Student Union Locks Out Labor Union at Simon Fraser University
The leadership of the Simon Fraser Student Society (SFSS) has announced a Sunday lockout of SFSS’s union employees, after two years of unsuccessful contract negotiations. Unless an agreement is reached by tomorrow afternoon, CUPE local 3338′s twenty employees will be barred from working their jobs.
Unsurprisingly, the two sides characterize the state of negotiations differently, with CUPE arguing that SFSS is demanding “dramatic wage rollbacks and cuts to staffing levels,” while SFSS president Jeff McCann claims that the student society is asking for an 8% average pay cut, with half of that loss to be restored over the course of the new contract.
Activists claim that this move is ideologically motivated, noting that newly-elected SFSS leaders announced the
