Academic workers at University of Winnipeg join PSAC

News Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – June 30, 2011

Academic workers at University of Winnipeg join PSAC

WINNIPEG, MB – After several months of campaigning and card signing, nearly 400 academic workers employed at the University of Winnipeg have joined the Public Service Alliance of Canada and will now benefit from improved working conditions and free collective bargaining.

Following an intense organizing drive, an application was filed with the Manitoba Labour Board on April 6, 2011. Teaching assistants, tutors, lab demonstrators and markers voted 89 per cent in favour of joining PSAC. Workers, many of them students, welcomed the opportunity to regulate their often precarious working conditions.

“It became obvious during the campaign that academic workers are underdogs at UofW and unionization will give them a voice,” explains Prairie Region Organizer Veronique Allard, who took the lead on this campaign. “Their work is important and should be valued more.”

“The PSAC has been organizing in the university sector for nearly eight years now,” says Robyn Benson, Regional Executive Vice-President – Prairies. “So we are thrilled to have the chance to put that experience and knowledge to work for our new members at the UofW.”

PSAC represents nearly 30,000 academic workers in more than 15 different Canadian post-secondary institutions, most of them in Quebec, Ontario and the Atlantic. This is the first PSAC bargaining unit in the university sector in the Prairie Region.

The Public Service Alliance of Canada represents 172,000 workers across the country and more than 23,000 in the Prairie Region, ­the majority of whom are in the federal public sector.

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