On Feb. 22, McGill University and the Association of McGill University Support Employees (AMUSE) announced that they had come to a tentative agreement on both the economic and non-economic issues affecting casual workers at the university. The proposed agreement, which needs to be approved by a ratification vote at AMUSE’s next major meeting, includes provisions for wage increases, paid overtime, and sick leave, as well as modifications to the existing hiring and firing process for casual labourers on campus.

According to a press release by McGill University, this will be the first collective agreement for AMUSE, which represents roughly 1,500 casual labourers on campus. These negotiations took a year to complete.

“Something that we keep in mind is that a lot of the advantage to holding a casual position is that it can be a short-term thing … and you’re looking for flexibility in that job a lot of the time,” Jaime Maclean, current president of AMUSE, said.  “But there’s also a lot of inequality between positions on campus, and without a labour union to police the working conditions of their members, an employer can easily take advantage of their employees.”

Maclean, however, was quick to state that while McGill hadn’t been taking advantage of their casual employees, there were still problems in wage equality and job demands that emerged some years ago, leading directly to the creation of AMUSE and the beginning of collective bargaining.

“While there are obviously people who just work once a week and don’t mind that, there are a large number of people who work full-time at McGill in the same jobs as MUNACA workers,” Farid Attar, former president of AMUSE, noted. Attar is also a member of the bargaining team that negotiated the agreement with McGill.

Attar added that AMUSE aims to maintain this flexibility for the employees who benefit from it, while also increasing job security, benefits, and general working conditions for employees who have put four years of their life into their work.

AMUSE’s bargaining committee was elected at their first general assembly in Nov. 2010, whereupon they attempted to draft the terms of the initial agreement. It wasn’t until March 2011 that serious back-and-forth negotiation began. Bargaining on the non-economic issues continued throughout the year until they were finally resolved in Dec. 2011. On economic issues, however, bargaining quickly reached a stalemate, requiring both parties to call for conciliation.

Altar explained that conciliation brings in the government as a neutral third party, in order to introduce a fresh perspective and restart negotiations. 

In this agreement, some of the benefits gained in the non-economic sphere included written contracts, paid sick days for full-time workers with six-month contracts, priority for AMUSE members for contract renewals and promotions, and paid overtime.

More thought was put into considering wage increases, with the membership of AMUSE categorized into three main groups, each of whom are going to see minimum wage increases under this agreement, as well as minimum yearly increases, with the first increase scheduled for the signing of the agreement. For those workers who are already paid above the minimums mandated by the agreement, there is no danger of losing wages.

“People have to come to the ratification vote,” Attar stressed. “Ultimately it’s not the bargaining team who decides, it’s the membership that gave us the mandate to bargain with McGill­—if you want those wage increases, if you want those job securities, you’ll have to come to the ratification vote … during that time, we’ll answer all the questions they have.”

The ratification vote for AMUSE’s collective bargaining agreement is tentatively scheduled for mid-March, with one session to take place in the afternoon and one at night.