The Canadian Federation of Students – Ontario fully supports and stands in solidarity with the members of Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) 901 Unit 1 members that went on strike last Monday, March 10th, 2025. The PSAC 901 strike is a result of the Queen’s administration’s failure to reach an agreement with over 2000 student workers who are demanding fair and liveable wages.
We echo the concerns of PSAC 901 and these concerns are true across the province. Graduate funding in Canada has not increased for over two decades—as a result, most graduate students in Ontario are severely underpaid, subsisting on $25,000 a year or less. Graduate students do not receive adequate compensation for their work. PSAC 901 demands are fair and just, especially given the working conditions that their members are experiencing. Oftentimes graduate students and TAs are expected to do more work for less compensation and in workplaces that are highly precarious. Better funding is required to help cover the costs of basic living expenses, housing, healthcare and tuition expenses in the midst of a cost of living crisis. Throughout this bargaining process, PSAC has highlighted the lack of compensation for course content preparation, no fair remedy to the years of Bill 124 blocking their wages and minimal support for mental health and child care support. This is disrespectful to the work that PSAC 901 members do for the institution and for the bargaining process.
With Queen’s University’s Board of Trustees predicting a 35.7 million dollar deficit, the institution is at risk of a financially precarious future, especially with the lack of funding from the provincial government. Students and workers have witnessed this before– the Laurentian University insolvency in 2021 that led to program closures, massive layoffs and students not able to finish their degrees or their graduate research. This all occurred due to decades of underfunding of post-secondary education and the overreliance on tuition fees to fund institutions, rather than having stable, long-term public funding. As the PSAC 901 strike continues, students and workers are aware of what is at risk if the institution continues to penalize workers for the institution’s financial crisis.
Graduate students in Ontario are struggling to make ends meet. While completing their own research and course work, graduate students play many different roles in post-secondary education including providing academic support, teaching and research assistants for the university, and supporting faculty and other students – yet their wages are half the annual minimum wage.
Since 2018, we have seen how budget cuts to post-secondary education have been detrimental to both students and workers. Whether it is preparing for another term of Doug Ford’s provincial government, or bargaining with administrators who prioritize profit over people, we are reminded that students and workers must be united in our demands for a better education system or we risk witnessing irreparable harm to public institutions. Solidarity between workers and students is needed now more than ever as we foresee another year of crisis in post-secondary education.
United, we win!