OVERVIEW

CUPE represents just over 73,000 members across over 230 bargaining units in the post-secondary education (PSE) sector. Our members work in universities, colleges and student-led organizations.

CUPE PSE members work in a wide variety of positions. We organize and represent both academic and support staff. Academic staff includes instructors, researchers, teaching assistants and lab technicians. Support staff work in grounds and building maintenance, libraries, food services, caretaking, information technology, clerical support and administration.

The PSE sector has undergone profound challenges in recent years. Between the COVID-19 pandemic, the impacts of sweeping immigration restrictions on international students, and ongoing austerity, members’ work and lives have been profoundly impacted.

As of the most recent census, over 460,000 people worked at universities, colleges, vocational and trade institutions in Canada. CUPE is a major union in universities, representing non-faculty employees. CUPE has far fewer members in colleges, but we have a significant number of college members in BC and Quebec.

ISSUES

Funding

Overwhelming evidence shows that investing in PSE makes sense for our common social and economic well-being. As Canada prepares for the impacts of a trade war with the United States, PSE institutions provide a crucial economic anchor for many communities by providing stable, good-paying union jobs in a wide range of professions. A strong post-secondary system is also essential to retrain and re-skill workers whose jobs may be impacted by tariffs and other economic disruptions, and in facilitating research and development that will preserve Canada’s economic prosperity and sovereignty in a rapidly changing world.

Despite these realities, both provincial and federal governments are persistently underfunding PSE. In 1982, 83% of university operating revenue came from combined provincial and federal government funding. Deep cuts made by the federal government, along with cuts made at the provincial level, have pushed the proportion of public funding down to below 50% today. The situation is particularly dire in British Columbia and Ontario, where PSE institutions rely disproportionately on student fees. Ontario, despite being Canada’s most populous province, has the lowest per-student funding in the country.

Funding for Quebec universities comes from the provincial government (49.9%), the federal government (20.9%), students (16.4%) and other sources (12.9%). Under the Plan d’action pour la réussite en enseignement supérieur 2021-2026, the Quebec government is allocating an additional $450 million over this five-year period.

Most provinces, however, instead of investing in the future are pushing for further austerity. In Alberta, the UCP government’s “Post-secondary Review” threatens to impose deep cuts on post-secondary institutions through decrees from the provincial Minister. Similarly, Nova Scotia’s Bill 12 attacks both stable public funding and collective bargaining rights by giving the Minister responsible for post-secondary broad powers to impose restructuring plans. In Newfoundland and Labrador, the government’s “Education Accord”, modelled after the provincial “Health Accord”, threatens to make big cuts to the MUN budget and pave the way for privatization.

When governments underfund PSE, the difference is made up by tuition increases, corporate donations and contracts, and more precarious work. Governments may provide direct support to students to help with tuition, in the form of grants, loans, scholarships, and tax credits, but much of this funding is poorly targeted or back-ended, with students forced to pay up front and wait for a tax credit or loan forgiveness to come a year – or even years – later.

The burden of rising tuition has been particularly heavy on international students, which can be charged much higher fees than domestic students and are often not eligible for direct supports. This has resulted in an exploitative financing model where PSE institutions have used international students to subsidize reduced public funding. In response to anxieties and scapegoating around the impacts of immigrants on housing prices, the federal government in 2024 significantly reduced the number of international student visas, accelerating the crisis of underfunding.

With all of these attacks on stable funding, many public PSE systems across the country are in a death spiral. Institutions are shuttering programs or closing entire campuses. This will have a negative impact on workers employed by PSE institutions but will have wider impacts on the economies and economic opportunities available to students and communities across the country.

Privatization, corporatization, and technological changes  

The decline in public funding has also transformed how PSE institutions are governed and how they operate. As more PSE institutions accept corporate donations and contracts that come with strings attached and more management and administration of universities and colleges are made up of business executives, the mission of providing higher education as a vital public service becomes eroded by profit-making and cost-cutting logic. PSE institutions are also turning towards financialization, with investments and real estate speculation becoming the fastest-growing part of university revenues.

One of the favoured tactics of corporatized administrations is privatizing or contracting out services. CUPE’s report, Who Pays? The cost of contracting out at Canadian post-secondary institutions identified that 83.7% of post-secondary institutions have contracted out some or all food services, while 61% have contracted out some or all custodial services. Half have contracted out both food and custodial services. Contracting out has a detrimental impact on workers. The report found that contracting out takes more than $1,000 a month out of workers’ pockets, in addition to costing them pensions, sick days, and other benefits.

Contracted-out workers are also more vulnerable to attacks on their union through “contract-flipping”. In New Brunswick, locals representing custodians and food service workers have been decertified through contract flipping, winning back their representation only after hard-fought campaigns. Many CUPE locals are fighting against the contracting out of services currently provided by members. In Ontario, CUPE had success in bringing back in house contracted out services such as academic support services, food services, cleaning and maintenance at several universities.

PSE administrations are also increasingly using new technologies to outsource work. Automation and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have been used to displace custodial and groundskeeping workers by robotic cleaners, and a growing amount of academic labour – such as marking and grading – is being performed by AI computer programs. Most of these technologies are controlled by for-profit tech companies, many based in the United States, that are contracted by PSE administrations. This can lead to workers employed by public PSE institutions losing work, or an intensification of work as these privately controlled technologies create new pressures and responsibilities for workers. CUPE has developed an AI Bargaining Guide to assist locals with negotiating on issues around digitalization and AI.

Along with the hollowing out and corporatization of public PSE institutions, the for-profit colleges industry has expanded rapidly, supported by right-wing provincial governments. In several provinces, private, for-profit colleges offer courses that can be used toward public university degrees. A number of for-profit, private colleges have also signed deals that allow them to offer students a diploma from a publicly funded college when they complete their studies.

Health and safety

Many campuses rushed reopening amidst the pandemic. In Ontario, universities reopened without any consultation with unions. Preparedness for future pandemics remains poor in post-secondary institutions, and the growing use of P3s in managing university facilities (including student housing) undermines university administration’s capacity to respond proactively to infectious disease outbreaks.

There is a growing backlog of deferred maintenance on PSE campuses, estimated at $17.9 billion in 2019. This means students and workers are learning and working in sub-standard, deteriorating facilities, often posing safety risks including slips and falls, exposure to harmful chemicals, and poor lighting. The funding framework for PSE institutions encourages administrations to invest in new buildings and other “capital development” like new machines over repairing and improving existing facilities. Further deterioration of campuses and facilities is likely as austerity is intensified.

Sexual harassment and violence

Everyone has the right to work, live, and learn in a safe environment. Sexual violence and harassment are serious matters that impact all members of the workplace, the union, and the campus community.

CUPE is committed to addressing and preventing sexual violence in our workplaces. There are unique factors to consider when it comes to post-secondary institutions. CUPE developed Tools on Sexual Violence and Harassment in Post-Secondary Education to assist and support local executives, union stewards, and members to navigate the process of responding to and preventing sexual violence and harassment within the sector. Our priority is fostering a culture of consent on campus, which is more effective than purely punitive measures.

BARGAINING

Wages and benefits

Cuts to government funding also have significant impacts on the wages, benefits and working conditions of workers, including CUPE members. Precarious work, outsourcing, privatization and corporatization are all on the rise in PSE. CUPE continues to face challenging rounds of bargaining due to underfunding in the sector.

In 2023-24, the sector saw significant wage settlements negotiated, which factored in the higher inflation rate since the pandemic. These settlements were often hard-fought and hard-won, reflecting the broader trend of increased labour militancy in Canada. In many cases, CUPE units made gains in PSE through coordinated bargaining strategies. At Queen’s University in Kingston, ON, CUPE locals played a key role in in the Queens Unity Council, which coordinated bargaining across all campus unions. CUPE 3902 and 3261 at the University of Toronto coordinated their bargaining across multiple bargaining units to win substantial financial gains.

While refusing to commit to adequate public funding, provincial governments regularly involve themselves in collective bargaining by setting wage mandates for the PSE sector. While Ontario’s Bill 124 restricting wages across the entire public sector was repealed, governments in Alberta, BC, and elsewhere continue to try and set wage mandates ahead of collective bargaining. There is also a worrying trend of legislation like Nova Scotia’s Bill 12 and Ontario’s Bill 33 which attack PSE autonomy and seek to override free and fair collective bargaining.

Precarious work

Declining government funding and increasing corporatization of PSE administrators contributes to an increased reliance on precarious forms of employment by PSE institutions. CUPE research shows that 54% of faculty appointments in Canadian universities have been contract, rather than permanent. Part-time, casual and temporary terms of work have also expanded in support roles. Contracting out also facilitates increasing precariousness. In some cases, universities and colleges are using attrition to get around collective agreement language preventing layoffs in order to replace permanent positions with casual and temporary ones.

The impacts of the Federal government’s changes to the International Student Visa and related programs underscores the adverse impacts of precarious work. PSE employers have offset the loss of international student tuition revenue by cancelling or not renewing contract teaching positions, circumventing normal layoff rights. At Carleton University in Ottawa, ON, as many as half of all teaching staff have been eliminated through contract instructor cuts, while at St. Mary’s University in Nova Scotia, specialist language instructors and support staff have had their work replaced by AI language learning bots.  

Organizing

CUPE’s recent organizing successes in post-secondary include:

  • Graduate academic assistants at the University of British Columbia (2023)
  • Support staff in the Université du Québec system in Montreal and Chicoutimi (2023)
  • Teaching assistants at St. Mary’s University and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (2023)
  • Support staff at the Agence universitaire de la Francophonie (2023)
  • Sessional instructors and teaching assistants at the University of Waterloo (2024)
  • Clinical nursing instructors (2023) and education instructors (2025) at Brock University
  • Maintenance support staff at l’École des hautes études commerciales de Montréal, HEC (2024)
  • Staff of the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness at York University (2024)

Graduate research assistants at the University of British Columbia also organized in 2024 but have been the targets of a litigation campaign by their employer to be decertified, based on the erroneous claim that student researchers are not workers. CUPE fights for student workers’ right to organize and collectively bargain around their conditions of work at UBC and everywhere in Canada.

Pensions

Most university pension plans are employer-sponsored. Most college plans are multi-employer plans established and regulated through provincial legislation. For the most part, these are defined benefit pension plans. Since the 2008 recession, employers have attacked pension plans by cutting benefits and shifting risk to employees, most notably by moving from defined benefit plans to defined contribution or target benefit plans.

Three Ontario universities – University of Guelph, University of Toronto and Queen’s University – established the University Pension Plan (UPP), a joint sponsored, multi-employer pension plan. CUPE staff and local leaders worked to ensure that this new pension plan will continue to provide members with a secure and stable retirement plan. As more universities re-examine their pension arrangements, many other CUPE locals could be involved in discussions with their employers about to joining the UPP. CUPE will work with locals to ensure that they have a strong voice in these discussions.

In Newfoundland, Memorial University is moving toward establishing joint sponsorship and joint control of their pension plan.