Executive Resignation

We cannot make the gains that our members so desperately need and deserve under our current parent union, PSAC. For this reason, we are resigning from our union positions and dedicating all our energies to a member-led campaign to step away from PSAC and affiliate to another union, the CSN. We will be forming a new organization: the Concordia Research and Education Workers (CREW) Union. We encourage you to find out more about this campaign—and sign a CREW membership card using this link:

PSAC is unable and unwilling to address the longstanding and pervasive problems facing us as teaching and research assistants at Concordia. Every year, they pocket dollars from struggling student-workers, while contributing virtually nothing to improving our pay and working conditions. We want to spend our time building a stronger union, but we’ve been forced into this grave decision by PSAC’s poor results and support.

Our mandate: A democratic, fighting union

Our executive team ran on a mandate to build a democratic, fighting union that would secure a collective agreement that addresses the rapidly rising cost of living, rampant job insecurity and overwork, and Concordia’s atrocious record on sexual harassment. In a contested election last May, we won 70% of the vote on this platform. Since then, we’ve been organizing our membership to put this platform into practice. Together, we’ve built strong campaigns around fighting sexual harassment and better pay, and advocated for collaboration with other unions and organizations at Concordia. We’ve expanded and democratized our Delegate Council, activating members from previously underrepresented departments. And we’ve started the process of bargaining for an ambitious collective agreement, consulting with members and electing bargaining officers.

We have only achieved this much because there are many hundreds of teaching and research assistants at Concordia who are demanding change after years of inertia. Our collective agreement has remained effectively the same as it was when it was first established years ago, and PSAC’s slow and often uncaring grievance process regularly fails to enforce what meagre protections it offers. PSAC has actively undermined many of our attempts to campaign for our members: they failed to help us deliver significant changes on the issue of sexual harassment. They failed to provide adequate training and support for us and our members. And they disciplined us for rallying for a pay raise above inflation. They also insist that the PSAC head office, not the TAs and RAs who work at Concordia, will dictate the monetary demands that we will present to the university during bargaining. The university takes full advantage of these dynamics, exploiting PSAC’s poor results and lack of consultation, not to mention its lack of a participatory union culture—in sharp contrast to CSN’s, notably—to push around our members and chip away at our working conditions.

The importance of this coming year—our first major contract negotiation in six years and the first since the COVID-19 pandemic—demands that we take action. We need to build a union that is truly run by the members. We need a union that campaigns for social change in and beyond the workplace. And we need a union that is ready and willing to fight for the contract we deserve: a pay raise above inflation, an end to overwork and job insecurity, and the ability for students and workers themselves to address abuses of power.

CSN: A culture of democracy, a history of success!

We urge you to resign from PSAC and sign up to CSN today, and that you encourage every TA and RA in your department and your classes to do the same. CSN is one of the largest and best-known unions in Canada, with a proud history of organizing low-paid and precarious workers like us. They campaign in the courts and in the streets, on important social issues like discrimination, housing, education, and the environment. CSN has a democratic structure that is different from most large unions and which provides far greater autonomy to union locals. Employers are scared of CSN unions because they have a track record of backing members’ demands, effectively using the collective power of workers and winning good contracts during bargaining. Signing on with CSN sends a clear message to Concordia that we are ready to fight – it’s a simple action you can take to improve our future. All TRAC members are currently PSAC members, so by not signing you would be inadvertently endorsing the status quo.

It has been a profound honour to be trusted as leaders in this union, and we remain committed to fighting for our collective interests as education and research workers at Concordia. But the work that we’ve been doing as TRAC can only lead to meaningful change if we begin working together as CREW Union. We intend to formally step down from our posts at the end of Friday, March 17 to wrap up the existing commitments of the organisation. We hope that you will give us your trust in taking this next step forward and that you will join us in signing on with CSN.

Yours in solidarity,

Sam Thompson, former President, TRAC
Becca Wilgosh, former Vice-President, TRAC
Stephanie Eccles, former Secretary-Treasurer, TRAC
Max Jones, former Communications Officer, TRAC
Saskia Kowalchuk, former Mobilization Officer, TRAC
Mya Walmsley, former Bargaining Officer, TRAC