OPEN STATEMENT OF SUPPORT WITH CUPE 3902 & 3903

We the Rojava Solidarity Collective, representing many graduate student members of CUPE, express our full public support for the striking workers of CUPE 3902 and CUPE 3903. TAs, GAs and Contract Faculty are central to the delivery of education and the conduct of research at universities, and the University increasingly relies on their lower-cost labour to deal with a growing undergraduate student body without having to pay for more expensive full-time faculty. This is a trend throughout North America and Ontario has the worst per-student funding formulas in Canada.

In addition to harming the teaching and learning environment, this expansion of academic insecurity more broadly harms the university as a public institution, with its chilling effects on faculty governance, collegiality, and academic freedom. The rise of contingent faculty is further developing in tandem with the bloating of senior administration and salaries. All of this takes place in the context of declining government funding for post-secondary education

Therefore the Rojava Solidarity Collective stands in support of the ongoing strikes by the workers of CUPE 3902 & 3903. We are a grassroots organization based in Toronto, on the stolen lands of the Anishinabek, Haudenosaunee and Wendat. Our independent collective organizes to show solidarity with peoples’ uprisings around the Middle East and North Africa against authoritarian regimes, imperialist rule, and jihadist groups. Ongoing people’s struggles around the world show us that an injury to one is an injury to all, and that any victory against exploitation and oppression is a victory for all the oppressed. Immediate and principled solidarity sustains these struggles and wins concrete gains.

In solidarity,

Rojava Solidarity Collective