UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO EDUCATION WORKERS

803-180 Bloor Street West, Toronto, Ontario M5S 2V6

tel: 416.593.7057; fax: 416.593.9866
info@cupe3902.org/www.cupe3902.org
Executive Committee

Dr. Cheryl Regehr

Chair:
Erin Black

Vice-President and Provost

Secretary-Treasurer:
Abouzar Nasirzadeh

University of Toronto

Vice Chair Unit 1 and 2:

Ryan Culpepper

6 March 2015

Vice Chair Unit 3 and 4:

Erich Vogt
Vice Chair Unit 5:
Scott Melvin
Communications/Recording
Secretary:
Jessica Gardiner
Internal Liaison Officer:
Alexander Ivovic
External Liaison Officer:
Daniel Brielmaier
Grievance Officer:
Sean Hayes
Executive Director:
Wayne Dealy
Staff Representatives:
Jesse Payne
Shiraz Vally

Dear Cheryl,
We know each other. We have sat across the table from each other in previous rounds of
bargaining, and weve worked in collaborative ways on task forces and working groups. We
share a commitment to graduate-student support. We believe in negotiating fair deals. You
are an honest person and a social worker whos attuned to the needs and vulnerabilities of
your fellow human beings. But members of CUPE have not witnessed you acting that way.
Im asking you the following questions in an open letter because your Bargaining Team is not
meeting with ours, and because when hundreds of freezing student-workers came to your
office yesterday, and again today, requesting to hear from you, you refused to come out.
Were in the dark here. Without answers and with no communication, and with untrue and
insulting information appearing in the media, people are getting increasingly frustrated and
angry. The possibility of a negotiated settlement is becoming more remote. I sincerely dont
think thats what you want to happen.
Can you please clarify the following?
1)You and I both know that graduate funding is insufficient. Youve said that to me and
others. We havent agreed on the ways to raise it, but we agree it needs to be raised.
On the graduate-funding working group, you proposed departmental slush funds to top
up the funding of only certain students. The student representatives insisted on an
across-the-board increase to the minimum.
Now youre speaking to the media and saying grad students are flush with cash and have
no need for improvement. Your Globe interview included absurd claims that every
CUPE member can see through. Ill spare you a catalogue of the colourful responses Ive
heard. So which is it? You are publicly portraying us as base, greedy and deceptive
people who issue threats to fellow member that we in fact have never issued, and in
addition to stationing campus security at each of our picket lines, you are spending
thousands of dollars every day on a private investigation firm with no function other
than to collect evidence toward injunctions against your own students peacefully
exercising our legal rights, as if we were criminals.
I know thats not how you see us. Will you please just confirm your longstanding
position that grad students dont receive enough funding and that the funding must be
increased? Is it really your position that the funding minimum will never go up? I cant
believe thats the case. And if not now, after 7 years, when?

2) You know how the funding package is structured. We spent over a year in a working
group discussing the relationship of employment income to the rest of the funding
packagesomething the media have not yet accurately portrayed, largely due to your
own knowing misstatements. CUPE, the Graduate Student Union and your
administration issued joint recommendations regarding the work/funding relationship.
You know that, unless the structure of the funding package fundamentally changes,
proposed wage increases are meaningless for people on internal funding. Will you state
that publicly and stop focusing on wages? This is a dishonest message, and you know
that.
3) The numbers youve publicized to the University community regarding average graduate
income at U of T are flawed in many ways. You know that, because weve been through
the numbers on your working group. When we discussed them, your representatives
including a few social scientistsfreely admitted the problems with the way the
averages were calculated, and the problem with relying on averages more generally (a
topic covered in every Sociology 100 class).
The distortions are obvious. CUPEs membership includes statisticians and economists
who can easily expose the ridiculousness of the numbers, as well as computer scientists
who can recover the hard data your administration has inexplicably deleted from the
School of Graduate Studies web site.
I know you to be a person uninterested in deception. Please provide the necessary
context for these numbers or remove them. The Union can also provide this context if
you are unwilling.
I believe this labour dispute can be settled relatively easily if your administration simply does the things
youve known and admitted for years that it needs to do. Increase the funding minimum. Its been 7
years! Stop charging full tuition to unfunded students who take no classesanyone with a moral
compass knows thats wrong.
If we could take your word that these things would happen without a strike, we would. But when we
last bargained in 2012, you sat across the table from me as we negotiated the creation of the graduate
funding working group. You and your colleagues looked me in the eye and said, Ryan, I know that if this
working group doesnt produce results, well never be able to get an agreement with CUPE in this way
again. You knew you had three years or there would be a strike. Here we are, three years later, and
you were right. Lets get together, produce results and get to an agreement. Were willing if you are.
Sincerely,
--Ryan Culpepper
CUPE 3902 Unit 1 Chief Negotiator
PhD Candidate