On November 25th, as eight CUPE 1281 members working for the York University Faculty Association (YUFA) entered their 5th week on strike, YUFA posted a job advertisement for an Executive Director and in-house legal counsel position. The job posting confusingly lists two positions that are quite distinct, yet says they would prefer a single individual do both — as well as other specialized work such as communications and facilitation — presumably for the same wage.

What is clear is that the posted job description lists a number of responsibilities and duties routinely performed by striking staff, such as providing legal advice to YUFA Executive officers and members, handling grievances, drafting legal contracts, and dispute resolution, among others.

Hiring non-unionized workers to perform the work of striking employees is using scab labour and marks YUFA’s most aggressive union-busting tactic to date. Strike breaking, i.e. hiring replacement workers to cross a picket line to weaken the strike and a union’s efforts to improve working conditions, is often called scabbing because it is disgusting, anti-worker behaviour.

By actively replacing experienced unionized staff with confusingly defined strike breaking positions, YUFA undermines good-faith negotiations at a time where they have finally claimed that they want to return to the bargaining table as early as next week. This move attacks the very principles of progressive trade unionism that YUFA claims to uphold. In fact, YUFA appears to have forgotten how strongly they condemned their employer, York University, for hiring scab labour as recently as the 2024 CUPE 3903 strike

The labour movement must not hesitate to hold bad employers to account. This is especially true where that employer is a union. If we can’t hold each other to basic respect of collective agreements, how do we expect to hold other employers to those standards? CUPE 1281 calls on labour movement bodies such as the Toronto & York Region District Labour Council and the Ontario Federation of Labour to condemn this escalation by YUFA and its violation of core union principles.