocs deserve to stay poor.
The Union came to the table with a comprehensive proposal that would end the abject poverty of our lowest paid postdoc members, but also help lift others out from the cost-of-living crisis and into the dignity of relative comfort. Fairness isn’t just about the minimum, but about the quality of life for all postdocs. That’s why PSAC asked for wage increases across the board that would help alleviate the wage suppression and cost of living crises they face, both exacerbated by Queen’s.
Queen’s didn’t agree with the Union. It saw it unnecessary to offer any wage increase to above $38,000, which only marks an overall increase of $0.73 per hour over three years. Queen’s also disagrees with the need for unit wide salary increases, even amid the current financial context.
We’re left hoping once again Queen’s will be embarrassed by how their offer compares to U of T’s, and be shamed into the moral choice. We can only hope the University take an example from U of T’s nine per cent increase for 2023.
But it’s only up to Queen’s to do right by postdocs. Reading the news out of Toronto, we also felt renewed in our efforts to do right by each other.
That’s why PSAC 901 fine-tuned a package that would put money in the pockets of all postdocs by additionally proposing housing and relocation support, mental health and hardship fund, and enhancements to childcare benefits.
The Union also believes that members remain an integral part of the Queen’s community even when they’re no longer an employee or student. That’s why we asked that those who suffered unconstitutional wage suppression should be retroactively paid for their work even if they no longer work at Queen’s. They worked as hard as those who remain here now, and they too deserve fair compensation for their work.
As arbitrator William Kaplan recently explained, there’s no justification to pay some employees the full value of their work while not granting this rate to others doing the same work.
There’s nothing unusual about providing retroactivity for current and former employees. It’s simply the standard practice in the private and public sector from coast to coast to coast.
What the 50,000 postdocs at U of T secured on March 4 is just the bare minimum that can elevate some out of abject poverty. It’s far from a salary commensurable with the level of education and research contributions postdocs offer to Queen’s and other universities.
It’s indeed a matter of fairness that postdocs and adjuncts earn a wage that is comparable to their academic peers—the colleagues with whom they work most closely: the faculty. The fact some postdocs or adjuncts spend years or decades in precarious conditions working on short-term contracts is what’s wrong not just with Queen’s but with North American academia more broadly. The existing model is based on the underpaid work of grad workers, postdocs, and adjuncts maintaining unfair disparities and increasingly making academia affordable only for the privileged. Nobody from a working-class family can afford to go into debt to go to grad school only to continue living in poverty as a postdoc.
Over 50 per cent of Queen’s postdocs are temporary residents, which shows again Queen’s and Canada’s blatant exploitation of the migrant workforce. Many of these scholars are here on a closed work permit which means they aren’t allowed to work anywhere but Queen’s, which only pays them $18.44 per hour. Queen’s invites international scholars who they know won’t be able to work off campus and yet takes no responsibility for securing them a living wage, let alone livable accommodations or other community supports.
This system ultimately leaves international postdocs beholden to their employer, financially and legally. This isn’t just a matter of precarious immigration status, but one wrapped in complex academic power dynamics deeply impacting the ability for many to demand fair compensation. While these are broader structural issues, by providing better wages and access to housing and healthcare, Queen’s could significantly change the lives of its postdocs for the better.
Unfortunately, Queen’s isn’t the University of Toronto—it deliberately chooses not to.
Postdocs at Queen’s started bargaining in October 2023, at the same time as CUPE 3902 and CUPE3261, but they have yet to be taken seriously by the Employer. Hopefully, the news from U of T will be a wake-up call for Queen’s. Hopefully, the Employer will return to the table on March 13 with a less insulting offer to the postdoctoral scholars that work endlessly to uphold the research excellence Queen’s aspires to. Otherwise, it makes no sense why postdoctoral scholars would want to do their research at Queen’s.
If Queen’s won’t show up for them, how long before international scholars—similarly to international students before them—find it time to simply stop showing up for Queen’s.
Justyna is a fourth year PhD candidate in the history department and is the President of PSAC 901.
Tags
bargaining, Bill 124, CUPE, Postdocs, PSAC 901, U of T
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