As you know, over the past few months we have been trying to collect as much information from floor fellows (past and present) as possible. We have been asking about expectations, worries, fears, hopes and thoughts on the unionization process so far and the bargaining process that is to come in the fall. I have also been doing some research to find out if any other floor fellows or RA’s at other universities across Canada have unionized, or at least attempted to, in the hope of learning from their experiences. While I have not yet found another set of unionized floor fellows I have been in contact with an RA at Carelton University who went through a (unsuccessful) unionization attempt recently. We chatted for quite a bit comparing our relative Rez Life systems and I was surprised to hear that they had a lot of the same issues that I myself felt this past year. She shared with me that a few RAs became frustrated with their superiors in their failure to deal with some critical issues they were facing and so began to think about other options and hinted at unionization. Those few RAs organized and eventually led a card drive where, they ultimately came up short. They only received 49% approval, and in Ontario this does not lead to a referendum vote as it would in Quebec. 

While the Carelton RAs never made it past the card drive in their attempt to unionize, some of them are still attempting to organize. The RA I spoke with was quite involved in the organization process and is passionate about the possibility of unionization. I myself had mixed feelings about unionization over the past year but, the more and more I educated myself about it and thought about what it could mean for future floor fellows, agree it is necessary and am very excited about it. I was therefore interested to hear why this particular RA was so passionate about unionization. 

She explained to me some of the scenarios that she encountered while she worked for Carelton, which included being left without a director to deal with serious issues on duty such as suicide attempts, and feeling unsafe in their work space because of a student on their floor and even feeling unsafe due to a member of their own RA team. She explained that many became frustrated when Rez Life did not address these issues. We also bonded over the fact that we began floor fellowing in second year and did so for at least 2 years. Particularly she expressed to me that while she herself felt able to deal with such tough situations on her own at the age of 19, she knew many other floor fellows who were (and continue to be) thrown into situations, which overwhelm them with little support from Rez Life. We agreed that there was sometimes a disconnect between the amount of ‘self care’ rhetoric preached to us by Rez Life and our ability within our own jobs to take care of ourselves emotionally, and physically. She also shared that she often took on second jobs in Ottawa or at the University, on top of being a full time student and working as an RA. However she was not technically allowed to take on any other job(s), as stated by her contract with Rez life, and had to meet with and get the acceptance of her directors in order to take on the other jobs. While she agreed that most RAs simply couldn’t manage another job (we all know how time consuming floor fellowing can be) she thought it unnecessary for Rez Life, as an employer, to dictate if we took other jobs, especially when many students must do so to cover their financial costs such as tuition, books, etc.  

Our conversation really left me thinking about the reasons why I supported our own unionization process. Talking to someone at another school who was dealing with a lot of the same issues that I myself witnessed or went through this past year (I won’t go into details here but feel free to message me and ask me questions) validated my feelings and my support for our own unionization process. After all this discussion of things we didn’t like about our Rez Life systems though, we both reassured each other that we do in fact love our jobs. And that really is true! What an amazing and rewarding two years I have experienced in this job. But the reality is that sometimes it's overwhelming and in those (hopefully) rare moments when shit really does hit the fan I think it's important that floor fellows have a lifeline to turn to. That is not to say that McGill and SHHS are not capable of supporting floor fellows. To say this would be unfair, as SHHS and McGill have done a lot to support floor fellows and students. However in other cases they have failed us and that is why I believe it is right for us to build a nice cushy net for us to fall into when things go wrong and our other avenues are not able to help us. 

I would love to hear your opinions about this! Comment below or message me on Facebook (Christina Clemente) or email ([email protected]). 

Hey everyone!
So you haven't heard from us in a while but Adam and I, as well as the FF union team,  have been meeting with AMUSE, getting some survey's ready for y'all, and doing some research in preparation for bargaining. 

Anyway hope everyone is having  a lovely summer. I am having a blast looking over Quebec labour codes - but actually! So I decided to share the fun. Below I have broken down some parts of the Quebec Labour Standard Act which I think are particularly interesting and may apply to us. 

For starters the Quebec Labour Standard Act (QLSA) sets the minimum conditions for all Quebec employees. While some employees are excluded from this act (such as domestic workers) we are not... a.k.a. the QLSA applies to Floor fellows. 

WAGES SECTION:


As of May 2014 the General Min Wage in Quebec is $10. 35 per hour. However there are some exceptions such as: camp counsellors, trainees, and employees remunerated on commission alone. 


Under a sub section about Meals and Accommodation the QLSA states: 


"An employee's working conditions may require the employer to provide meals and accommodation or ensure that accommodation is provided to the employee. ... Each employee must have a bed and a chest of drawers, and access to a toilet and shower or bath.... The employee cannot be required to pay any other costs related to the accommodation, such as the cost of having access to a kitchen, a living room or any other room."


FYI the maximum you can be charged for meals and housing in this case is $26.79 per week for food and $25.76 per week for a room. 

In a bit more detail, what this means is that the arbitrator decided to remove the names of the new hires for next year from the list of employees that McGill submitted to the Labour Board, and determined that we had over 50% of Floor Fellows sign cards in favour of unionization.  (If you want to know more about the hearing, you can check out the previous blog post.)

AMUSE and PSAC are now certified as our parent unions.  In the next few weeks there are a number of things that need to get done in order to formalize our position within AMUSE's structure.  There will be a Special General Meeting of AMUSE in order to vote on bylaw changes within AMUSE that will guarantee us representation on the AMUSE Board of Directors and within the AMUSE executive.  You will all be invited to attend, so if you're in Montreal for the next few weeks, stay tuned!

Additionally, we will begin reaching out to various groups to gather information that can help us begin to prepare for bargaining.  This is an incredibly important process, and I hope that everyone who is at all interested will get involved.  This will include gathering information from past floor fellows, returners, and new hires about their perspectives on the Floor Fellow position.  More details (including anonymous online surveys, in-person information sessions, etcetera) will be coming your way about that as the summer continues.

(Email from Allison Jones)

On April 30th there was a hearing at the Quebec Labour Board where McGill University and Amuse each presented their case to the commissioner to determine if the floor fellow union should be accredited. To begin let's go over the unionization process step-by-step:

Step 1:  Card Signing

• Cards are distributed which are signed by those in support of unionizing. Signed cards, along with a $2 fee are submitted by a set date (in this case it was March 3rd, 2014).
  

Step 2: Verification

• The cards are sent directly to the Quebec Labour Board for verification. They are the only people who ever know who did, or did not, sign a card. They contact McGill to obtain our names and information so as to cross-reference to ensure there was no fraud. If McGill provides the information without delay, the process will take about 5 weeks.
•  If 50%+1 (or more) is reached we proceed to step 3 (bargaining).
• If 30-50% is reached The Labour Board conducts a mandatory vote of all floor fellows. If this vote results in 50% + 1 approval for unionization, proceed to step 3.        
• If less than 30% is reached, our attempt to unionize stops here. 
  
  

Step 3: Bargaining

•  At this point, we would become certified and then enter into negotiations with McGill to come up with a collective agreement.
  

Currently we are at step 2, the verification stage. The point of contention between McGill and Amuse, which the Labour Board will rule on in about 3 weeks, is the list of employees at the time of the card collection (March 3rd). We only included the floor fellows who are currently hired for the 2013-2014 year, however McGill believes that the list should include this years floor fellows as well as the new hires for next year (2014-2015). They also believe that we should include the MacDonald Campus Floor fellows (there are only 5), which we have agreed to do. 

So on Wednesday, at the hearing, McGill was arguing that all this year and next year floor fellows should be on the list, while the PSAC (union) lawyers were arguing that only this years floor fellows should be on that list. Here is a brief overview of each side's arguments. 

McGill: 

• The new hires should be considered employees as of March 3rd because they were included in an email listserve sent out by Ria Rombough at that time. 
• Because the number of people who are hired in the spring but decide not to begin work in August is so low (0-2 per year) it demonstrates how committed new hires are as floor fellow employees. 
• Morally, it would be unjust to exclude next year's hires since they will be directly affected by being apart of the union. 

PSAC and Amuse:

• They established that our payment was solely with room and board. They then established that new hires would not receive this payment until August 13 2014, therefore they are not considered employees until then (until they receive renumeration). 
• They cited a lot of parts of Quebec Labour law and precedents which further proved that, as of March 3rd 2014, the new hires were not officially employees and therefore should not included on the list. 

Also: 
Ria Rombough was called as a witness by McGill, and she was asked many questions by both the McGill lawyer and the PSAC lawyers. Basically, she went over the structure of Rez Life in great detail, along with the timeline and method of hiring new hires. She didn't say anything contentious, it was all stuff that we know and have heard before. 

Why is this list of employees important?
We cannot be accredited as a union until McGill verifies that the list we have presented is an accurate representation of the work conditions and employees as of the date we handed in our union cards (March 3rd 2014). If the Labour Board decides to include the new hires on our list of employees it means we will have only had 30% of "Yes" cards collected and would have to take it to a referendum vote. However, if the Labour Board decides that we do not need to include the new hires then we will be accredited and can move on to step 3, bargaining. Whether or not the MacDonald Floor fellows are included will not effect this particular concern (our accreditation) since there are only 5, however including them in our union will require some further coordination with them as to how to include them in our collective agreement. 

We will hear about the final decision in about 3 weeks.