Putting the Union Back in Labour Day

Labour Day is about celebrating workers. Working people like YOU and ME!

Labour Day is not just the day of summer before the fall semester starts. It’s not just a long weekend to cram one last camping trip before September gets busy. It’s not just about sales or picnics (even though you should totally go to the Victoria Labour Council Labour Day Picnic if you can!). Labour Day is to celebrate and honour the people who organized, bargained, struck, marched, and even died to win the rights we now rely on.

At the CCFA, those rights live in our Collective Agreement: workload protections, seniority, job security, vacation, benefits, academic freedom, union representation, grievance rights, protections against unsafe work, and the right not to cross a picket line. These are not perks, and they’ve never been given freely. They are hard-won rights secured by past members of the CCFA Contract Negotiations and Management Committees who came before us, and they stay meaningful only when we are prepared to use and defend them.

Why it matters more now than ever.

Public post-secondary education is under sustained pressure from underfunding, restructuring, precarious work, workload creep, technological change, and increasingly centralized decision-making. All these factors have led to a redistribution of resources and workloads that doesn’t always follow our collective agreement. When we don’t ALL hold the line, our rights can be eroded slowly, one exception and one “temporary” workaround at a time.

So this Labour Day, I’m asking you to put the union back in Labour Day.

The dictionary defines union as an act or instance of uniting or joining two or more things into one, such as forming a single political unit from two or more separate and independent units – Unions Solidarity. And that, my friends, is what we need more than ever now! Be united. Don’t be silent when you see someone being overloaded! Get curious about why people on your team are working overtime. Discuss your workload and assigned tasks all together in your departments! Ask each other, “Whose work should this be, or was this?”

Get to Know Your Rights. Talk to the Union before agreeing to extra work, extra students, or workload changes that don’t feel right. Support other members who push back. Show up for the other unions on campus. This isn’t just happening to CCFA. BCGEU and CUPE are resisting the same encroachment on their rights. Solidarity isn’t just walking the line when workers are on strike. If your course should have an IA or TA… and it doesn’t, it’s refusing to let the employer get away with it by doing their work!

YES. Even. If. It. Means. Students. Will. Suffer.

We can’t prevent the system from failing on our own. Our willingness to help and prioritize students is being exploited. Not only is it unsustainable, but routinely absorbing this additional work makes understaffing and oversized classes easier for the College to normalize. Our sacrifice isn’t making things better for students; it isn’t saving people’s jobs (even your own); and it isn’t solving the bigger problem.

So then, how do we solve the bigger problem?

It starts small. This Labour Day, buy union-made wherever and whenever you can. Always buy local when you can. Spend your time and money in ways that strengthen workers and communities instead of rewarding employers that undermine them. Tell your MLAs to support expanded funding for Post Secondary and that you oppose any government, employer or legislative restructuring that alters, merges or overrides existing union certifications and that the autonomy of workers and their unions to organize be respected.

Remember, the CCFA is not separate from its members. The Union is all of us, acting together.

And all of our unions, acting in unison, is how we make it better for everyone.