We congratulate our colleagues from PSAC 901 on ratifying a new collective agreement on the night of April 17. You managed to move the administration to make substantial concessions on wages, childcare, gender-affirming care, caste discrimination, and, perhaps most importantly, you laid the groundwork for strengthening your collective agreement with anti-clawback language to protect your funding packages. This is a significant win that future bargaining teams will be able to build on. Brick by brick, you are building stronger protections for your members. We especially commend your fierce bargaining team for taking a comprehensive approach to bargaining that recognizes how labour issues intersect with multiple forms of oppression, both locally and globally.

We admire the grace with which you have endured weeks of bullying by the administration’s bargaining team, the administration itself, and the private security forces they hired to surveil and police you on and off campus. Their disrespect, contempt, deception, and violent behavior tarnished the reputation of this university.

Although calling for a strike for the first time in 30 years may have scared many, all the unions on campus now know that unprecedented austerity measures and attacks on labour rights require unprecedented responses from organized labour. This was a historic strike – only the second ever at Queen’s, and the first academic one – and all the unions on campus owe you a debt of gratitude for teaching us about union power and cross-campus solidarity. 

We recognize the struggles, challenges, and sacrifices of holding the picket for five long weeks. This was an incredibly difficult time for you. But we know that you will emerge from this strike stronger than ever. As we move into the next chapter of cross-campus organizing, we are looking forward to continuing to fight with our fierce PSAC comrades against the corporate takeover of education and for a university that truly stands for curiosity, integrity, and justice. 

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