McGill to eliminate floor fellows
McGill University is abolishing the position of live-in dormitory floor fellows – they’re unionized – and replacing them with a bureaucratic fixture called “residence life facilitators” who will not actually live in the dorms with the purpose of helping young people out on their own for the first time – and, especially appealing to the university, they’re not unionized.
This decision seems notably unwise given all the news about young people struggling with their mental health in an era of social media.
P 16:40 on 2024-02-20 Permalink
They flew too close to the sun. This was inevitable and I even warned someone that this was the eventual outcome when they pushed to unionize.
Free rent, free transit passes, almost unlimited free food and a host of other perks, but they just had to unionize and poke the bear over nonsensical issues.
If I cared, I’d go rub it in some faces.
Kate 17:16 on 2024-02-20 Permalink
McGill attempts to break unions on principle. They’re willing to do damage to get the upper hand on their employees.
P 17:51 on 2024-02-20 Permalink
Which is what I was saying to the floor fellows at the time. They had a system where they were provided an amazing deal in exchange for a dozen or so hours of their week acting as floor fellows.
They decided (“collectively”, with emphasis on the quotation marks) that in addition to thousands of dollars worth of benefits for a part time job, untaxed (as far as I could tell) perks and exceptionally flexible schedules, they wanted wages. And that they wanted to get involved in collective bargaining and to continue to pick fights with the people paying their rent.
And my point to them was that the McGill administration is exactly the kind of cold and cunning group that will just eliminate the program altogether once they get the chance.
Well, they got the chance. And now a fantastic and beneficial program for new students is gone.
Ian 19:01 on 2024-02-20 Permalink
Union busting is illegal even in Quebec, and organizing for collective bargaining rights is protected by law.
Solidarity with other workers is the hallmark of a decent person. Why are you siding with the bad guys, P? Are you a former floor fellow that was scared to mobilize?
The floor fellows didn’t “bring this on themselves”. They do provide an essential front-line socail service. I refer you to every other time McGill has engaged in union busting and deceitful labour practices, from their faculty all the way down to the support staff. Even though I am an alumnus I think McGill really represents some of the worst tendencies of universities in this regard.
Blork 19:13 on 2024-02-20 Permalink
While I do not like McGill’s union busting, I think “P” makes some good points. I don’t think unionizing is needed for what amounts to a part-time job that by definition only lasts a few years. This isn’t a career job. Nobody’s raising a family on a “floor fellow” job. Nobody plans to be a “floor fellow” for more than a couple of years. There’s no need for the protections provided by unionizing.
Clearly, the unionizing effort there was based on youthful idealism over practical realities, and had I been around and involved when this was going on I would have been on the same side as “P.” I would even (almost) go as far as saying that unionizing a job like that sort of makes a mockery of “real” jobs that should be unionized.
Nicholas 19:16 on 2024-02-20 Permalink
CBC Corrections, Feb 19, 2024 2:40 PM ET: “An earlier version of this story said that the facilitator jobs would not be unionized, based on the comments made by the union president. In fact, the position is covered by the same union but under a different collective agreement. The story has been updated.” The CBC story is from Saturday, updated Sunday; it originally had the line: “‘The residence life facilitators that they’ve said are going to replace us are not unionized,’ said Hutt, adding that this means it will be easier for the school to negotiate on their terms with workers.”. The CTV story, from today, was last updated at 2:03 p.m. EST, and does not say one way or another whether they will be unionized, nor does an archive updated four minutes after the first publication.
Ian 19:29 on 2024-02-20 Permalink
I disagree, respectfully.
If some workers in a university setting are unionized, they all should be. By definition, many jobs in a univeristy are not permanent – especially since tenure is increasingly elusive.
This indicates more need for protection, not less.
Even janitors are unionized, as well they should be.
bob 20:10 on 2024-02-20 Permalink
$14.25 an hour when minimum wage is $15.25 an hour. Some union.
dwgs 20:42 on 2024-02-20 Permalink
As a McGill employee I can say that both P and Kate are absolutely correct.
Blork 22:03 on 2024-02-20 Permalink
Hmm. Well… I’m not married to my opinion on this. And I am admittedly old-school when it comes to unions, meaning that where I grew up they protected miners and steelworkers and so on from having their families ruined by “the company.” Even here and now, it makes sense that teachers and nurses and other career people be unionized for all sorts of reasons.
But I don’t see the point in unionizing jobs that are by definition transitory and part time, especially in cases like this where the “floor fellow” is probably going to be an engineer making a six figure salary in a few years. What exactly is the union protecting for someone in such a short-term job that has zero chance of being long-term?
Do the complications and overhead of a union justify the protection for a job that doesn’t really need protection?
Ian, I hear what you’re saying, but any academic job at a university is a job on a career track, and you can’t really compare that with a short-term job like “floor fellow” that is in no way on a career track. (You could argue that working at a food kiosk or mopping floors isn’t a “career track” either, but those jobs are at least potentially long-term and the employees rely on them for their living. Not so with “floor fellow.”)
Anyway, I’m not planting any flags on this issue, just speaking to how I feel.
Maxim Baru 22:20 on 2024-02-20 Permalink
Please forgive me for breaking decorum, but some of these comments about unionization are totally checked out.
Unfortunately, most people in Quebec and Canada don’t understand just how much our labour market was set up in the 1940s on the assumption that the core industries people are working in are unionized — meaning that everyone needs to be unionized to access basic rights we take for granted.
For example, Canadians pride themselves at not having at-will employment like in the US. But in Quebec, everyone is an at-will employee for the first 2 years of any employment. Your boss doesn’t owe you a reason for firing you at all. Unless you are unionized, and owed just cause for termination.
Or how about your right to talk to your coworkers about each others conditions of employment, like wages? Unless you are unionized, your boss can fire you for talking about it with coworkers. You boss can also fire you for your activities outside of work. Don’t believe me? Read the basic text on Canadian employment & labour law by David Doorey.
In Europe if you don’t have a union, you’re probably covered by a sectoral agreement anyways. Or at least you can elect a works council. There’s some kind of mechanism for industrial planning that involves the general population. But in Canada we have nothing like that except for through the unions.
All to say: everyone up and down the labour market needs to be unionized. It’s beneath the dignity of an adult not to be. People just don’t understand how inverted the labour market has become in terms of the basic rights they think they have.
As for the floor fellows in specific, everything they get from the university in terms of in-kind payment and whatnot is definitely taxed. My understanding is that some people get virtually nothing on their pay cheques because everything has been whittled down by deductions done by the university. And even if they achieved no gains except to shift from the less advantageous set of laws governing individual contracts to the law governing collective agreements which entitles them to progressive discipline and just cause termination, it would have been worth while to unionize.
Blork 00:29 on 2024-02-21 Permalink
No need to ask forgiveness, as you’re not breaking decorum. You’re just voicing your opinion, and that’s what these comments are all about. 🙂
Kate 10:20 on 2024-02-21 Permalink
Thank you, Maxim Baru. You are not breaking decorum, you’ve made valuable points.