News

CUPE 1281 is pleased to announce the winner of the 2025 Mary-Jo BDS Award: Guelph 4 Palestine!

In a field crowded by amazing organizations working for Palestinian liberation, it was difficult to pick a single group! G4P is a group of artists, healthcare professionals, students, people of faith and committed community members that have truly galvanized the city of Guelph. We recognize the creativity of their work, and how they have continuously connected with folks on many levels and in different places, including the People’s Conference for Palestinian Solidarity.

This award honours the legacy of Mary-Jo Nadeau, a former CUPE 1281 staff representative and activist, professor, leader, mentor and comrade to many.

Free Palestine!

The CUPE 1281 Executive Committee has sent the following solidarity letter to the ITF Staff Union.

We, CUPE 1281, a union representing union, non-profit, and social justice staff mostly in Ontario, Canada, want to express our unwavering solidarity with the ITF Staff Union as you resist escalating attacks on your job security and the growing wave of managerialism inside the ITF.

It is deeply hypocritical for an organization that claims to defend workers’ rights worldwide to undermine its own staff, erode union protections, and impose top-down control. The same leaders promoting labour solidarity and democracy abroad are silencing the very workers who keep their organization running.

We know this pattern of behaviour all too well. Many CUPE 1281 members are staff at various unions which call themselves progressive, yet engage in anti-union actions and rhetoric quite similar to what you are facing- despite an ocean separating us. One of our units, consisting of staff at the York University Faculty Association, is currently fighting off restructuring, increased managerial control, attacks on job security, workplace protections against harassment and discrimination, and union rights at the bargaining table. The circumstances may differ, but the pattern is the same: more management power, fewer worker rights, and silenced staff voices. We support your fight just as we support everywhere workers fight back — through solidarity and defending union principles.

We also recognize the severe toll this process has taken on ITF staff mental health. Constant uncertainty, the threat of job losses, and increased workloads come at a real human cost. No worker should face that kind of pressure — least of all in a labour organization built to champion workers’ rights. If the ITF claims financial distress, they must open their books. Workers deserve full transparency — not vague excuses to justify restructuring and erode rights.

When unions are undermined from within, the entire labour movement suffers. Your fight is not only for ITF staff — it’s for every worker the world over who believes in fairness, dignity, and the right to organize without fear or retaliation.
Stay strong. We see you, we are with you, and we will amplify your fight.

In solidarity,

Sam DeFranco, President
On behalf of CUPE 1281

On July 9th & July 14th, CUPE 1281 staff at the York University Faculty Association (YUFA) returned to the table with YUFA’s negotiators. While the parties reached agreement on a couple of minor, mainly housekeeping, proposals, YUFA and its lawyers from Ogletree Deakins continue to push over 100 proposals with sweeping concessions it labels as “modernizing” and “streamlining.”

CUPE 1281 staff at YUFA continue to bargain in good faith, but the restructuring that YUFA is seeking starkly contradicts its own commitments to equity, collegiality, and labour solidarity.

What we heard is YUFA’s strong desire to hire more managers without a lot of detail about how it intends to pay for them. There are 14 Elected Officers whose course releases are paid back to York University with members’ dues. Top-heavy management diverts resources away from front-line servicing work.

We are a providing just a snapshot, in no particular order, of the significant number of concessions and what it means.

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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.

It’s time to register for the CUPE 1281 Convention! If you are elected as a delegate, an executive officer, or are a sub-unit steward, or if you intend to participate as a non-voting member, including as a retiree, please complete this registration form to confirm your attendance at Convention. If your sub-unit has not run an election yet to form a delegation, and has over 5 members, please do so as soon as possible.

Convention Details

This year’s annual convention will be held on Monday July 21, 2025, and will run from 10am to 5pm. Convention will be hybrid: in-person at the Workers Action Centre in Toronto, as well as virtual on Zoom. At our annual convention, sub-unit delegates of our local gather to receive reports from the executive committee, discuss new business items and elect the executive committee and convention and council delegates for the upcoming year.

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On June 11, the staff at the York University Staff Association (YUFA), represented by CUPE 1281, presented a focused set of proposals to strengthen protections against harassment and discrimination, advance equity and job security, and prioritize health and safety. These workers fight for the rights of full-time faculty, librarians & archivists, and postdoctoral visitors at York University every day.

In an unprecedented move, YUFA has hired external legal counsel to lead their negotiations. In the first meeting between the parties, YUFA stated that bargaining negotiations should remain confidential and behind closed doors, a practice that YUFA itself does not exercise in recent bargaining rounds with their own employer, York University. It would also mean that their bargaining team would remain less accountable to their membership. CUPE 1281 made it clear that we cannot agree to confidential bargaining with media blackouts.

YUFA’s opening package contains over 100 aggressive proposals aimed at restructuring the workplace and weakening our union by splitting the bargaining unit, reducing our rights to participate in our union, stripping anti-harassment and discrimination protections, and reducing job security, among many others.

We are dismayed and disappointed, but CUPE 1281 is committed to collective bargaining and reaching a fair and respectful agreement at the table. We look forward to the next bargaining sessions on June 25, July 9, July 14 and July 28.

During CUPE Ontario Convention, the delegates from CUPE 1281 worked to bring forward an emergency resolution against the Canadian government’s plan to increase reliance on prison labour. Due to the fact that only one person, not from our local, was allowed to speak on the motion, the delegates wanted to share the following with CUPE 1281 members.

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For the seventh year, CUPE 1281 will be giving out the Mary-Jo Nadeau Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Award. This monetary award of $500 is presented to an organization fighting to end support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and to pressure Israel to comply with international law. Anyone may nominate an organization for this award.

Selection criteria that will be taken into consideration include the following:

• Local to where CUPE 1281 members work/live
• Raises the voices of Palestinians in their struggle for self-determination

The deadline to nominate an organization is Monday, June 30, 2025.

If you are interested in nominating an organization, please fill out the Mary-Jo Nadeau BDS Award nomination form.

This year’s annual convention will be held on Monday July 21, 2025, and will run from 10am to 5pm. Convention will be hybrid: in-person at the Workers Action Center in Toronto, as well as virtually on Zoom. More information on registration and sub-unit delegate elections will be emailed out within the next couple of weeks.

If you are interested in learning more about our annual convention, and the obligations on the Executive and the Membership, please feel free to review the Convention section of the CUPE 1281 Bylaws (see pg. 12).

We apologize for any inconvenience that stems from our late announcement of the date. We encountered unexpected difficulty securing an in-person space.

We hope to see you there!