At our latest bargaining session on June 25th, CUPE 1281 staff employed at the York University Faculty Association (YUFA) made some movement on housekeeping items and explained our objections to a significant number of YUFA’s proposals. We called out the alarming direction YUFA is taking — hiring the international union-busting law firm Ogletree Deakins to restructure our workplace.

Ogletree Deakins is a well-known employer-side law firm that is notorious for undermining workers rights, including specializing in “union avoidance” (i.e. union busting) strategies, and pushing top-down corporate restructuring. That’s exactly what we’re seeing in YUFA’s proposals, which seek to gut protections against harassment, restrict union rights, and ram through management-heavy changes — all to create space for expensive new managers, while eroding the core values that define YUFA as an academic workplace union.

This approach marks a sharp and radical departure from YUFA’s own structures and principles. YUFA, as a union, has long championed democracy, equity, collegial governance, and solidarity. Yet their current approach abandons those values — sidelining staff voices, importing union-busting lead negotiators, and paving the way for corporate-style control over a small professional office of hardworking, dedicated staff. We are both perplexed and disappointed as to why YUFA is actively supporting a law firm known for union busting and advancing a global anti-worker agenda, and more recently, co-opting nonprofits and progressive organizations as a strategy to advance its goals.

The drastic changes being pushed are not only out of step with YUFA Executive’s stated principles, but are also at odds with YUFA’s own constitution and bylaws. They include proposals that YUFA staff have helped YUFA members fend off during recent rounds of bargaining with their own employer, the York University Board of Governors.

YUFA staff are proud CUPE 1281 members committed to advancing equity, dignity, and democratic workplaces. We reject this corporate-style attack on our rights and stand firm against rollbacks.

No to Ogletree Deakins union busting. No to concessions. No to top-down restructuring.

See the previous update for more information on YUFA sub-unit bargaining.