Concordia teaching and research assistants take to picket lines on first day of unlimited strike

The union representing Concordia University teaching assistants (TA) and research assistants (RA) hit the picket lines Wednesday as part of an unlimited strike. 

Concordia’s Research and Education Workers Union (CREW-CSN) represents more than 2,000 employees, 95 per cent of which voted in favour of the strike.

Wages and job security are at the core of the union’s demands. They are demanding a pay raise to $45 an hour to combat the cost of living crisis alongside a range of job security measures. The union is also striking to put an end to unpaid work hours and to obtain protections for members who have been disciplined for participating in political protest outside of work.

“Striking is not something we do lightly,” said Jason Langford, member of the CREW bargaining committee and graduate student in geography. “CREW members are ready and willing to do what it takes to get a wage which allows us to live and work with dignity.”

Union members will picket every weekday at the university’s downtown Sir George Williams campus and two days a week at the Loyola campus in the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce borough.

The strike follows a long line of negotiations that began in the spring of 2024. After close to a year of bargaining, the union said they reached an impasse with the university administration last month. 

“We have hit a brick wall with management,” said Saleha Hedaraly, vice president of the Fédération nationale des enseignantes et des enseignants du Québec-CSN. “Austerity is not a reason to deny workers adequate work conditions.”

Concordia has implemented a fleet of budget cuts as it stares down the barrel of a forecasted deficit of $79.4 million for the 2025-26 year. Measures like hiring freezes were implemented in the hopes of closing the deficit gap to $31.6 million by the end of 2026.

Despite this, Lauren Laframboise, a research assistant in the department of history who was present at the picket lines Wednesday morning, believes that the university still has the capacity to support academic staff who she said are struggling to put food on the table.

“I think that it shows that people are tired of this bloated administration and that it’s time to redistribute some of these huge salary increases to the people who are actually doing the work that makes the university function,” she said, referring to the near $33,000 pay increase Concordia President Graham Carr received during the 2023-2024 academic year.

Concordia spokesperson Vannina Maestracci said that the president’s salary increase was equivalent to the ones given to other unions and associations at the university that year, adding that the executive team did not end up pocketing the pay increase.

“The president and the other members of the executive team actually donated the amounts of their salary increases for 2023-2024 back to the university, in effect freezing their salaries for that year,” said Maestracci in a statement to CityNews.

For Laframboise, striking is the only tool remaining that academic staff have left at their disposal.

“I’m a student of history so I know that historically, labor unions and collective action in other forms are, like, why we have weekends, regulations around overtime work, all of these things.” she said. “It’s the only way that you can get anything done.”

With no official end date, the union said that the strike will end once members vote to accept a tentative agreement with the university.