On December 20th, 2024, the MoveUP union sent an application to the BC Labour Relations Board (LRB) to include CapU student employees in their bargaining unit
Laura Morales Padilla (she/her) // Video Production Manager
Andy Poystila (he/him) // Production Manager
The Student Employee Programs is meant to provide an opportunity for students to obtain work experience and financial support, not to provide a source of cheap labour to the university. During the Capilano Students’ Union (CSU) Board of Directors meeting on January 26th, 2024, student employee Theodore Abbott voiced his concerns, saying, “The question of our wages […] first came up when I realized that pay increases had not matched inflation. Not even close.” He requested that the CSU advocate for CapU students to be paid fairly, noting that CapU’s current rate is approximately $10 less than Simon Fraser University’s (SFU). According to Niko Williamson, one of the student organizers of the union drive, the main difference between the student employees at CapU and those at SFU is that the latter are unionized.“We currently make minimum wage because we do not have any bargaining power being non-unionized workers,” she says.
Faculty member Barry Magrill has been the supervisor of the Student Digital Ambassadors (SDAs) since the positions were created five years ago; he indicated that “they were paid at a rate that was about $3 an hour more than minimum wage at the time, and over the years minimum wage has gone up, but the SDA’s wage—tied to all the other student job wages—has not kept up with that buffer.”
The final push to start the union drive, Williamson shared, was seeing how the MoveUP strike in the summer of 2023 impacted student employees. “When a union goes on strike, union members receive pay while they are on the picket line. However, for student employees who were unable to work due to the strike, there was no compensation,” she explained.
The Courier reached out to the university’s Senior Communications Officer for an interview about this application and the implications for CapU if student employees are ultimately included in this bargaining unit. Melissa Nichol, Strategic Director, People, Culture & Diversity, sent a statement.
“We encourage diversity and inclusion at CapU and recognize that some student employees may choose to join a union. We respect student employees in their exploration of joining MoveUP and understanding what that means for their employment with the University.”
“If certified, the union becomes the exclusive bargaining agent for the student employees in the defined unit, and all student employees in that unit—not just those who voted in favour of the union or signed union cards—must pay union dues. Subsequently, student employees are represented under one collective bargaining voice, through the union. Terms and conditions of employment would be negotiated by the union, and individual contractual flexibility between CapU and covered student employees would no longer be possible. Once a collective agreement is in force, existing work agreements between the University and student employees as individuals would no longer apply.”
—Melissa Nichol, strategic director, People, Culture & Diversity
Nichol points out, “Terms and conditions of employment would be negotiated by the union, and individual contractual flexibility between CapU and covered student employees would no longer be possible.” A supervisor who has been working at CapU, and part of MoveUP for over seven years, foresees that some flexibility would be lost concerning autonomy over position descriptions, duration of positions, and the number of postings. “As with any issue, there are pros and cons to both positions, however, I am in favour of adding to our membership […] Students should have a resource to lean on if faced with unfair treatment from the employer and should benefit from the collective bargaining power of the CapU workforce,” they say.
On the other hand, individual contractual flexibility hasn’t allowed wage increase negotiations. Magrill advocated for better pay for the SDAs a couple of years ago, arguing that there is a lot of training involved in their role, making it a skilled job. As an explanation of why this wasn’t possible, he says,“I was told that all student employees were paid the same.” This raises the question of who is benefiting from this contractual flexibility. According to Abbott, who is an advocate for attaining living wages for student employees, “We don’t want to be treated as gig-workers, we want dignified employment.”
MoveUP representative Javed Saheb responded to the concern of a reduced number of job postings as a consequence of higher wages for student employees, questioning,“Should the university be employing workers that they can’t actually pay a living wage to? Is this the example we want to set for young workers coming out of university and going into the workforce?”
How many student employees does CapU have? That depends, who’s asking?
On December 20th, 2024, the BC Labour Relations Board (LRB) received an application to include CapU student employees in the Canadian Office and Professional Employees Union, Local 378, also known as MoveUP, the union representing non-faculty and non-management workers at CapU. Meanwhile, CapU was required to send a list of all student employees to verify that the required support of 45 per cent of student employees was met. The union withdrew the application right after CapU’s list was submitted, on December 24th, as they realized that the 41 membership cards collected didn’t meet the minimum threshold of 49.
It is a challenge to keep track of the number of student employees since they are distributed in multiple departments and are often hired for only four months, explained Williamson. Since the union drive organizers couldn’t get the official number until after the application was sent to the LRB, they had been building a list based on conversations with other student employees which led to 74 names. The list sent by the university on December 24th included a staggering 108 names. Student organizers were surprised by this number, but MoveUP representatives were indignant.
As it turns out, on October 4th, 2024, union representative Nathan Beausoleil requested a list of all student employees from Human Resources and, at the end of the month, received a list with 43 names. This was less than half of the names provided to the LRB four days after it was requested. “Apparently, the number of student employees at CapU depends on who’s asking,” commented one of the student organizers, who reviewed the list sent to the union and found that several student employee positions were missing. This included career ambassadors, research assistants, residence advisors and peer tutors from the Writing Centre. Javed Saheb, the union representative who has been collaborating with student organizers, suspects that this, “inflating of the list at the application and providing the union with a substantially shorter list was a tactic used to avoid the workers getting fair representation. I hope the student workers take notice and know the union has not been deterred but rather, motivated to push forward.”
“I’m pro-union but I’m mainly pro-you-guys,” said a supervisor who has been assigned a student employee to support their role for the last five years. They explained that the flexibility student employees would like to maintain in terms of how many hours they work, the option of working remotely or the duration of their contracts are some of many aspects to be discussed with the union representatives and the university. They went on to say, “That’s what bargaining is for. But most importantly, with or without the union, don’t forget the power you have for being students. You are the main stakeholders.”